Siblings Are Forever (2013)

The Worst Film Ever

Sorry, this movie sucks

It is a performances centric movie

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Saw this at the Noordelijk film festival 2014 in Leeuwarden (NL). Illustrative semi-documentary about two people in their 70-ies running a farm. Beautiful landscapes, animals and people interacting, seasons changing in fast forward, and much more things to admire in this movie. Remarkable how this couple still moves around, albeit not very fast, yet do all the inevitable chores while running a farm, including collecting wood and hay to survive the winter period. They seem not too reluctant to modernize when relevant, like electrical milking, a chainsaw, a tractor serving many purposes, etcetera.Also remarkable was the visit of relatives from the USA, which encounter went much better than I had assumed beforehand (freely translated: it went much better than the usual How Are You, Very Well, Nice Place Here). As a takeaway observation, the visitors appreciated the close interaction between people and animals, something that takes years to grow into, and only works in small scale operations like here. (Full disclosure: I grew up on a farm in a small village in the 50/60-ies, when not much of the daily work was replaced by machinery, so I think I know what I'm talking about.)All in all, this documentary did not feel as one, which is good as I usually hate documentaries with their cliché voice-over, and particularly the annoying scholarly tone. The festival audience rewarded it a 3rd place (out of 64) with average score 9.1, and what can I do other than concur.

Originally made for TV, this documentary was shown in cinema due to the big interest that was shown for it. And it was an amazing success in the cinemas as well, before it now will be shown on TV channels across the world.We meet the hard working siblings Magnar and Oddny which runs a mountain farm in the western part of Norway together, like they've done all their life, since they took over for their parents. They are now in their seventies, and their age is take it's toll and their backs are almost humpbacks from all the heavy work on the farm during the years. They never came to find time to get married, and they live like you would do in times long gone. They live without TV, and have never been to cinema, but they have a tractor. We follow their year with work in the beautiful scenery, are there like fly's on the wall when they have to put down an old milking cow, when they get letter from their relatives in America, when they are driven to the shop by a neighbor. We get to know what they think about modern life, which they recent to a certain degree. They are in close contact with nature, and feed birds and wild animals.The siblings live like almost no one do in today's Norway. A country with the highest income per capita in the Western world. It's like time have stood still at the farm. They don't miss out on traditions like Christmas tree or the making of Christmas food. And we get to know how they read nature's signs for weather or the coming season. A funny part us when they get a summer visit from Minnesota, though they need a translator, since they never learned to speak English.The beautiful nature and seasons are captured well, sometimes as time laps. This is not slow-TV, but still it shows the slow life and seasonal changes, and also much of what hard work it is to run a small farm. Well filmed, but still quite strange that this was to be put up as a cinema release, and even more so becoming a success there. Goes to show that sometimes people wants something different.