Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Excellent adaptation.

A Disappointing Continuation

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Knut Hamsun seemingly had everything: Norway's poet laureate and novelist par excellence who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. So how did this "great man" end up by betraying his country by supporting Hitler during World War II? Hamsun was no garden variety traitor and the story of his collaboration is complicated as was made clear by Jan Troell's absorbing but somewhat biased 1997 film.The story begins in Norway at the time of Germany's surrender. We then flash back to 1936 at the time when Hamsun (brilliantly played by Max Von Sydow) was already 77 years old. He and his much younger second wife, Marie, can't stand each other and his four adult children resent their father for sending them off to boarding school when they were young and basically not expressing enough affection toward them when they were growing up.Flash forward to 1940 and Hamsun openly calls for Norweigians not to resist the new Nazi occupiers but to cooperate with them. He supports Quisling, the puppet head of the newly installed Fascist government and is further resented by the general Norwegian population when Marie (who speaks German) goes on the lecture circuit, supporting the German cause.Despite his pro-German leanings, Hamsun attempted to intervene on behalf on resisters scheduled to be executed by the Nazis. Hamsun met with Josef Terboven, the Reich Commissioner in Norway, but his appeals for mercy fell on deaf ears despite Terboven's soon to be realized false assurances. Hamsun rejected Nazi racial theories to Terboven's face and had Jewish friends. Hamsun even met with Hitler in Germany in 1943 (as most ably illustrated in the film) and alienated the cruel dictator by protesting Terboven's brutal policies in Norway. Upon leaving, Hitler was overheard remarking that he never wanted to see "that man" (Hamsun), ever again! Hamsun was quoted as saying that he still believed in Hitler but his "wishes were being twisted" by men like Terboven (this according to Jeffrey Frank in his excellent 2005 article in the New Yorker, "In From the Cold-The return of Knut Hamsun").After the war Norway hardly was in a position to dispose of Hamsun as they did Quisling, who ended up in front of a firing squad. Hamsun, on the other hand, was an old man. His wife got three years in prison but Hamsun ended up being shuttled back and forth between a nursing home and a psychiatric institution. Hamsun resented being diagnosed as "senile" by the psychiatrists and demanded his proper day in court. Finally a civil action was brought against him and he was fined a substantial portion of his savings.In his defense, Hamsun argued that due to his advanced age, deafness and isolation (he only had pro-German papers to read on his country estate), he was unaware of the atrocities the Nazis were committing. This same view appears to have been endorsed by Troell, who appears to have been influenced by the author of a book chronicling Hamsun's trial as well as a 1987 biography (according to Jeffrey Frank). Troell only briefly touches on Hamsun's support of Germany during the war. Much of the support stemmed from Hamsun's anti-British attitude which dated back to the Boer War in 1900. In Hamsun's myopic world view, Britain was the devil incarnate, citing the excesses in its years as a colonial power. Hamsun could never admit that Britain had evolved much since those days and had a become a progressive force in world politics. Troell appears to argue that Hamsun found some measure of redemption in his last years, writing a new book after so many years, in an attempt to justify his behavior.The bottom line is that Hamsun never was able to see the bigger picture. During the occupation of Norway during World War II, Hamsun was unable to draw the connection between the Reich Commissioner's brutal policies and Hitler himself. Somehow Hitler was not aware and not responsible for what his subordinates were doing in Hamsun's eyes. Hamsun saw Norway as independent but part of a greater German Empire, with Great Britain as victimizer, not victim.Hamsun is an excellent portrait of the curmudgeonly artist who turned a blind eye to what was going on in the world before the tragic occupation of his country. He had ample opportunity to observe what the Nazis were all about between the wars but chose to view the world only through an anti-British prism. Hamsun's failure was probably most due to a rigid personality that could see or hear no evil.

One of the elements that make this film one of the most fascinating ever made is the use of language... while Knut and Marie Hamsun were Norwegians, Max von Sydow and Ghita Nørby speak Swedish and Danish respectively throughout the movie. To those not well-versed in Scandinavian languages, there is a very big difference. Most Swedes cannot understand more than 20% of spoken Danish and perhaps 60% of Norwegian. To make the comparison easier to grasp, imagine a Spanish movie where the main characters speak Portuguese and Italian. I don't know why this linguistic device was used, but the effect is remarkable. At first I figured it was a way to distance Norwegians from the main characters whom were regarded as traitors, but that theory doesn't hold since the character who plays Quisling (the man who "sold" Nazism to many Norwegians) speaks Norwegian throughout the film.Trivia: throughout Scandinavia the name "Quisling" is not just synonymous with "back-stabber"... it has actually become a commonplace word and is found in most dictionaries. It is comparative to the phrase "his name is Mudd" in the U.S.

I expected an entirely different movie. Having read a single review when Hamsun was released, and having heard of him only from listings of Nobel Prize winners, I thought this would be about the traducing of a man's loyalty to country, the political evolution of an intellectual celebrity's thinking. It's not.The movie is instead one of the most penetrating looks at a distinctive and more often than not failing, marriage I've ever seen. The examination begins after the couple have already been married 35 years; they are a tempestuous, often bitter, and jealous former author of children's books (and in youth, an actress) who desires love from her spouse - and a proud selfish ill-tempered intellectual author who lives in splendid rural isolation and admits his wife's nature disappoints him. The story of marriage is simply fascinating - even though the relations with their five children are cryptically portrayed. It would be hard to ever better von Sydow's performance as Hamsun (or even as a man growing very old) - or the actress (previously unknown to me)who played his wife - they are simply astounding. I definitely recommend this movie - it is in the same vein as Cries and Whispers or Scenes from a Marriage.The question I thought the film would address - the responsibility of someone for his words during wartime - is only glancingly struck. Without any attempt to whitewash Hamsun's written opinions favoring the Nazis who had occupied Norway, the movie's author clearly makes Hamsun more sympathetic as a human being as the movie continues. I think few would agree about where the line should be drawn on punishment for one's opinions in a free society - when that society is at war. Most think those from the democracies who sympathized with the Nazis and Fascists during the Second World War (e.g., Ezra Pound, Celine, deKock, P.G.Wodehouse, Hamsun) are villainous. But is this because they sided with Nazis or because they sided with their country's enemies? Surely in a free society in peacetime, Ezra Pound's anti-semitic ravings and pro-fascist sympathies would not be punished as treason - any more than those who spoke, but did nothing, in favor of Stalin in America during the 1950s were ever tried for treason. Clearly in a free society, the crime is not that one has taken a particular position, but that one has spoken in favor of an enemy during wartime. But if this is so, then what is one to say of those Americans who wrote to denounce the United States' war with North Vietnam? Or with Iraq? If we do refuse to label such writings as treason (and most probably do - few call for thousands of trials for treason), why? Could it be simply because neither Iraq nor North Vietnam was likely to so succeed that they would occupy the United States? If Iraq were winning so resoundingly that it now occupied parts of the United States, would writings denouncing the war and in favor of Iraq THEN be treason? Probably most would say so. But by what logic does treason depend on whether one is winning or losing a war?Further, if we assume a war between different ideologies, should those who have expressed sympathy for another country's ideology BEFORE any war - at a time when no one could have called it treason - be expected to completely forswear their former opinions the date the war is declared against that country? If so, is this not a strange definition of treason? That someone with PRE-WAR sympathies for a certain position must denounce his previous sympathies when his country goes to war against a country that shares his own beliefs? Must someone perform an about face from his own repeatedly expressed views -- whenever his country enters a war - or be guilty of treason? Betray yourself or you betray your country? If so, is this not a demerit in any society professing to be free? And yet no one can doubt that one's own country's success is badly affected (and conversely the enemy is uplifted) to the extent that influential people denounce their own government and praise the enemy - particularly when under enemy occupation. The issues of treason for opinions are quite complex - but are scarcely touched on in this movie. And that is fine - this is another movie altogether, psychologically penetrating, fascinating study of old age, of a poor marriage, of the unforeseen future as disappointment, of the yearning to die when old.

The extraordinary Max von Sydow stars in this terrific film about the fine line between complicity and collaboration in the life of a Noble Prize winning writer from Norway during the Nazi occupation. But this film is also so much more than that: it is a film about the complex and heart-wrenching relations between the writer, his wife and their children. Like "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl," this film asks where we draw the line in holding artists responsible for their art and actions in an oft confusing world. But it takes that question a step further in examining how his art may also have cost him his relationships with his wife and children.This is a beautifully filmed, well-acted movie; a true character study of the inner lives of a family, particularly Knut Hamsun and his wife, Marie, evocatively portrayed by Ghita Norby. It is a subtle and slow-paced film in true Scandinavian fashion and von Sydow again shows us why he will be remembered of one of the finest actors of cinema's first 100 years. I highly recommend it, and for those who are interested in other movies dealing with this theme, especially as it relates to artists, so often regarded as naive regarding politics and how they are may be used and manipulated for political gain, I highly recommend "Mother Night," the aforementioned documentary about Riefenstahl, and "Mephisto."