I Am Dina (2002)

Really Surprised!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

**Spoiler*J. Leite: _I Am Dina_ is a story about judgment. In fact, the name Dina means "judged," and various characters other than Dina are judged as well as she with similar consequences in this story. Male/female relationships in which the men are extremely harsh with women result in women who are dehumanized and hard as stone. The dominant imagery in this film is "hard-ness." This is visible in the ferocity of the fist all the way down (pardon the pun) to the wedding night and the ability to stand on ice barefooted. The oddity in behavior of these women can be attributed to the lack of femininity which men admire in women because their souls have been murdered. Notice Stina who is raped by Dina's stepson; she harbors such hatred for him and has become hard as well. Further, notice the wet-nurse who lost her baby after becoming pregnant and abandoned: hard as stone. Dina understands these women and because she has the power to help them and comfort them, she does. Dina doles out justice throughout this film. Although Dina finds a husband and a mentor who really care for her, she cannot forgive recurring abandonment and betrayal. Can Dina be saved? The final scene seems to suggest that she does find a man who understands her and her needs, and unlike the tutor, is in a position to do something about it. How do we know this? Because of the scene in which she, with a mother's love, jumps into the frigid waters of Norway to rescue her son after he falls off a boat, the man she loves dives into the same waters to rescue her. In that act he tells her how much he loves her and also he tells her that he will always leave her when he has a "mission," but he will always come back to her. Redemption! This film was beautifully executed, cinematography, score, actors, direction, script...and most of all location! This was a treat and what I call a tour-de-force. Well done!

I am Dina is completely incomprehensible. It lacks focus and direction and even though action good for at least ten feature films is pressed together at a little over two hours the story drags.The over acting makes Daniel Day-Lewis pale in comparison. (Maria Bonnevie is not only beautiful, she can make her eyes go huge, too. And she can breathe heavily. These talents are never clearer than in her scenes against Björn Floberg, who behaves as though he acts in a completely different film. Maybe he new better than to listen to the director.) Confusion surrounding the accents is complete. If those speaking with a Norwegian accent are supposed to be speaking actual Norwegian, it's only logical that the man with the Russian accent is speaking Russian. And then it's strange that all Norwegians (and the British and the Danes and Swedes and French - who knew northern Norway was such a cosmopolitan place back in the 19th century) understand him.What director Ole Bornedal wants to convey is a little unclear. Maybe that little girls who cook their mothers alive tend to act out as young adults?

A powerful story, made weaker by excessive length and too many characters. Some of the secondary characters could have been eliminated to make the plot flow more smoothly. Having said this, I was tremendously impressed by Maria Bonnevie in the title role. Her face is florid, sensual, expressive of lust, sorrow and all the other emotions in this often violent woman's life. Mads Mikkelson as the grafting, unscrupulous Niels gives the other fine performance; his suicide takes all the life out of the story.Gérard Depardieu and Christopher Eccleston were added to the cast for star power, I suppose, but they don't mix well with the other players. Eccleston's character--Zhukovsky the anarchist--is just a jumble of historical clichés we can't become involved with.

I feel I must disagree with the previous review of this film. The title of the move is, after all "I Am Dina," and not "We are the people who live and interact with Dina." The fact that the director of this film does not indulge in a more in-depth exploration of the supporting characters is to be expected, as the premise of the movie is that it allows us to witness the world through Dina's eyes, to see the effect other people have on her, and to a lesser extent, the effect she has on them. In this way, the movie is an astounding success. The masterfully crafted dialogue allows for the unique, if subordinate, personas of the supporting actors to shine through while not overpowering the focus of the story: an achingly real, beautiful woman who fights a personal struggle on both the internal and external fronts. This is certainly not a movie for every one. At times, it leaves one feeling as a guest in the imagination of the director as he reads an excellent book; as such the movie deserves an audience that is capable of being swept away by a story.