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Sweet Land

  • 2005
  • Tous publics
  • 1h 50m
IMDb RATING
7.1/10
4.3K
YOUR RATING
Sweet Land (2005)
In 1920, Inge, a German national, travels from Norway to rural Minnesota for her arranged marriage to Olaf, a Norwegian farmer; bureaucracy and prejudice cause major complications.
Play trailer2:46
2 Videos
28 Photos
DramaRomance

In 1920, Inge, a German national, travels from Norway to rural Minnesota for her arranged marriage to Olaf, a Norwegian farmer; bureaucracy and prejudice cause major complications.In 1920, Inge, a German national, travels from Norway to rural Minnesota for her arranged marriage to Olaf, a Norwegian farmer; bureaucracy and prejudice cause major complications.In 1920, Inge, a German national, travels from Norway to rural Minnesota for her arranged marriage to Olaf, a Norwegian farmer; bureaucracy and prejudice cause major complications.

  • Director
    • Ali Selim
  • Writers
    • Will Weaver
    • Ali Selim
  • Stars
    • Elizabeth Reaser
    • Lois Smith
    • Patrick Heusinger
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.1/10
    4.3K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Ali Selim
    • Writers
      • Will Weaver
      • Ali Selim
    • Stars
      • Elizabeth Reaser
      • Lois Smith
      • Patrick Heusinger
    • 67User reviews
    • 44Critic reviews
    • 75Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 9 wins & 2 nominations total

    Videos2

    Official Trailer
    Trailer 2:46
    Official Trailer
    Sweet Land: The Making Of Sweet Land
    Featurette 1:12
    Sweet Land: The Making Of Sweet Land
    Sweet Land: The Making Of Sweet Land
    Featurette 1:12
    Sweet Land: The Making Of Sweet Land

    Photos28

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    + 22
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    Top cast44

    Edit
    Elizabeth Reaser
    Elizabeth Reaser
    • Young Inge
    Lois Smith
    Lois Smith
    • Old Inge
    Patrick Heusinger
    Patrick Heusinger
    • Young Lars
    Stephen Pelinski
    • Old Lars
    Tim Guinee
    Tim Guinee
    • Young Olaf
    Robert Hogan
    Robert Hogan
    • Old Olaf
    Alan Cumming
    Alan Cumming
    • Young Frandsen
    Paul Sand
    Paul Sand
    • Old Frandsen
    Jodie Markell
    Jodie Markell
    • Donna Torvik
    Sage Kermes
    Sage Kermes
    • Mae Torvik
    Kirsten Frantzich
    • Lee
    Stephen Yoakam
    • Einar Torvik
    Karen Landry
    Karen Landry
    • Rose Torvik
    James Cada
    • Minister Thorwald
    Debbie DeLisi
    Debbie DeLisi
    • Sarah Torvik
    Charlotta Mohlin
    Charlotta Mohlin
    • Else Jorgensdatter
    Tom Gilroy
    Tom Gilroy
    • Comrade Vik
    James Bakkom
    • Station Manager
    • Director
      • Ali Selim
    • Writers
      • Will Weaver
      • Ali Selim
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews67

    7.14.2K
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    Featured reviews

    10nussgalles

    a lyrical beautifully filmed story

    i knew nothing about it before i saw sweet land at a film "class" preview. what a wonderful surprise. it is slow, thoughtful, with frames that are like beautiful photographs. the director gets more across with silence and facial expressions than most dialogue does. the actors are unique individuals - each performance a gem. and, the story is touching - the decent salt of the earth assimilated farmers who feel threatened by "other" outsiders. the two main characters beautifully portrayed as they work side by side and get to know each other. unique heartland music that respects the acting and dialogue and enhances without taking over at all. i highly recommend this for filmgoers who want to be touched and immersed. kudos to ali selim and fine company.
    9roland-104

    Wonderfully nostalgic, funny, sad, ironic tale of immigrant farmers in Minnesota

    Delightful, richly imagined story of a young immigrant woman who comes from Norway to Minnesota in 1919 as a "mail order bride" to marry a Norwegian farmer. By turns slapstick funny, tender, ironic and sad, this movie successfully evokes the difficult life of foreign homesteaders in a new land, in a story told simply, with no pretensions and with a wondrous range of nuances.

    We confront outrageous instances of religious, ethnic and political bigotry, and the cruel predations of wealthy money lenders who don't blink an eye when pressing foreclosures, ruining families who have sat elbow to elbow with them at church every Sunday for years. But we also see examples of kindheartedness, longing for love and gradually dawning romance, individual integrity and group justice, not to mention hilarious moments, both intentional and unintended.

    Inge (Elizabeth Reaser, a luminous beauty) is the stalwart German woman who comes to marry the reticent Olaf (Tim Guinee), who had thought she was Norwegian like him, since she came from a town in Norway. Olaf is a character straight out of a Garrison Keillor monologue: he's the quintessential shy Norwegian bachelor farmer.

    Inge, on the other hand, is deferential only because she can't speak English or Norwegian, only German, and that only with the church pastor, Rev. Sorrensen (John Heard), who refuses to conduct the wedding because Inge has no citizenship papers and, ironically, he is suspicious of her German roots, in a time when anti-German sentiment was still at a peak following WW I. Once Inge's got a handle on language, she starts to show her pluck, for, beneath her stunning physical beauty, Inge is in fact a forceful woman.

    Comic relief is afforded in a marvelous turn by Alan Cumming as Frandsen, another - and altogether inadequate – farmer. Rather than actually work at farming, Frandsen would much rather entertain his wife and nine kids, and his friends, with funny gestures and tunemaking. Cumming's performance reminds me of Ray Bolger as the scarecrow in Wizard of Oz, or Håkan Hagegård, as Papageno in Bergman's "The Magic Flute," or some of the masters of physical comedy in the silent film era. Rounding out a superb cast are Ned Beatty as Harmo, a ruthless banker, and Alex Kinston as Frandsen's wife, Brownie.

    Director Ali Selim, a native of St. Paul, Minnesota, had a highly successful career making commercials for television before undertaking this picture, his debut feature narrative film. He worked from a short story by Bemidji writer Will Weaver, called "Gravestone Made of Wheat." The movie was shot on location in a rural area of southwest Minnesota. This film will leave you laughing and crying. It is a treasure. (In English, German and Norwegian) My grades: 8.5/10 (A-) (Seen on 12/26/06)
    10Red-125

    Anti-German prejudice after WW I

    Sweet Land (2005) was written and directed by Ali Selim. Elizabeth Reaser plays Inge, a mail-order bride who travels to Minnesota to marry Olaf (portrayed by Tim Guinee).

    Because Inge is from Germany, not from Scandinavia, she finds social and legal obstacles to her wedding. The plot proceeds from this significant problem.

    Tim Guinee is a strong actor, as are some of the actors in supporting roles: John Heard as the troubled Minister Sorrensen, Ned Beatty as Banker Harmo, and Alex Kingston as farm housewife Brownie.

    However, the movie belongs to Elizabeth Reaser. She is a brilliant actor. She's even more talented than we realize. She doesn't speak German, but in the film she had to speak German as if it were her first language. Also, she had to speak English with a German accent. Somehow, she carries it off.

    It's worth mentioning one aspect of the movie that was unintentionally funny. Reaser has been traveling across the ocean and then halfway across the continent. She arrives looking fresh and tidy. She continues to be fresh and tidy--without a bath--for days after she arrives. Similarly, Alex Kingston is supposed to be a farm housewife who is the mother of nine children, but she still looks youthful and slender. OK--they're beautiful women, but director Selim should have given them a few signs of wear.

    I enjoyed this film, and I recommend it highly. We saw the film on DVD, where it worked well. The movie has a strong IMDb rating of 7.3. I think that it's even better than that.
    9lwalsh

    A lovely film which deserves to be widely seen

    'Sweet Land' manages a difficult feat: it is a historical film with a clear message for the present, yet it avoids becoming either nostalgically cloying or preachily shrill. "Banking and farming don't mix" is not merely a phrase heard several times; it is the key to the confrontation of two utterly different, and utterly irreconcilable, attitudes toward land and life. Ned Beatty, as the chief banker, embodies the one, driven by money and power, harshly and repellently (it's a superb performance), but he and his few allies, and what they stand for, cannot completely overwhelm what most of the other characters, major and minor, believe in and represent: the importance of human connections, with each other and with the jobs they must carry out.

    There is scarcely a false step in this film. Elizabeth Reaser brings Inge to life completely believably and very poignantly. We truly care about this woman, a fact made all the more astonishing when we realize that for a sizable part of the film she speaks in languages most of the American audience will not understand. It's one of the best performances I've seen in a long time. Similarly convincing is Tim Guinee as Olaf, her perplexed husband-to-be. His struggles to overcome prejudice (his own and that of his neighbors) are played with a delightful mix of humor, pathos, and inner strength which mirror the complex set of forces with which he must deal. Much the same could be said, albeit on a smaller scale, of the lesser parts; these performers inhabit these roles as if they had already lived them for real. Watch the interactions between Alan Cumming and Alex Kingston, for example; these are two people who are deeply and genuinely in love, but who recognize and accept the flaws of the other. There is no conventional 'happy marriage' insipidity here-- with the result that their marriage comes across as truly happy in a far more profound manner than so many others on screen.

    Visually the film is often lovely. It is not as lusciously filmed as Terrence Malick's 'Days of Heaven', with which it shares an underlying approach, but it also avoids the occasional glossiness which undercut the down-to-earth elements of the earlier film's plot. Here the images rarely feel forced, and never overwhelm the intense sense of physical presence so vital to both plot and message. Also powerful is the use of two framing stories, linked to but not dependent upon the central plot. Indeed, the emotional climax of the film actually resides in the contemporary story, something we will not realize until almost the very end of the film. What seems a mere narrative trick suddenly resonates with tremendous power, and brings home the film's central theme beautifully yet without undue emphasis.

    The flaws are few. The music, usually vaguely folksy without being especially engaging, is more than once rather too modern in its feel and too diffuse in its impact to support the visuals. The music is the weakest element in the film; at times it sounds almost as if the decision to add music was taken so late in production that all that was possible was some improvisational doodling, which fits neither the delicately shaped mood nor the careful pacing and structuring of the action. The important part of Minister Sorrensen is a bit awkwardly written, with his changes of outlook being rather too sudden; John Heard's performance, though thoughtful, could likewise be more nuanced (he was probably responding to the part as written, but in this case he would have been better off to play against the script).

    'Sweet Land' is a beautiful, funny, and often very moving film, with a deep and respectful sense of history and human relations. Both the action and the thoughts it provokes will linger long after the curtain closes. The film has much to offer, and I recommend it very highly.
    10overjoyedtoo

    Not slow and boring like some want you to believe...

    Sadly, if something isn't blowing up or someone isn't sawing someone's limb off, too many people and kids have become numb to violence and need a more violent fix that never gets satisfied. This is a wonderful glimpse into the hard life of being an immigrant from a foreign land, just like today, but even harder. Great casting supported by wonderful cinematography, and yes...story line. Like many of our ancestors, yet we forget wanting to shut the door behind us and not accept and celebrate this wonderful world of variety. Please give it a chance and be patient and not expect a James Bond action thriller. See it with open eyes and context it was meant to be viewed in.

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Elizabeth Reaser' Norwegian pronunciation was so bad that after Dagbladet (one of Norway's biggest news-papers) stumbled upon this film, they posted a clip from it with the title "What is she trying to say?"
    • Goofs
      They harvest an entire field of corn between the two of them, when they get back to the barn, the crop is suddenly wheat. They go through the whole "separating the wheat from the chaff" process, and pour the seed into sacks.
    • Quotes

      Old Inge: Olaf died, Frandsen.

      Old Frandsen: [considering for a moment] No. Olaf is in the fields.

      Old Inge: [slowly glancing out the window and remembering]

    • Connections
      Featured in Siskel & Ebert & the Movies: Blood Diamond/Turistas/The Nativity Story/10 Items or Less/Sweetland (2006)
    • Soundtracks
      Eskimo Kisses
      Music and Lyrics by Thomas Lieberman (as T.F. Lieberman)

      Published by Liza Rose Music (ASCAP)

      Performed by Thomas Lieberman (as Tom Lieberman)

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    FAQ21

    • How long is Sweet Land?Powered by Alexa
    • Is "Sweet Land" based on a novel?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • July 31, 2008 (Brazil)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Official site
      • Official site
    • Languages
      • English
      • German
      • Norwegian
    • Also known as
      • Wedding Photo
    • Filming locations
      • Montevideo, Minnesota, USA
    • Production companies
      • 120dB Films
      • Beautiful Motion Pictures LLC
      • Channel Z Films
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $1,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $1,706,325
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $41,860
      • Oct 15, 2006
    • Gross worldwide
      • $1,843,537
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 50 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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