Här har du ditt liv

Long, lumbering tale of teenage Olof and his coming-of-age journey through Sweden in the 1910s. This award-winning epic tells both a rite-of-passage story, and a fairly interesting depiction of rural Sweden and the country's early proletarian and workers' movement.

Great production values and cinematography underline competent movie-making for sure... but we never get to know the protagonist enough to really care in the end, because of its overly episodic narrative. What's more, it contains at least one HOUR of footage and scenes that neither move, entertain or push the story forward... Poetic? No, in my book, that's being guilty of painfully redundant screen time! It's on many a list of best-ever Swedish movies. To me, it's not bad (as stated), but I probably wouldn't even rank it on my Swedish top-50...

5 out of 10 from Ozjeppe

Jan Troell's debut film is a pleasure to view. It's realistic, yet artful, and shot in tasteful black and white. He takes great care with poetry of nature, along with picturesque composition.

Alas, when it comes to original narrative, Mr. Troell doesn't demonstrate that's his forte. The film for me felt largely redundant, as though almost half could be deleted for a stronger cumulative statement.

Later on in his career, "The Immigrants" and "The New Land" revealed the film maker's talent best realized. In contrast, "Here's Your Life" merely shows technical promise in its photographic imagery. What's needed is a skilled writer.

It's easy to understand the work being selected by Sweden as its entry in the Academy Award foreign language category--and the Academy's rejecting it's qualification.

Today it's a "forgotten film" shown occasionally on the TCM network.

This film is a piece of art. I watched this famous 3-hour long film and was chocked by it´s fantastical visual style. It begins in black and white and then suddenly you see the color bird (which shows up several times in the film)and then your in the film for the next almost three hours.

It´s about a boy in 1914 who leaves his home to start to work.The film is very critical to the society and it´s a big epic and on the same time it is a very beautiful film. The acting by Eddie Axberg is one of the best performances I have seen in a long time.The film tells the story very honestly and it´s(as I wrote before) visual style is inspiring.A masterpiece that deserves without a doubt a 5/5

The movie is about a young man, 15 yo Olof, leaving his home and starting a life on his own. An Australian friend said: "This is Art House". I don´t agree. This movie captures ordinary people in the early 1900-hundreds, struggling to survive in a harsh environment and dreaming dreams ordinary, poor people dreamt, and still dream. The dream of a better future. That is, in a way, as mainstream as It could be. Another thing is that Olof´s saga is told with an outstanding level of cinematography. Jan Troell masters his tools extraordinarily, telling the story with extreme close-ups, astonishing panoramas, over-exposures, beautiful colors and grainy black&White footage. The sense of pictures and details characterizes Jan Troell´s work. It´s no wonder this amazing movie led him to the assignment of directing "The Emigrants" and "The New Land". Those movies made him internationally famous. Watch this, and you will see why.

The nearly three-hour film tracks the teenage years of Olof (Eddie Axberg) in the late 1910's. He leaves home at age 15 to find work, settling in at a lumber company, meeting odd characters and learning about life. Olof later moves on to working at a movie theater, and eventually a traveling circus. His experiences shape his outlook, as does his voracious reading, with a particular interest in philosophy.

Lyrical, meandering, often beautiful, this was director Troell's feature debut. It's a snapshot of Sweden at a particular time and among a particular class, but the film holds universal appeal thanks to the quality of its compositions and the effective performances. The secondary characters come and go, with Axberg's Olof being the one constant, and he anchors the film well. The cinematography is mostly B&W, but there are bits here and there in color, usually memories or imaginings of Olof's. Recommended.