In the Back Row

with Allison McKinley © 2005

Wild Child Publishing.com © 2005

Film: Under Solen (Under the Sun)
(New Yorker Video)

Allison's review in ten words or fewer: Poetry for the eyes; love story to nurture the soul.

Grade: A+

Genre: Romance
Rating (USA): Unrated
Runtime: 130 Minutes
DVD Release Date (US): 17 February 2005
Starring: Rolf Lassgard, Helena Bergstrom, Johan Widerberg
Directed by: Colin Nutley

• Rated: NR
• Studio: New Yorker Video
• DVD Release Date: February 17, 2004
• DVD Features:
  • Available subtitles: English
  • Available Audio Tracks: Swedish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
  • In Swedish with optional English subtitles
  • Original theatrical trailer

***

Critics loved Under Solen, and it was nominated for several awards, including an Oscar in the category of Best Foreign Film. Regardless, the movie performed poorly at the box office. Why? Because it is a chick-flick for men.

Huh? Exactly. What is a chick-flick for men?

Women can tolerate, and often actually quite enjoy, a relaxed scene with people just talking. Men get antsy and start hogging the popcorn as soon as the screen is not filled curtain-to-curtain with fast cars, explosions, invading aliens, and hot females with big breasts; or, preferably, I suppose, hot cars driven by fast female aliens with big exploding breasts. It's a matter of attention span and focus.

Now, the conversation that women will tolerate, and often actually enjoy, is talk about romance, and usually romance with a big, hunky guy. Just what constitutes big, hunky guy might vary from Marshall Mathers (Eminem) in 8 Mile to Chris Cooper in Adaptation, to Robert Redford in anything (or nothing at all), but it comes down to this: Women enjoy dreaming about sex almost as much as having sex if the dream includes a sensitive and capable partner.

Under Solen doesn't have a big hunky, adept guy for the female audience members, at least not on the surface. It does have a very pretty girl, but it is because Ellen is so good looking in contrast to Olof that we suspect her of foul play from the start. So, women don't want to identify with Ellen, and men don't want to identify with Olof. And Ellen doesn't spend the entire film with her boobs hanging out, so she does not appeal to the primal instincts of the men in the audience.

Enter Erik.

Erik is Olof's young friend, a blue-eyed vision in blue jeans, fifties-style, with hair greased into a ducktail and a cigarette hanging precariously from the corner of his mouth. But Erik, like his Levis, is just too tightly wrapped around his own frame. He drives a turquoise-and-white, 1956 Ford Fairlane Sunliner, and he has seen too many Hollywood movies: He's all James Dean on the outside and mixed up little boy inside. He treats his current girlfriend dismally, using the words "I love you" as his own private key to her nether regions. Again, he is not someone women would dream about (okay, maybe a little), nor is he someone men would want to identify with (again, maybe a little).

All said, Under Solen does not fit the demographic to set box-office records. It is no National Treasure.

However, that does not mean that Under Solen it is not a treasure of a film. It is.

It is a carefully-crafted poem of a film, quiet and subtle, yet vast in scope, a delicious look at simple people in a simpler time and place. Though it may not be right for all of us, it will easily gain a place in the top-ten list of a few of us. I loved everything about it.

At the end of Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart, as international tavern-keeper Rick, spoke these words to Ilsa Lund and Victor Laszlo: "The problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Of course, he was playing the tough hero, while inside his heart was breaking. Because, if the problems of three people didn't matter, then nothing would matter in this world.

Olof is the original 40-year-old virgin. His dad died, and then his mother, leaving him alone on the family farm. Like a child learning to ride a bicycle, Olof keeps going only because his mum gave him a final push, and we begin to wonder if Olof can actually make it on his own.

This is the summer of 1956 in rural, northern Sweden.

Overhead, a fighter jet silently wings its way through the lofty clouds, whilst below vast fields of shoulder-high wheat undulate in the intense sun. The wind whispers a seasonal narrative to torpid crickets who are too lazy even to keep a good rhythm; the earth is alive, true, but you must listen carefully to hear wheat grow.

The symbolism may be subtle, but director Colin Nutley presents us with a timeless painting: the warrior above, the bucolic farmer below, along with the caption, "There's nothing new under the sun."

Every night at nine, Olof winds the big grandfather clock just as instructed, turning the key nine and one-half times. Then he goes to bed, drawing the blinds against the summer sun, still high in the Swedish evening sky.

Olof is by no means a rich man, if we are to judge him solely by the kroner in his bank account. He owns two plough horses, a milk cow, some chickens, a rudimentary residence, an outhouse, and an old Buick. He uses the latter for visits to the local village to buy sundries and attend church.

On one such visit to town, Olof stops at the newspaper office to place an ad in the personals for a housekeeper. He asks the very kind woman at the desk to write the ad for him, saying he left his reading glasses at home. She complies, helping Olof to structure the ad, and smiles knowingly when he insists on requiring a picture of the potential applicants. Gradually, we learn along with the clerk that Olof cannot read or write, and that he is probably looking for more than a housekeeper.

Erik supposedly helps in running the farm, though we are never quite certain where he comes from or where he goes or what he does on Olof's behalf. He is charismatic, crude, energetic, driven by the ghost of post-puberty hormones, secretly not quite certain if he wants to be James Dean or Marilyn Monroe. He claims he has "had" a hundred women whilst sailing round the world on various ships. Not once does he say he has loved or been loved.

Erik uses Olof as his personal banker, borrowing money to play the horses. In addition, we begin to see that the money Olof gives Erik to buy groceries and sundries for the farm somehow doesn't go as far as it should. Erik is very aware of his friend's illiteracy, and uses this knowledge like a cutting tool to separate Olof from all he possesses.

One day, Olof receives a reply to his ad, accompanied by a picture. He invites Ellen, again with the help of his new friend at the newspaper office, to visit him.

From the first moment Ellen arrives, we become suspicious of her. She is beautiful, by 1950s standards, in the painted, Technicolor ilk of Anita Ekberg or Marilyn Monroe. What does this elegant creature from the city want with Olof?

Of course, Olof is too blinded by her beauty to suspect anything (or does he sense something deeper?), but Erik, knowing the malice in his own heart, suspects a rat.

From this point, everything in the film hinges upon the acting performance of Helena Bergstrom as Ellen, and the direction of Colin Nutley. If they cannot convince us that a modern and sophisticated city woman could fall in love with Olof, then we would have no reason to stay for the end of the film.

But they manage to pull off the transition. How?

First, because no one is completely what they seem on the surface. Yes, Ellen may display the makeup and dress of a fifties film star, appearing sophisticated and worldly, but inside she is relatively homespun, and was probably out of her league in the big city. She is elemental woman looking for her elemental man.

Erik may imitate James Dean, but he is not James Dean. Behind his blustering swagger skulks a frightened adolescent with hormone problems and an identity crisis. He is an angry Peter Pan who becomes a fighter, fomenting war wherever he goes, whilst leaving behind a trail of fatherless children.

Further, we find that Olof's virginity does not render him incapable of love, any more than his inability to read makes him a fool. Though he may not enjoy a life enhanced by the tremendous vision of Shakespeare, nor confused by the befuddlement of Freud and Descartes, he sleeps, he wakes, he feels, he loves, and most important, he knows what is in his heart.

Olof represents the third stage of man in his development as man, a thousand millennia beyond the nomadic hunter, and a few small steps past the hunter-gatherer. He has learnt to husband the animals, harvest the food, hold the seed, till the soil, control fire and water in the most rudimentary sense. He is a farmer.

It is through the earthy strength Ellen finds in Olof that she is able to return to the big city to face the mess she has left behind. She leaves Olof a note, telling him that she must take care of something first, but if she has her way, she will return to him. Her note tells Olof that she is married, that she left her husband, and must now return to set things straight.

At this point, we stop doubting Ellen's intentions, and our suspicions about Erik are confirmed: He is not just an immature friend who sometimes uses Olof to get his own way.

We find that he is a dangerous and selfish manipulator as he reads Ellen's letter to Olof, embellishing the part about her husband, and leaving off the ending where she proclaims her love for Olof, saying she will return to him if she possibly can. He even throws in a bit implying that Ellen was stealing money from Olof all along, to cover his own larceny.

Olof knows in his heart that what Erik read cannot be the truth, and he asks Erik to read the letter again. Of course, Erik declines. Olof's love has made him wise, wise even beyond the learning of his dubious friend who is armed with vile cunning, and backed by the education he has gleaned from Hollywood films and world travel.

In the end, Erik decides his own fate when he returns to the sea, and even the most casual followers of nautical disasters will smile when gives the name of his next ship.

Ellen too, finds her destiny, a much brighter one, when she returns to Olof and the farm.

Overhead, once again silently piercing the clouds, Sweden's new fighter jet streams across the cerulean sky.

In our little drama of three people down below in those wheat fields, the heart has won another significant battle against the headstrong mind, and we ask ourselves, "Is there anything new under the sun?"