Das neue Land

In 2016 after years of waiting, Criterion Collection has released this two-part epic in Blu-Ray and standard DVD. For fullest effect, the two segments should be played as in the original, theatrical release: "The Emigrants" entirely in Swedish (with English subtitles), "The New Land" in English. It is in itself quite an achievement that the cast of both is virtually identical yet are competent in the new and old languages. Scandinavian immigrants to the Minnesota Territory in the 1850's--before the US Civil War-- found conditions both familiar and alien. The cold climate was like their native land but the soil of the New World was more fertile and not so stony. It was a place of open spaces and vast pine forests, few towns and no cities to compare with Stockholm or Oslo.

In the story, friendships are tested, some broken over issues of religion. Family life isn't always smooth or predictable. There are generational conflicts. Historical events are alluded to such as the Civil War or depicted, if briefly, like the 1862 uprising of the Eastern Sioux, starving on their Minnesota reservation, with deadly attacks on surrounding settlements until put down by the US Army. Yet the Indian side of the conflict is given play, also, with the emigrants coming to understand that The New Land had belonged to others before them.

"The New Land" is the second half of a story started in Troell's "The Emigrants," which depicted the struggles of a band of Swedish peasants in their move to America. Here, several of the settlers- such as the priest and the prostitute- move away in the first half-hour and reappear here and there throughout the rest of the film. The plot focuses on Karl-Oscar, his wife Kristina, and the family they try to raise in the Minnesota wilderness.

Von Sydow and Ullmann are given a chance to embellish on their characters, and they both do excellent work. Axberg also does a fine job of lending more depth to the character of Robert, Karl-Oscar's rebellious younger brother. There is also material worked in that examines the mistreatment (and eventual uprising) of local Native Americans and the futile searches for gold in the north. These other elements do not always seem to fit with the central story, but they effectively add to the sense of time and place anyway.

"The New Land" does not have the same emotional impact that "The Emigrants" had, but it develops the two central characters more and intelligently explores how they learn to adapt to their new life. Put together, these two films convincingly illustrate the plight of those who forged our frontier.

"The New Land" is the second half of a story started in Troell's "The Emigrants," which depicted the struggles of a band of Swedish peasants in their move to America. Here, several of the settlers- such as the priest and the prostitute- move away in the first half-hour and reappear here and there throughout the rest of the film. The plot focuses on Karl-Oscar, his wife Kristina, and the family they try to raise in the Minnesota wilderness.

Von Sydow and Ullmann are given a chance to embellish on their characters, and they both do excellent work. Axberg also does a fine job of lending more depth to the character of Robert, Karl-Oscar's rebellious younger brother. There is also material worked in that examines the mistreatment (and eventual uprising) of local Native Americans and the futile searches for gold in the north. These other elements do not always seem to fit with the central story, but they effectively add to the sense of time and place anyway.

"The New Land" does not have the same emotional impact that "The Emigrants" had, but it develops the two central characters more and intelligently explores how they learn to adapt to their new life. Put together, these two films convincingly illustrate the plight of those who forged our frontier.

Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell's categorical pièces-de-résistance, a diptych, 7-hours long saga based on his fellow countryman, the literature titan Vilhelm Moberg's THE EMIGRANTS ensemble.

Divided into THE EMIGRANTS and THE NEW LAND, this 19th-century epic holds a dear look at the travails of an ordinary Swedish household, the Nilsson family, resides in the Småland hinterland, when (mostly natural) adversity mounts against their livelihood, the eldest son Karl Oskar (von Sydow) mulls over the prospect of emigrating to the United States. A proposition deprecated by his wife Kristina (Ullmann) initially, but when poverty and hunger is aggravated by the premature death of one of their brood, she eventually accedes, joining their emigrating pack are Karl Oskar's younger brother Robert (Axberg), his farmhand friend Arvid (Lindstedt), the family of Kristina's uncle Pastor Daniel Andreasson (Edwall, a straight-up hard-hitter, brilliantly bringing about an air of smug virtuosity that treacherously verges on hubris), who is at loggerheads with the supercilious local parish clergy for preaching to the fallen ones (viz. those who are deemed not worthy of Christian gospel), among whom a former prostitute Ulrika (jazz chanteuse Monica Zetterlund), now a reborn woman, also partakes in the trek with her teenage daughter Elin (played by Monica's own daughter Eva-Lena Zetterlund).

THE EMIGRANTS itself can be bisected into two halves, before and after the family's embarkment for the state of Freedom, during the former, Troell introduces the hardship and inequity (religious parochialism and mistreatment) with a pastoral equanimity (occasionally lard with invigorating drumbeats) and purveys his main characters with sufficient impetus for their longing for a reset button in an idealized country where everyone is (purportedly) being treated equally and fairly, especially for the young Robert, it is the California gold rush beckons him, and supports him against the cavalier abuse he receives on a daily base when working as a farmhand.

Once their journey kick-starts, a looming nostalgia begins to sweep the cohort, Troell (who is also presiding over the cinematography department) fixes the valediction shot with a subdued solemnity, no goodbyes, tear-infused eyes, lingering looks are deployed, just a long-shot of the elderly parents seeing their children off in front of their house, incorporating the place into their final adieu, and the impact is ineffable.

Tellingly, THE EMIGRANTS' most accomplished passage is the ten-weeks trans-Atlantic voyage on a wooden brig, and Troell valiantly re-enacts its sordid state of affairs with swingeing maritime verisimilitude when most passengers are fallen victims of sea-sick, life is snuffed within a two-by-four space, by scurvy or even quinsy (a pertinent reference to today's illegal immigrants' ordeal on the sea). Here Liv Ullmann holds court in two magnificent scenes, one is Kristina's altercation with Ulrika, both actress are emotively unsparing, and letting out their prejudice and retorts once for all, which also presciently serves as a catalyst for their eventually best-friends transition; the other is when Kristina, apparently in extremis, exchanges with Karl Oskar their fondness, as if for the last time, by confessing that they are each other's best friends, a superlative affirmation that true love does exist thanks to the two players' most poignant delivery.

Once the survivors touches the terra firma but incognita, they are still miles away from where they will start life anew, hopping on the train and later a steamer, than on foot, when they finally reach their destination in Minnesota, their first dream is dashed by a boastful liar who never expect his lie will be debunked in his face, and THE EMIGRANTS finishes when Karl Oskar finds their new land under their new identities, American homesteaders.

Right picking up where its predecessor leaves, THE NEW LAND takes place entirely in the new land, where the Swedish emigrants forming a somewhat enclave, mostly living among themselves, which brings about a problematic issue about the story's sense of locality and Troell's inaction of alleviate this anonymity, if it is not for the random appearances of the indigenous Indians, one can safely surmise that the household is still live in their homeland, with very similar sylvan exuberance and harsh winter-time, and not much foreignness to interact with, in a way, it takes the shine off one of the story's focal points: displacement.

Yet, what THE NEW LAND excels in, is that oater flashback of Robert, who manages to stay alive just long enough after a futile gold-digging attempt with Arvid, a sounding slap in the face to the wide-eyed daydreamers, the pair is saddled with the same drudgery and hardship (not to mention Robert's potluck is rooked by deception) that ultimate will cost them both their young lives, here Troell launches a more hallucinogenic experiment in accentuating the pair's delirium and exhaustion when wandering in the desert, to admirable effect. Eddie Axberg has weathered convincingly in honing up Robert's tale of woe, and his final resignation with fate effectually brings a lump in one's throat.

Life goes on, as Karl Oskar's household finally prospers, a God-fearing Kristina turns out to be benighted enough to risk her own life for the sake of procreation, indoctrinated as a wife's sacrosanct duty, even after receiving the doctor's warning that another pregnancy would become her undoing, together with a less disinterested depiction of a wanton slaughter during the Sioux Uprising, by suggestion that it is at the expense of those white homesteaders' hospitality upon which the Indians conducts their retaliation, THE NEW LAND's luster starts to ebb away, notwithstanding a show-stopping Max von Sydow consistently radiates with plebeian bonhomie, sympathy and mettle from stem to stern of the entire roman-fleuve.

Picking up right where 'The Emigrants' left off, this film tells the story of an Swedish farming family who have staked out a claim and being their life anew in Minnesota. It's done in a highly realistic way, and we really feel the struggle of building a house, clearing the land, facing language difficulties, enduring the cold of winter, not having much money, and the possibly mortal threat of sicknesses. While it's giving us 1850's rural life in an authentic way, without a lot of glitz and a slower pace coming along as a part of that, it somehow does so without ever lagging over its 200+ minute run time, at least for me.

The story-telling a little more disjoint in this film, giving us bits of life in America almost as if in chapters, some parts of which we see once and then are never mentioned again. One example is the family's neighbors chastising them for their friendship with the former prostitute Ulrika (Monica Zetterlund), who has married a Baptist minister and converted to that faith, which they see as sacrilegious, and failing to note the irony in this view, given their own persecution prior to emigrating. It's a powerful scene, but nothing more comes of it. Similarly, we see a brief interval where Karl-Oscar (Max von Sydow) faces the possibility of going off to fight in America's Civil War after having been in the country for less than ten years, a perspective which was fascinating to me, but after he's rejected because of a limp, we hear nothing more about the distant fighting. Maybe this is like life.

Director Jan Troell is more daring stylistically during the flashback sequence involving the brother (Eddie Axberg), who goes off with a friend (Pierre Lindstedt) to try to find gold in California. Without spoiling anything, the surreal way he portrays this amplifies their harrowing ordeal, and I liked how the story behind how he returns with so much money is revealed.

The cast is wonderful, led by von Sydow and Liv Ullmann who have several great scenes. In one of the difficult moments, we see the attitude towards women in the period shown when she's told that getting pregnant again might prove fatal to her given past complications. She feels immense sadness over this because she feels like she wouldn't be a wife if this is true, and in turn, that she wouldn't be able to sleep with her husband if she couldn't risk pregnancy.

Unlike 'The Emigants', there is acknowledgment that the land these Swedish-Americans are farming was stolen from the Native Americans, but this is a film that is definitely told from a European perspective. Karl-Oscar defends himself, and we sympathize with him - he had no part in any of that, paid the government for the land, and has put in a lot of toil. We don't see any of the atrocities that the white settlers or the government committed, but we see some horrifying things the native Sioux do when backed into a corner and starving. One of the acts done after the killing of an entire white family is so brutally heinous, cruel, and disgusting that it seems to justify the mass hanging of Native Americans which follows. The events seem to be based loosely on the events of the Sioux Uprising in 1862, which led to the mass hanging of 38 Sioux in Minnesota. Still, I give the film credit for directly confronting the moral dilemma, though I struggle, wondering if there is an element here that is in a small way accepting one of America's two original sins. The film successfully strives for honesty through the lens of this family, achieves that, shows us just how hard life was in this period, and lets the viewer then grapple with what it all means. It made me think of the quote from Joyce, History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.