From next week I’m going to spend almost a month in Sweden doing some research. Any recommendations for Swedish films (especially more contemporary than Bergman), novels, music?
From next week I’m going to spend almost a month in Sweden doing some research. Any recommendations for Swedish films (especially more contemporary than Bergman), novels, music?
Jeff’s going to pipe up with big love for Lukas Moodysson, so I’ll leave that to him.
Lasse Hallstrom, before hitting Hollywood for better and often worse, did a great little slice-of-odd-life called My Life as a Dog.
Roy Andersson’s Songs from the Second Floor is beautiful and bleak and perversely funny.
Wikipedia offers up a film called Thriller–en grym film as a forerunner of Kill Bill. But I havent’ seen it. Actually, Wikipedia has a good list. It’s a lot of Bergman, and a lot else is not available in the States, but it’s a start.
And I’ll put in a plug for the novels of Henning Mankell, whose crime procedurals with gloomy detective Kurt Wallander are well-written and capture some of the sociopolitical concerns of the last 15 years in Sweden.
I also note Swedish Gas Pump Girls, which is like Bergman, if he did more films for Cinemax.
Really quick: as for music, the Hives is the most obvious choice, though I don’t listen to them myself so I can’t say anything ’bout ’em.
I like Learning from Las Vegas. Their CD “Petit Bourgeois” is worth checking out.
Three Blind Mice is cool.
Visit http://www.vibrashop.com and broswe
Yes, Lukas Moodysson is amazing, particularly his first two films Show Me Love and the magnificient Together, which, unfortunately, is not available via Netflix but is worth purchasing. It’s that good. Lilya 4-Ever and A Hole in My Heart are harder work, intensely alienating and bleak films. Still they are worthy efforts by Moodysson (the latter deals with a small time pornographer and his problematic relationship with his shy, physically deformed, seventeen-year-old son). I will second Reynolds nod toward My Life as A Dog; what a beautiful film and the new Criterion disc offers a nice transfer and newly translated subtitles. The coming-of-age film Evil, which was nominated for an Academy Award two or three years ago, is ok. I’d give anything to have access to the documentaries of Stefan Jarl but alas (and given your interests Chris, I think you would too). There is also the Iranian immigrant Reza Parsa who moved to Sweden in 1980 and has built a strong reputation. Parsa’s film Before the Storm has amassed critical attention but unfortunately has not made it to America (there seems to be a small yet burgeoning collection of films made by immigrants in Sweden). Also, films of Bo Widerberg are worth contemplating, particularly All Things Fair.
broswe is Swedish for browse, by the way.
Sweden has quite the burgeoning punk rock scene. One of the biggest labels there, Burning Heart, was distributed in the US by a label I used to work for, Epitaph, so we ended up releasing a lot of Swedish music over here, and much of it is quite good.
The Refused were an anarchistic punk band that also used electronica, James Brown dance moves and stole a lot from the excellent band Nation of Ulysses. They also made one of the most perfect rock song/video combinations ever with “New Noise:”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8MkVIe9xGc
They broke up and the singer formed The International Noise Conspiracy which had its moments, but never matched Refused for inventiveness. The Hives have been mentioned, and their Vini Vidi Vicious is pretty great. There’s a female band called Sahara Hotnights from Sweden that never really put out an entirely satisfying album.
Very good is The Division of Laura Lee’s album Black City, which is kind of Jesus & Mary Chain-esque. The Hellacopters were very good at mimicing a more stripped down 60s garage aesthetic, kind of like New Bomb Turks.
One of the oddest – and not on Burning Heart – was The Soundtrack of Our Lives, some older guys who were in an old punk band called Union Carbide Productions. But StOOL was something else entirely; a great blend of melodic stadium glam rock, 70s vintage analog recording techniques, and one catchy song after another. Totally infulenced by The Who, Mott The Hoople, Pink Floyd… After some big hype over here, they kind of blew it with the album that finally saw a big US release. But the three records before it are great: Behind the Music, Infant Freebase and whatever record has “21st Century Ripoff”
It’s worth noting almost all of these bands sing in English, and they get govt. funding, which allows for a pretty great scene to build. NOT form Sweden is Turbonegro, but no mention of Scandinavian rock is complete without recommending their insane 1-2 punch of Ass Cobra and Apocalypse Dudes. A mix of denim, militant (fake) homosexuality, rampant (real) drug abuse, and incredible guitar riffs. (I’ve been a proud member of the Silverlake chapter of Turbojugend for many years now.)
The Caesers had a little hit about 2 years after their album came out with Jerk It Out b/c it got used in an iPod commercial. But that whole album, 39 Minutes of Bliss, is quite good; lots of cool organ on it. I never heard the follow-up record.
Have fun in Sweden. It always gets Top 5 in Best Places in the World to Live. But some of those “Best palces” have very high taxes on booze, which makes me raise a suspicious eyebrow in their direction.
i am surprised that no one has yet mentioned lasse halstrom’s abba: the movie. especially the director’s cut which features the cinematography of sven nyquist and a chess match between benny anderson and death (played by sven goran erikkson)–this was of course later immortalized on stage as chess. indispensable for understanding the character of modern sweden.
I think Sven just lost a chess match against you-know-who recently
I enjoy the Swedish film “Oopsy, Bouncy!”
I’d recommend Scenes from an Idiot’s Marriage, starring Harriet Andersson and Jerry Lewis. An excerpt follows:
“I’ve returned from Stockholm to tell you our marriage is death. A pitiable vestige of our youth. I’m getting a divorce. My lawyer will contact you in the morning. His name is Sven Gonndelblum.”
“Sven Doin-nen..den?”
“Sven Gonndelblum!”
“Sy Hoiben…nnnst?”
“No no no, repeat after me. Sven.”
“Sven.”
“Gonn.”
“Gonn.”
“del.”
“del.
“blum.”
“blum.”
“Sven Gonndelblum”
“Sy Woiben…nen”
“Make…me…vant…to…puke!!!”
Thanks for all these recommendations. I know (and even own) ‘Together’ but I’ll take a look at the others. I think I shied away from ‘Liyla 4-Ever’ because it looked depressing and ‘My Life as a dog’ because I distinctly recall the word “heartwarming” appearing in one review (the emotional range of my movies has to lie in between depressing and heartwarming, hence B-13), but I’ll check them out. As for the music, I’ll load as much onto my iPod as I can before I fly.
Sy!
My Life As A Dog is really quite sad but by the end I guess you could say it is heartwarming (but in the same way Together‘s ending with everyone playing ball in the snow is heartwarming). Both films earn their sentiment (and, I think, the audience’s love).
….hoiben-nn?
I just re-watched ‘Together’ and had really mixed reactions. On the one hand, I felt that Moodysson had it in for the communards because every adult is utterly self-centered; their politics are transparently either moronic or designed to get into each others’ pants. Perhaps it is being a parent, but the treatment of the kids just made me angry for big chunks of the movie. On the other hand, they do build community, and the final soccer game in the snow (though heartwarming) implies an ability to recognize friendship and to do so in a genuinely joyful manner. What does Moodysson want us to think about these experiments in communal living? It makes me want to rewatch ‘Return of the Secaucus Seven.’
Every Swede I have talked to about this movie has loved it and said almost the same thing: yes, that’s exactly the way it was (of course, I’m only talking to a political range that runs from middle-of-the-road Social Democrat to died-in-the-wool communist). This weekend a Swedish researcher with a summer cottage on one of the islands in the archipelago outside Stockholm (so… not poor) invited me to an open house for the ‘Kollektivhus’ where he lives with his family in Stockholm. It is exactly what it suggests: a collective living space where several families share cooking, cleaning and childcare while each having their own living quarters. These are actually quite widespread in the large cities. So the new left grew up, and instead of becoming Republicans, as in the US, they reinvented the commune.