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Summary: pele the conqueror
Review: a very good story and well acted I would highly recomend it
Rating: 
Summary: Dreams in the face of adversity
Review: I am not a big fan of `foreign' films, (and I guess by foreign I mean films made in non-English speaking countries) because many times the English voice-overs, or even worse, subtitles, do not seem to fit the action or drama that is unfolding on screen. But I wanted to watch something different and the fact that this was a Cannes film festival winner meant that it would at worst be a boring movie (aren't most artsy films by definition boring?) and at best it could be something spectacular.
Well Pelle the Conqueror would not exactly be my idea of a spectacular film but it certainly isn't boring, so rest assured those fearful of foreign films.
Lasse Karlsson (Max von Sydow) is a Swede escaping poverty in his native land and seeking work in Denmark. His wife has died and in his advanced age he has to look after his prepubescent son: Pelle, while at the same time struggling to cope with the fact that his age and lack of education disqualify him from many of the jobs he came in search of.
Fortunately he finds a job as a laborer with a Dane whose love for his laborers isn't exactly exemplary, but he survives and the movie is about the hardships that he and Pelle have to go through on the farm; surviving the prejudice from Danes and the abject poverty.
It is a slow movie and shows life on a farm in rural Denmark with the numerous everyday and occasional extraordinary events that make up a life, so if you were looking for a thriller, look elsewhere.
That said, this isn't a bad movie and I would recommend it to anyone who likes the slower paced movies and wants something different from the ordinary fare fed to us by Hollywood.
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Summary: Best movie I have seen in a long time.
Review: I stumbled into Pelle by accident in the Bravo Channel a few days ago. I have not been able to get Pelle out of my mind. It is a beautiful movie about the hopelessness of life as a worker in a farm in Sweden. Pelle, the stableman's son hears about America and it becomes his dream. The scenery, the actors, specially Pelle and his dad are excellent. I watched the English dubbed version. Dubbing was well done. I just found out this is an older movie which was just recently dubbed in English. The best movie I have seen in a long time.
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Summary: Elend, elend, elend,...
Review: Max von Sydow magnificently plays a certain type of Scandinavian man, maybe his best film of the ones I've seen. I saw the movie when it came out, remembered it as fantastic but forgot the details, then watched the video again recently. Tried to watch it with my 7 and 12 year old sons, but the older one couldn't take it: too much sadness. The theme of the movie: unfathomable human cruelty, that 'happiness' is only an illusion. How to know that the movie was filmed on Bornholm? The Rundkirk in a burial scene.
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Summary: Hauntingly moving experience
Review: Moving Academy Award winning film about a Swedish widower and his son who emigrate to Denmark in the late 1800s to find work and a better life. What they find, though, is something else entirely. Brilliant performances by Max Von Sydow (an Oscar nominee for perhaps his greatest role as the widower) and 12-year-old Pelle Hvenegaard. This VHS version is in danish with English subtitles. Max Von Sydow dubbed his own role in the English language version (an option on the DVD version). At turns heart-rending and uplifting. Outstanding cinematography, filmed on location on the Danish island of Bornholm. One gripe : the original European release of this film was 160 minutes long; 22 minutes were cut for US release. Why couldn't those 22 minutes have been restored on either the VHS or especially the DVD? Most highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: 5-star movie, 4-star DVD
Review: Pelle the Conqueror is an utterly flawless film with regards to acting, cinematography, score, storytelling, etc. It won Best Foreign Film honors at the Academy Awards and was even nominated for Best Picture. Of course, the politics of Hollywood could never have allowed it to claim that honor, otherwise a precedence would have been set of acknowledging that foreign films might be (gasp!) better than a lot of the [stuff] Tinseltown shovels out.Personally, I watched the Oscars that year exclusively to cheer for Pelle the Conqueror and even more specifically for Max Von Sydow, who turned in the performance of a lifetime. From the moment I began watching the film to the moment it ended, I never lost my sense of absolute immersion. It was, in truth, a grueling experience... because like so many Scandinavian films, Pelle is not a "feel good" story and doesn't have a happy ending. It doesn't have a happy beginning or middle, either. I'm straining my memory to remember a full happy minute, actually. Max Von Sydow is so thoroughly convincing as the widower father of 12-year-old Pelle Hvenegaard that I couldn't help but bear his anguish as all his hopes for a better life for his son get trampled. Even though I was fairly young when the film came out, Von Sydow led me to understand a poor father's burden. When I saw this movie in the theater in 1988, I was told by a friend it was "part one" and that the subsequent film would give viewers a little more resolution as young Pelle escapes to try to reach America... I waited and waited for that sequel, because I believed in these characters and wanted a better life for them; that's how powerful the film was to me. So why only 4 stars? Because the DVD (to date -- these things sometimes change) does not contain the whole film. 22 minutes were hacked from the original to fit into American time slots, and they were inexplicably not restored when the film went to DVD. The DVD also lacks special features such as "making of," background story, director's comments, etc. that would have been fascinating, especially considering this is such an epic foreign film from a country American viewers know so little about.
Rating:
Summary: Moving
Review: The story behind this movie was very touching. My Great-Great Grandfather went AWOL and came to America about the time this movie is set. The movie helped reveal to me why my family carries some of the attitudes it has and why he stopped speaking Danish or speaking of Denmark the day he stepped on American soil. This movie is a must for anyone of Scandinavian ancestry.
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Summary: DRAMA AT ITS BEST
Review: This film from Denmark is incredible to view.
Although a step behind the German film made a year earlier, I believe this movie garnered many of the international film awards due in part to the presence of Max Von Sidow.
The boy in this film is incredible. And an astonishing fact: When Pelle Hvennegard was born, his mother named him "Pelle" after the title character of this novel. Hence, eleven years later the boy is in a film from this very same book.
There are some tense scenes that follow the novel quite accurately. The shame and humiliation this young boy faces, being lured into a barn where he is later publicly degraded with a bare-skin flogging.
The film veers away from the novel a bit when it comes to the boy's leisure activities while tending his animals in the meadow. If you've ever read the book and are aniticipating these scenes in the film, you will be sorrowfully disappointed.
I'd still recommend this movie to any "coming-of-age" film viewer, and to anyone who enjoys classic cinema at its best.
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Summary: A movie for all children and adults
Review: This is a truly great movie. It demonstrates human emotions on a grand scale. It takes place around the turn of the century. A father (played by Von Sydow) and his son Pelle (played by Pelle Hvenegaard) are forced to travel from Sweden to Denmark in order to leave a life of poverty and despair (Pelle's mother died). Pelle is only 12, and his father is over 50. Only reluctantly does a farmer hire them (the father is too old, and the kid is too young). Little did they know that the life in Denmark was physically harsh and emotionally draining. Prejudice was common against the foreigners. Pelle is very dependent upon his emotionally weak father who will not defend his son and likes alcohol.
In the end, Pelle demonstates his strength beyond most adult men.
This movie is directed and produced so clearly and accurately that it draws you into the the harsh, physically filthy and emotionally draining life on the farm. Since it is filmed over the course of about one year, you need not doubt that the georgous scenery is real. The blizzard, the ice, and the fields are real. In fact, Pelle Hvenegaard was named 12 years before the production after Pelle from the novel. Pelle is an uncommon Swedish name. His acting was so good that one forgets this was a movie.
The ending put me in tears. Although it was somewhat predictable, it still packed an emotional punch. It took my breath away.
I can recommend this Academy Award winning movie to anyone.
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Summary: Bille August the Conquerer
Review: This is a wonderful film which gets a 10 on my rating scale.
One of the marks of an enduring film for me is that the characters continue to have a life -- they still live -- after the film has ended.
I like many movies, but very few are created in such a way as to impart self-contained life to the people within the movie.
Pelle the Conquerer is such a movie.
The films of John Cassavetes also create characters which continue to live -- Gena Rowland's character in "Woman Under the Influence" or the man trying to revive his lover who has taken an overdose in "Faces".
These characters and the aging father played marvelously by Max von Sydow and his son, Pelle, live !!
I felt that I was absolutely there and after my visitation -- they all are continuing with their lives !
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