southerington

Wow - astounding and absolutely mesmerizing! A medieval chivalric allegory (it's based on the 14th century poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight") which makes little or no attempt - refreshingly enough! - to adapt to a more modern storytelling technique in order to make itself more easily accessible to the average 21st century moviegoer. If you want and expect an action packed knightly adventure film, this is definitely not for you. If you enjoyed "Pan's Labyrinth", however, with all of its symbolism and allegory, there's a good chance that you'll be as spellbound by this as I was!! And Dev Patel, in the leading role... He is, and has always been, a tremendous actor, and his achievement here is no exception - fabulous!!

With Kay Pollak's last film, "As it is in heaven" (Så som i himmelen), it seemed that there were two camps and two camps only - people either loved it or hated it, with nothing in between. The same thing seems true of this sequel, among both critics and general audiences. For my own part, I belong to the camp that loved it!

Both Frida Hallgren and Niklas Falk give absolutely masterful character portrayals, and they both deserve major acting awards as far as I'm concerned. I found the story gripping and deeply moving, and shed my first tears (far from the last) at a very early stage. Lena's struggles with a repressive village environment and her own self-esteem, and Stig's struggles with an old-fashioned church leadership stuck in its old ways as well as his own inner demons and failed marriage, provide a perfect mirror of easily recognizable struggles in just about anyone's daily life. The issues of loss and tragedy are also very easy to identify with on a personal level.

For me, the film evoked both laughter and tears, and left me with a feeling of hope and joy. I disagree completely with those critics, both professional and amateur, who feel that Kay Pollak has failed to make a sequel as masterful as its predecessor - I absolutely loved both films, found both the acting and the direction superb, and it has stayed with me since seeing it for the first time (yes, I will see it again) a couple of weeks ago.

I'm sorry, but unless you happen to be a right-wing born again Christian, with paranoid tendencies (and/or conspiracy theories) about globalization and the international community, this probably isn't for you. It feels more like massive right-wing religious propaganda than movie entertainment, the acting leaves a tremendous amount to be desired, the characterization leans so heavily on stereotype as to border on the ridiculous, the plot moves along so slowly at times that even the most hardcore of of insomniacs will doze off on the couch and the interpretation of Biblical text (around which the entire plot, such as it is, revolves) is simple-minded in the extreme. I can see that sci-fi might be the only film genre into which this move comes even close to fitting, but it bears little or no resemblance to any of the usual connotations evoked by that "label". There are plenty of pretty good movies out there with Christian and Biblical themes, if that's what you're in the mood for, but this is definitely not one of them.