Les Emigrants

The pace is too slow, which is even multiplied by a way too long footage, so you feel it´s twice as long. Full of long, quiet shots portraying suffering Swedes working hard on frozen, barren fields, vomitting on a shabby ship overfilled with emotions or having the hard time traveling long distances through America´s wasteland and chasing their dream for a better life. Despite the above, however, it is not dull or boring. Mainly thanks to the multi-layered characters and acting of (not only) the duo Sydow / Ullmann. Moreover, it is beautifully shot and will make you naturally immerse into a daily routine of Nordic peasant of the mid-nineteenth century. The biggest problem is the middle passage (or, if you want, the second chapter) on the ship, where instead of a repetitive one hour, a striking twenty minutes would be enough. In fact, making the footage shorter in a smart and sensitive way would make the movie better. After all, the footage of three and a quarter hours that is based on a less than three hundred and fifty-page novel is rarely seen. Thanks to this, it is a very faithful to the original, as a result, sadly, too illustrative, however undeniably good. (27/12/2017)