Touches You

Good movie but grossly overrated

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Blistering performances.

The opening scene in Bille August's "Pelle erobreren" ("Pelle the Conqueror" in English) shows a father and his son moving from their native country to a new one in search of a better life. The father finds work on a farm, but gets subjected to abuse every step of the way while his son gets bullied. The movie takes place in Denmark in the 1800s but could just as easily apply to a modern setting, as people continue to leave their native countries in search of a better life elsewhere, accepting the inevitable abuse. As for what we find out about the employer, that's probably a common occurrence also.Max von Sydow puts in an outstanding performance as the desperate father, always thinking of his son. The movie won a well deserved Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, only the second Danish film to do so.All in all, the Scandinavian countries have turned out some masterful cinema. I highly recommend this one. Bille August later directed the 1998 adaptation of "Les miserables".

Danish screenwriter, producer and director Bille August's fifth feature film which he co-wrote with Danish author and screenwriter Bjarne Reuter, Swedish author Per Olov Enquist and Swedish author Max Lundgren (1937-2005), is based on the first part of a tetralogy novel from 1906-1910 by Danish writer Martin Andersen Nexø (1869-1964). It premiered in Sweden and Denmark, was screened In competition at the 41st Cannes International Film Festival in 1988, was shot on location in Sjælland and Bornholm in Denmark and is a Sweden-Denmark co-production which was produced by Danish producer Per Holst. It tells the story about Pelle and his father whom he calls Lassefar who during the late 1800s travels from Tommelilla in Sweden to the Danish Island of Bornholm with a group of Swedish emigrants in the hopes of a better life and ends up living in a barn at a place called Stengården which is managed by an exploitative boss and his complaisant son.Finely and precisely directed by Danish filmmaker Bille August, this quietly paced fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints though mostly from the main character's point of view, draws a tangible and heartrending portrayal of a relationship between a widowed middle-aged man and his adolescent son, a degrading manager and his unruly employee and a young woman and man who's romance is damned and forbidden by the man's father due to their class differences. While notable for it's naturalistic and distinct milieu depictions, fine production design by production designer Anna Asp, exquisite cinematography by Swedish cinematographer Jörgen Persson and fine costume design by Swedish production designer and costume designer Kicki Illander, this character-driven and narrative-driven story which examines themes like survival, human dignity, friendship, prospects and the human condition, depicts two empathic and interrelated studies of character and contains a good score by Swedish composer Stefan Nilsson.This historic, at times romantic and literary coming-of-age tale which is set in the late 19th century on an Island in the east of Denmark in the Baltic Sea, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, subtle continuity, various characters and the reverent acting performances by Swedish actor Max Von Sydow, Danish actor and writer Pelle Hvenegaard in his debut feature film role, Swedish actor Björn Granath, Danish actress Astrid Villaume (1923-1995) and Danish actor Thure Lindhardt in his second feature film role. An epic, humane, atmospheric and heartfelt period drama from the late 1980s which gained, among numerous other awards, the European Film Award for Best European Actor Max Von Sydow at the 1st European Film Awards in 1988, the award for Best Young Actor in A Foreign Film Pelle Hvenegaard at the 10th Youth In Film Awards in 1989 and the Palme d'or at the 41st Cannes Film Festival in 1988.

Bille August's passionately directed epic, set in Denmark at the beginning of the twentieth century, uses its beginning, a humbling of our protagonists' dreams, in an interesting way. Through the seasons that follow during a long year on a hellish farm, the very young title character's decrepit old father's idealistic vision malleates and stays stubbornly alive inside him, even though life seems stacked to punish him for his hope of a better life.Life on the farm is defined by the land, the seasons, and the personalities of the people who live there. The owners, the Kongstrups, only sporadically appear. They live in a big manor house far removed, angled at a position of power from the barns, stables and farm buildings, and Mrs. Kongstrup spends her agonizing days drinking while her despicably proud husband chases tail, with no shame, not even about the one hapless wench who appears at his front door time and again with their illegitimate child. In the laborers' quarters, life is the bullying of the manager, who ascertains weaknesses in his farm hands and feels only inclined to exploit them. Modeling himself after him is the insecure trainee, a bully compensating atop his high horse who feels particularly fulfilled in tormenting Pelle.Pelle is played by an impressive young boy, but the film's real star is Max von Sydow, that masculine brick house of vitality and frankness, who rivals Brando in the natural practice of never resonating a trace of visible acting, of not appearing to be, not acting, but being absolute and guileless even in complex and heavy-handed scenes. Von Sydow's work in the film has been honored with an Academy Award nomination for best actor, well deserved, particularly after a distinguished career in which he stood at the center of many of Ingmar Bergman's greatest films. But there is not a bad performance in the movie, and the young actor, Pelle Hvenegaard, is quite convincing, having been literally born to play this part, as in real life he was named after the character in the original novel. When another actor calls to you while the cameras are rolling, and your real name is not your character's, that is a basic and obvious psychological obstacle. When that actor calls your real name in the same circumstance, it is a gift.The film is an absorbing entertainment because it is a richness of events. There are scenes of punishingly taxing toil in the fields and the stables, under the eye of the Manager. Invigorating friction between the Manager and a defiantly free-spirited worker. The chicanery in the mansion, where Mrs. Kongstrup wrests a distinctly caustic revenge on her psychologically abusive philanderer of a husband. The heartbreak of a farm worker, who has fallen in love above her class. Most of all, for me, there are so many great movies that give us heart-swelling mother-child relationships, and here is a tear-gushing father-child one.

I was expecting the Pelle character to be Max Von Sydow... anyway the boy Pelle hardly measures up to Von Sydow, but this is only one of this movie's shortcomings.To begin, it is much too long. Clip the school scenes. The schoolmaster's role is inconceivably bad and his flock of sex-obsessed children is not only obnoxious but would make Freud himself squirm in his grave. Also, the daughter, and all scenes related to her sub-plot, should be cut. This role adds very little or nothing and seems inserted only to supply the sex/beauty demand. Drop a few other flat characters too---and you drop an hour from the movie.Speaking of "Pelle's"characters, apart from Lasse (Von Sydow), they all seem to share an inert quality. It's as if they inhabit a Scandinavian winter scene painted by a second tier artist--beautifully set, but filled with people as props. Some are too stereotypical, some too gray, some too general---as if belonging to a wide-angle picture and not to a movie. And although the mother and Eric are potentially convincing and interesting characters it's as if their lines have been loaned out to them. In this sense, "Pelle" is too much like a TV movie.Another kind of stereotype is the strong association here of poverty and farms with a kind of animal sexuality. The youngest child to the very old seemed to be defined more by a mindless sexual interest than by any other. I mean since when do 5-10 year old kids gang up on adult sexual behavior? Then there's the baron (and son to a point) who can never pass up a chance to roll in the grass and hay with their indentured farmhands. And does the mutilation material really fit an already morbid movie? I've scored "Pelle" a 6, but believe it closer to a 7 (7.8 needs to be countered) The movie, I think, does have three strengths, with the first overshadowing the other two.Max Von Sydow's acting is exceptional, and it alone is worth the price of the ticket. Whatever problem there might be with his role, he overpowers it. He is utterly convincing as someone fated to poverty on one side and age on the other. Victimization seems to have seeped into his mind, spirit, and body. He calls on no tricks, and never deviates from the character he inhabits whether as a man cowering before the powerful wieldings of his masters, or buckling under one more shattered dream. He is as certain of himself as a proud and determined immigrant as he is as a broken and debilitated man. And he inevitably carries the movie's truth about oppression and discrimination on his back.Photography is another positive. The Danish landscape, the isolated world of a large farm, the centering big house, the natural world of farmland and seascape, and the snowy winter scenes all add realism, romance, atmosphere, and a sense of place which so often seem lacking.Finally it is rare to view so original a father-son relationship as the one portrayed here. It can teeter into sentimentality at rare moments--the boy actor is not Von Sydow---but the unabashed closeness between the two is remarkable. No matter how many falls from grace his failure to defend his son may entail, Lasse is a protective and truly loving father.