Kongen av Bastøy

It's such a shame the Norwegian Committee did not choose this film as the contender for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The acting is top notch from all the main characters. Kristoffer Joner and Stellan Skarsgård's characters really gives you the chill, but the actors that really surprised was the newcomers Trond Nilssen and Benjamin Helstad characters. They delivered the best dialogs and very convincing acting.

If you are a sucker for true stories about injustice, mental and physical abuse and uprising against a brutal regime, then go watch this film now! Forget about The Troll Hunter, this is probably one of the best Norwegian films from the last decades.

King of Devil's Island (2010)

A very straight forward, hard hitting, well acted account based on a true story of a boy's penal colony on a Norwegian Island early in the 20th Century.

That says it all. It is what it is, and there is the almost inevitable rebel and leader among the boys against the sometimes evil, sometimes indifferent adults who rule the group with false benevolence. You know who is right and who is wrong, and you follow the plot with a mixture of expectation and outrage. It's dramatic great stuff. Yes, been there and seen that somehow before, but it's severe and beautiful in its setting and intense and provocative within.

It might be interesting to compare this to more famous prison movies (the dubious "Shawshank" and earlier classics like "Birdman from Alcatraz") to realize how much this one is holding to a line of truth. As much as the events are extreme (eventually), the filmmaking is filled with restraint. Compare further to a movie like "Shutter Island" and you know that this one is practically a grey, subdued documentary.

And this is to its advantage. It's not a mind-blowing experience in cinema terms--it's just a really well done, focused, sensitive telling of a forgotten story of repression and survival and maybe, in the end, the every lifting human spirit.

Kongen av Bastøy is based on actual events happening on the Bastøy correctional facility for difficult boys, back in 1915. The Norwegian island Bastøy is located in the Oslo fjord, between Horten and Moss, about an hours drive south of Norway's capitol, what until 1919 was called Christiania before changing name back to original Oslo.

Marius Holst has made another good film about young boys coping with coming of age. This time he has gone to the core of coping with misplaced childhoods. Well acted, and very true to it's time frame, Kongen of Bastøy, is very believable story made with a 10 million dollar budget. Stellan Skarsgård, Kristoffer Joner, Benjamin Helstad and Trond Nilssen does the very best of method acting of their characters.

The story is both sore, dramatic and tragic, as well as true. It tries to both tell Norwegian history back when the country was poor, and when it was likely to be sent on a whaling ship, being a youngster from difficult background. So why is this film not a 10 out of 10. so many of these heart-wrenching stories easily make you get tears in your eyes.

Well, I'm afraid to say that this is a true story's dilemma. Making the best possible story come out in a film, you have to love of eel for the characters. The young boys on this facility is not the ones easy to love. They are brutal, uneducated, cheeky, unable to show affection and victims of a difficult past. Though Marius Holst tries to make us understand and feel affection for both the kids and the "wardens" in this boys home, I simply can't really start to like any of the characters.

Well acted, well written, but does director Holst really make us care? He has shown he know how to do this in the great story of "Cross my heart and hope to die", In Norwegian: "Ti kniver i hjertet" and "Mirsush" or "Blodsbånd", and succeeded well there. In Kongen av Bastøy which is a story of 10 years in progress, the trouble is that he had to face reality.

Telling a story on difficult boys, obviously has to show the boys how they are. And Marius Holst is no "tears-seeker". Neither is his leading actor in this. He obviously has felt this story has to be told. And as a historic manuscript on how one solved this cases of difficult boys back then, it functions very well. Just don't expect to really care. Maybe this makes the film even better. It should, but I'm afraid I still feel it lacks this. To really be able to touch a movie-goer, the fictional adding would have done the trick. making the film an even better story, but less true. That's the dilemma of telling a true story. If you want the story to be loved, you gotta add the elements of heart and soul, even if it would be untrue to the story told.

So for this cold bastard, I'm afraid this is just a good told story, and not a classic as I'd like it to be, and maybe also therefore not the possible box office hit it would have been, if made as a heart wrenching story.

Making a film like this loved, really need us to identify. This is the only true trouble with an otherwise great film.

Bastøy correctional facility was closed down in the fifties, when Norway was recovering from the 2nd World war. Now there's a prison out there. I'm sure a lot of kids was growing up hating Bastøy. Bastøy still have a negative sound for Norwegians, well deserved.

A gripping and tragic movie made even more so because its based on real events. It surrounds the infamous Bastøy Boys Home correctional facility in Norway and the violent uprising that took place there in 1915, led in part by 17 year old inmate Erling who bucks against the brutal regime.

I spent the entire movie feeling cold, exhausted and hungry as the wintry isolation almost becomes a character in itself here. Why didn't anyone ever wear a jacket? Was that part of the punishment at the home?

Great performances from everyone, although for some reason I'd been expecting more brutality from Stellan Skarsgard, maybe because he always looks so angry and mean. The real problem here was the dorm master!

In the end I was left wondering how much of this story is true and slightly confused by the bittersweet flash-forward at the end, how many years later was that? Was "he" a whaling captain? A little vague. 02.15.14

KING OF DEVIL'S ISLAND (Kongen av Bastøy) is an experience more than a film. It dares to take the viewer where all is black and white, emotionally and visually, and while the film is shot in color, the only moment of color in this dark, atmospherically eerie snow bound island boys prison is the occasional blood and fire that creates even more of an impact because of the bleak screen that serves as background for the story. Based on a true story by Mette M. Bølstad and Lars Saabye Christensen and adapted for the screen by Dennis Magnusson and Eric Schmid, the fine cast is directed by Marius Holst.

In 1915 on the island Bastøy, located in the Oslo fjord, live a group of delinquent, young boys aged 11 to 18 in the Bastøy Boys Reform School. The boys daily, sadistic regime is run by the guards and Governor Bestyreren (Stellan Skarsgård) who is stern but seemingly fair in his management of the reform school (his wife lives with him in an opulent manner). But the Housemaster, a smarmy pedophile names Master Bråthen (Kristoffer Joner), is cruel and malicious and bestows both mental and physical abuse on the boys: the boys are used for cheap manual labor rather than being schooled and 'corrected' to return to society. The boys attempt to survive by adapting to their inhumane conditions. One day a new 17 year old boy, Erling who is assigned the 'name' C19 (Benjamin Helstad), arrives with his own agenda: how to escape from the island. How far is he willing to go in order to get his freedom? There is a stalwart lad Ivar/C5 (Magnus Langlete) who is due for release and a rather frail lad Olav/C1 (Trond Nilssen) who falls victim to the Master: these lads are C19's colleagues. After a tragic incident takes place, Erling ends up forced into the destinies of the other boys by leading them into a violent uprising. Once the boys manage to take over Bastøy 150 government soldiers are sent in to restore order. How he maneuvers the escape fantasy brings a surprising ending to the story.

The acting is first rate from a fine group of young actors. The cinematography is by John Andreas Andersen and the haunting musical score is by Johan Söderqvist. In Norwegian with English subtitles. A moody, deeply moving work. Grady Harp, February 12