Hamsun dvd movie.|
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List Price: $29.95 Our Price: $26.99 You Save: $2.96 Features • Closed-captioned • Color • DVD-Video • Subtitled • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 06 August, 1997 DVD Release : 23 May, 2006 |
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Hamsun description Director Jan Troell's biography of Norwegian, Nobel Prize-winning author, Knut Hamsun (Max von Sydow), is as much about Norway's experiences with Hitler as it is about Hamsun's personal life. Opening with a scene that establishes Hamsun's torrent relationship with his wife, Marie (Ghita Nørby), the film examines the couple's gradual conversion to Nazism, as Germany occupies Norway during World War II. Persuaded by a Nazi embassador sent to Oslo, Vidkun Quisling (Sverre Anker), both Marie and Knut become spokespeople for the Nazi Party, justifying their politics by the German promise of a strong, independent post-war Norway. As the Hamsuns discover the hushed horrors around them, their own personal relationship falls away, forcing them to reflect on their lives, their dysfunctional children, and their mistakes. Known as a traitor in Norway, Knut Hamsun, in this film, is portrayed as a true Norwegian patriot, proving, through Hamsun's own words, that his misdirected desire to aid Hitler had nothing to do with anti-semitism. A sad beauty permeates Hamsun. Just as the author sentences himself, the viewer musters up enough sympathy for Hamsun to learn that, indeed, the personal is political. --Trinie Dalton |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Max von Sydow carries the film |
| Hamsun (Jan Troell, 1996)
Jan Troell, largely unknown to American audiences since he severed his troubled relationship with Hollywood in the late seventies, has here created an interesting, if flawed, portrait of Knut Hamsun, one of the twentieth century's great writers, and a man who found himself on the wrong end of the stick during World War II. Hamsun is portrayed by Max von Sydow, and truthfully, von Sydow-- a man capable of making anything watchable (well, okay, we'll overlook Exorcist II: The Heretic)-- is easily the best thing about this film. That is not to say he's the only good thing, but it is von Sydow's performance that carries the film beyond where it really should go. The time is the early forties. Norway has been occupied by the Germans, and not all Norwegians are thrilled with the prospect. Hamsun is one of those who is, and he throws himself into writing pro-Hitler propaganda to get the Norse to like the guy better. His embittered wife, Marie (Ghita Norby, probably best known on this side of the pond for Lars von Trier's The Kingdom), is not overly fond of Hamsun, but, as she tells him during one unforgettable argument, the mores into which he has inculcated her have stuck; she will be his mouthpiece to the Nazi party (for Hamsun, ironically, never learned German). Norway's rank and file, who had once praised him as Norway's greatest son, now turn upon him and call him a traitor. Then comes Germany's defeat and Hitler's death, and it is revealed to Hamsun that he was not at all aware of much of what the Germans were doing during the war; this leads us into the final hour of the film, which deals with Hamsun's decline and, ultimately, death. The film's main problem is its pace, which upon reflection is confusing more than anything; while the movie would seem to deal with Hamsun's possible Nazi affiliation, that doesn't answer for the final forty-five minutes of the film, especially after the trial, which simply deals with the end of Hamsun's life. But then, if the film is more about Hamsun's life and the possible Nazi affiliation is just a subplot, why does it take up so much of the first half of the film? The two are spliced together about as well as can be expected-- which unfortunately is not as well as it could have been. Much of the latter half of the film seems almost extraneous but for von Sydow's stunning performance; the weaker Hamsun gets, the stronger von Sydow's performance becomes. Von Sydow is surrounded by a stable of fine actors, but in the end he eclipses them all; I'm not sure any actor, no matter how fine, could have stood in the face of this performance and not had his light dimmed. I just wish everything else had worked as well as the acting here. *** |
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