Cast: Max von Sydow, Pelle Hvenegaard, Björn Granath...
The story of a Swedish widower and his son who travel from Sweden to Denmark at the end of the 19th Century in search of a better life.
From the start we are given the sense that this is an exciting adventure
for Pelle but for his father Lasse it is very much a last hope
a case of him hoping above hope that he can make his dreams for a better
life come true for both his son and himself. As Max walks off of the
boat carrying Pelle, he expertly conveys a sense of both hope and
trepidation, as he walks around the dock carrying Pelle and being
rejected by farmer after farmer we see those hopes fail and those dreams
shatter. He hugs Pelle closer to him and reassures him that something
will come along "it is no good accepting the first offer" but as he
cradles Pelle's head against the side of his neck we see him chewing his
bottom lip with worry and realise that Lasse doesn't believe what he has
just said to his son. Lasse in his desperation leaves Pelle with their
belongings on the dock and goes to the bar to get drunk coming out as
the foreman from Stone Farm comes to the dock, he is late and finds that
Lasse and his son Pelle are the only people left looking for work so he
employs Lasse as a general farm labourer and Pelle as a cowherd. For a
brief time we see Lasse dream flare in his eyes as he pulls himself to
his full height and gets into the cart with Pelle and their belongs, it
is only a brief time though as they approach the forbidding and
unwelcoming Stone Farm, they are taken to the Cowshed and shown the tiny
dilapidated junk filled room at the end of the shed that they will share
which has only room for the one small bed it holds along with their
trunk of belongings, the bubble bursts as they take in their
surroundings. Max expertly portrays Lasse and very much makes us
believe that this man has given up fighting for his dreams even though
part of him still hopes that may be just may be they can one day come
true, we feel the humiliation he feels because he can't read and finds
Danish hard to understand, the anger he feels at seeing Pelle bullied
but being powerless to stop it for fear of losing his job, the hope when
he thinks he has found a widow to care for them both, the pride he feels
when Pelle is made Farm Trainee and the sadness he feels when Pelle
decides he wants to go out and find his way in the world leaving Lasse
alone. Max was rightly nominated for an Oscar for this role, one of a
very few actors to be given such an honour for a foreign language film,
but he lost out to Dustin Hoffman who got the award for 'Rainman', which
in my opinion was nowhere near as good a performance as Max gave in
Pelle The Conqueror (OK, as a Max fan I can say truthfully I feel he was
robbed!). No other actor can take you through such a variety of
emotions so effortlessly and believably as Max does and not many of his
other characters have given him the opportunity to do so. This film is
one of the must see's for any Max von Sydow fan and if you can see it in
the Swedish/Danish language version it seems so much more powerful and
emotive when he is speaking his native Swedish than the English speaking
version (even though Max dubs the English version).
Review by Sheena Ashby
"You're still young. You can conquer the world".
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