A Song for Martin (2001)

Must See Movie...

Fantastic!

An Exercise In Nonsense

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

A film to learn from - in many, many ways. And a difficult film to watch. It moved me a lot. More shocking than any thriller. It reminds me of my own great fear of getting ill in this way. Or my wife for that matter. Terrible. And must terrible is, that this disease makes you another person - and you can't do anything in order to prevent it - besides living in perfect harmony.The actors were great. And the music. And the nice pictures from the seaside, where the couple lived.Just one (big) complain: The symbol in the end is too heavy and spoiling. Her life must go on: she starts the clock again. Come on ...

This is not a "public gratification" movie - don't watch it if you must have a happy ending. Also, it's subtitled (the subtitles were large and easy to read, yet did not detract from the film).It is a powerful and moving story of a woman, a talented violinist, dealing with Alzheimer's disease as she watches it ravage her husband, a renowned composer. It details her journey from having a fully functioning, healthy, loving husband, to the hard reality of taking care of him as he gets worse and worse. There are heart-wrenching scenes as he declines and his disease takes over his brain. As his wife, she is determined to keep him home as long as she can, but as he knows her less and less, it becomes impossible. We watch as the transformation takes place in her: From loving wife, to care-taker, to nurse-mother, and eventually to accepting the inevitable. It's amazing to watch how she adapts to each stage, and it is done incredibly well.I was completely engrossed in this film from the moment I started watching it. I found it beautifully done. It is worth watching.

This is a beautiful film, where Sven Wollter makes one of his greatest performances. But I can't see any any artistic reasons to give Viveka Seldahl a guldbagge for her contribution - she makes the lines as if they didn´t really engaged her (more as if she read them aloud from a script). And the language of the female doctor is definitely not natural spoken language. For example: today in Sweden, even doctors don´t say "herr Fischer" (Mr Fischer) to their patients, they say the first name. (Maybe the film makers were influenced by the American way of thinking and talking.) But - as a whole, the film is very well done and definitely worth seeing.

Despite not doing well at the theaters and not-so-enthusiastic critic response, this movie was nominated for best picture at the Swedish equivalent of the Oscars, Guldbaggegalan. Sadly I think this tells more about what a slow year 2001 was for Swedish films than what a great film this is. Because in my humble opinion it certainly is not anything special at all. Where should I start. It is based on a book and unfortunately this REALLY shows through... Several lines sound as if they were taken straight from a book. And they use words you simply never use in spoken language. The story itself is about an old man who obviously is a composer. He falls in love with a woman in his orchestra and they move together but he gets Alzheimers and it gets really bad very fast. Sounds like fun and games to you? Well I can tell you it sure isn't. It gets really predictable very quickly and what's worse it really doesn't end anywhere surprising. Not good or satisfying in any way. The acting is pretty awful actually. Sven Wolter does a good job portraying someone with Alzheimers, but others like Viveca Seldahl delivers her lines without even trying to put some emotion into it. But worst of all for me, having played in an orchestra for several years, was the silliness of trying to cover up that Viveca and Sven really have never been close to such a thing. They stand out awkwardly clear against the people who know how to play an instrument, and it really ruins those scenes for me. No, get your act together Swedish film industry. We need more movies like Fanny och Alexander. My rating: 2/10.