Sweet Land, 2006. Written and directed by Ali Selim. Starring Elizabeth Reaser, Tim Guinee, Alan Cumming, John Heard, Alex Kingston, Ned Beatty, Lois Smith, Patrick Heusinger, and Stephen Pelinski.
Now showing at the Edina Cinema (and a few others around the Twin Cities).
Someday I’ll be wise and watch movies like Sweet Land when they actually arrive at our theaters, and not months later. Maybe I’ll even review them in good time, in the hopes that my meager words will convince someone to avoid such highbrow garbage like The Good German and turn to this little movie. For Sweet Land is an absolute joy. Just as a bite of fresh bread reminds us of flavor and the blessings of wheat, salt, water and heat, then Sweet Land reminds us, visually, what it is to fall slowly and deeply in love, of the power of friendship and community, of hard work and of the world that surrounds us. Amazingly, the filmmaker, Ali Salim, read Will Wheaton’s short story “A Gravestone Made of Wheat”, fell in love with it, but decided to make a real movie out of the tale, and not some narrated silver screen reenactment. He eschewed moving his production to a distant land, choosing instead to stay in the story’s locale, where his talented cast and crew could walk the farmlands of our flat state, their footsteps heavy with the rich mud. Selim has an eye for people who struggle and fall in love under dark, late-summer clouds, framed by stalks of dry corn. If you seek a picture to make you experience such emotions, if you are aching to encounter a work of art that will remind you of life and its abundant, though small, pleasures, if you’re hoping for movie that has all the surprise of an old picture falling from the family bible, then Sweet Land is your movie.
It is the story of a young woman, Inge (Elizabeth Reaser, just stellar), who comes to rural Minnesota to meet and marry Olaf (a handsome Tim Guinee), a Norwegian farmer. Unfortunately for the both of them, she cannot locate her immigration papers, and, even worse, is part German. This is especially troubling in the wake of World War I, and the community, mostly from Nordway, and with their uptight ways, dislike the German peoples, often wondering, aloud, if she’ll try to spread subversiveness, or even prostitution to their quiet hamlet.
The town pastor (John Heard) will not allow a wedding to take place; the girl will have to sleep at a friend of Olaf’s, Frandsen. Frandsen (Alan Cummings) is a friendly, child-like fellow, another farmer, saddled with debts, but wth the treasure of a lovely wife and nine fine children. Inge quickly grows tired of sleeping at Frandsen’s place, amongst his wife Brownie (Alex Kingston) and in a bed with the nine kids, sharing bathtubs and shoving feet out of her face each night in bed. So she steals away to live at Olaf’s house, walking across the midnight fields beneath buzzing Northern Lights to take a private bath in Olaf’s kitchen. After all, they would be betrothed were it not for the pesky preacher and the prejudices of the community. They agree that, in the interest of propriety, he’ll sleep in the barn while she takes his room. And makes him breakfast and strong coffee. Which gets the bees buzzing in the townsfolk’s collective bonnet.
There’s not much more than this in Sweet Land. For the Good Lord’s sake, it is an especial pleasure to see a film with great acting, beautiful photography, and strong sense of its story. Selim has tremendous confidence in both his story and his audience, avoiding beating us to death with excessive crane shots and a soundtrack to force us to feel. Moments of great gravity are left for us to figure out: Inge and Olaf clearing his many dozen acres of corn is shot with a simple camera style, the long, empty furrows reaching out to a distant horizon behind the two, who are nothing more than filthy and happy with their triumph. I shudder to think what a ‘greater’ director would do, say, Terrence Malick or Spielberg. Undoubtedly, one would drown us in sunsets, the other sugarcoat that scene with a John Williams score and an edgy camera (not to mention a boatload of sweet-faced urchins). Selim’s film moves patiently, building the subplots with the care of a farmer trying to coax his beans to grow in a hot summer, his characters flexing their personalities without distracting from the considerable tension. At times cliches spring up–there’s a subplot involving a banker busting a farmer’s land for a past-due mortgage–but the people in this film respond strangely, as people do, to these crises, looking irritated as twists of fate interrupt their lives and loves and concerns, and then moving on. History is present but doesn’t turn into a lecture–there’s a socialist, the first tractor, responses to the War to End All Wars, but in each instance they are skillfully weaved into a plot whose sole concern is to illuminate the lives of these fascinating people. Lovely.
Sweet Land is being touted locally and in Los Angeles, where it is filling theaters to the rafters. I was surrounded by eager patrons, most of whom were elderly, including a lady who couldn’t stop grunting and groaning at the action that unfolded, irritated, say, by the things a banker said, or someone’s inability to make a good cup of coffee. Sweet Land is a movie made by decent people for us decent people–a movie that does not patronize like local don Garrison Keillor and his “above average” Lutherans from Wobegon. Here, Selim chooses to allow struggles to define his characters, and if there’s a joke, they’re in on it as well. Where Keillor is cynical and distant, Selim is hopeful, real, and empathetic. Perhaps that is why its immigration message is so appealing to the Hispanics of Los Angeles, who are also seeing this film in droves. Sweet Land is specific to Minnesota, it is a story of farmers and Norwegians and Germans. But it is also the story of immigrants, the story of the struggle to make life work, and resonates to every one of us who has ever walked beneath a stormy sky, who has ever ached for a good dinner made by a loving hand, or has fallen into a frustrating love that might go unrequited for whatever circumstance. And with its close, of Olaf and Inge waltzing on a perfect summer’s day, you might just find yourself thanking your lucky stars for Sweet Land, for your own memories, and for the lovely magic of your friends, family, and the one you love. I ask you: What more do you want in a movie?
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