In many ways Scandinavian film and television is a global cultural brand, connected with and exporting some of the cultural and social values connected to a liberal and progressive welfare society. This course deals with the social, institutional and cultural background of film and television in Scandinavia and in a broader European and global context.
6.2: Contemporary Scandinavian film success, by Professor Ib Bondebjerg
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來自 University of Copenhagen 的課程
北欧电影和电视
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從本節課中
New Wave, Art Cinema and Social Drama
Many people have heard of the French new wave cinema, 'la nouvelle vague'. The fifth lesson deals with the main tendencies of the Scandinavian new wave cinema and some of its 'auteurs'. The sixth lesson focuses on different tendencies in the Scandinavian art film and social drama after 1990, ranging from award-winning heritage films to harsh stories from the contemporary Scandinavian welfare societies.
與講師見面
Eva Novrup RedvallAssociate Professor
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication
[SOUND].
Although the Scandinavian countries have been influenced by various similar
historical tendencies and follow some of the same social and cultural roots,
there are differences.
World War II did not influence Sweden as a neutral
country in the same way as occupied Denmark, Norway, and Finland.
And Finland was furthermore caught between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
The political and military history is also different in the three countries.
But in Norway and Denmark, World War II has been an important theme in many
different historical films and we find those fiction films and documentaries.
This particular historical period has raised and
continues to raise public interest and debate.
In 2008, Espen Sandberg and
Joachim Ronning's Norwegian World War II film Max Manus was seen by almost 1
million Norwegians, the biggest success for a Norwegian film ever.
The film is based on a true story of one of Norway's most spectacular and
colorful resistance fighters, Max Manus, member of the so-called Oslo Gang.
So, the film combines a historical drama and a biopic.
[MUSIC]
In Denmark, two similar films are Ole Christian Madsen's Flame and
Citron from 2008, also based on a true story,
which follows two famous Danish resistance fighters.
Whereas Anne-Grethe Barup Friis' This Life from 2012
tells a story of the famous resistance group, the Hvidsteen Group.
Both Max Manus and This Life has been seen by around 700,000 Danes,
which brings them to the top ten of most seen Danish films since 1990.
None of these films have reached a very big international audience.
But they clearly speak to a national audience.
The films have scenes of spectacular action,
especially Max Manus and Flame and Citron.
And although the characters are realistic and portrayed with a nuanced psychology,
there is a certain heroic celebration of the national resistance.
Historical films like these have a strong national appeal and
they raise strong feelings and debates about national history.
But they do not find an international audience like some of the heritage films.
But if you want to deal with the Scandinavian films that
really find a broad international audience we need to look elsewhere.
Since 1990, the biggest international Scandinavian success is
Swedish Kay Pollak's social and romantic melodrama, As It Is In Heaven from 2004.
In cinema, it has reached 3.5 million people in Europe alone,
of this 1.4 million in Sweden.
And the film also did okay in the US.
It is a rather universal story of a famous conductor,
returning to his small childhood town in Northern Sweden.
Although tired of life and sick, he manages to develop
the local church choir into something beyond imagination.
And he also falls in love again before the tragic end.
It is an existential life drama dealing with basic emotions and human relations.
>> [FOREIGN] >> He will be here, don't worry.
>> [FOREIGN] >> [NOISE].
>> Despite the spectacular international figures for Pollak's film,
the two most successful international directors in Scandinavia right
now are Lars von Trier and Susanne Bier, both from Denmark.
Bier, like Pollak, makes strong social and psychological dramas.
But she also, in most of her work,
underlines a more cosmopolitan approach to filmmaking.
Her films rarely just deal with national themes.
She wants to address the connection between local, national,
and global issues.
In an interview in 2000 she stated, I am very skeptical of
the kind of new nationalism that insists that we must protect everything Danish.
I don't think Danish culture is in any way threatened.
Cultures have to be strong enough to resist an encounter with other cultures.
If they aren't, then there's no reason to sustain them.
I'm convinced that whatever is worth preserving in Danish culture
easily can accommodate a significant degree of inspiration
from other and interaction with other cultures.
Bier has developed a double narrative strategy in her latest films,
In a Better World, Brothers, and After The Wedding.
It is a strategy where global problems are reflected and
mirrored in a local national universe.
Poverty and human tragedy in underdeveloped parts of the world and
the tragedies behind our engagement in wars abroad
are connected to social and psychological contracts in our western world.
In In a Better World, violence, revenge, terror, and
human failure are not just part of a distant reality but
in the idyllic circle of a Danish province.
The story tells us that we are all part of a global pattern,
although we may try to ignore or reject it,
that our actions and ways of living have universal elements.
In this sense, the film has a very Danish reality to it,
and at the same time a very global dimension.
[MUSIC]
>> [SOUND]
[MUSIC]
>> Brothers deal with the consequences of war, both abroad and at home, both inside
the individual character and in family relations.
After the Wedding, for instance, confirms the endless poverty in the world,
our guilt faced with it, and our lack of strategy to tackle the global problems.
But it's also about life in a Western welfare state,
where all this can seem so far.
So Susanne Bier started making more national films.
Her romantic comedy, The One and Only, is among the most popular Danish
films together with Lone Scherfig's, Italian for Beginners, since 1990.
And also, Bier's dogma film Open Heart is a fine but more traditional love story.
Her move towards more cosmopolitan films with a narrative, reflecting and
themes of globalization can be found in other films in Scandinavia.
Swedish Lukas Moodysson for instance, started also with very
popular Swedish films about youth cultures made in a strong,
realist, almost documentary style.
Fucking Åmål or Show Me Love as it's also called from 1998,
took almost all the National Prizes that year, including Best Film,
Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Script.
>> Leonardo DiCaprio is a greaseball!
>> He's all bones and fat.
Take his arms, for instance!
>> What's with the mascara?
It's all over your face!
>> I always wear it like that!
>> You're so silly.
>> Elin?
Elin, Elin, what on earth
were you dreaming about?
>> The film combines a strong realism with comedy elements,
just as the film Together from 2000,
a film about suburban life in Stockholm in the 1970s.
A film with a strong musical score, typical for that time.
Both films were seen by around 850,000 in Sweden and
also did well internationally with Together in the top world 2.2
million cinema tickets including the national.
So, already Moodysson's two first and more national films had some of
those qualities that made it possible for it to reach beyond a national audience.
But in his following films, Moodysson took up more heavy social and
global issues, and his films developed a more harsh realism.
This is clear in Lilya 4-Ever from 2002,
which deals with life in the post-communist Russia.
And where the tragic story and
gloomy realism is far from the tone and style of his first film.
>> Tomorrow.
>> The move towards global themes and
problems continues in the English language film Mammoths, from 2009.
It is the story of a successful New York couple and
their Filipino nanny that illustrates the global divides and problems.
>> Here's some bread, eat it!
>> I don't want it.
>> Why not?
You haven't eaten anything today.
Go on, eat it.
Do you know why your mother is working in America?
So you won't have to eat this bread.
So that you can have a good life.
A good life, proper food, nice house.
A good education.
Money, so when you get sick you can go to the doctor.
Those kids can't go to the doctor.
When they get sick, they just die.
They just die.
[MUSIC]
[MUSIC]
