First Word

This is one of those movies that is quite stunning and moving in the watching, but afterwards you realize you’ve been cheated.

What makes it moving is that it is about love and death; what makes it stunning is the fabulous photography and the pure Minnesota rural settings. It is almost worth watching just to see the corn fields.  And it is well-acted.

Indeed, three quarters of the “one” rating is for looking at the corn fields. The other 1/4 is to join me in engaging with what can be taken as iconic of our modern culture.

The story spans the adult life of (fictional) German immigrant Inge (Elizabeth Reaser), expecially her young adulthood as a mail-order bride for a young man (Tim Guinee) in a community of Norwegian Lutheran immigrants. The time period is the years immediately following the Great War. Allegedly, a strong anti-German animus prevailed in the community which made life miserable for Inge, or would have, if not for her strength of character. Here are some of the obstacles she faced:

1. The local bureaucrats resisted giving legal status to her immigration.
2. Thus, her marriage was also not granted.
3. This meant there was no place to live properly, which led to setting up housekeeping at her fiancé’s house.
4. Though we the audience know that the couple remained chaste, the local church cast them out for suspicion of fornication — they were seen dancing and drinking coffee together one morning.

What ruins the movie is a combination of self-righteous leftish caricature of the 1920s American community, and characterizations of the Norwegians which do not ring true. The former consists of digs at “socialism” sprinkled throughout the dialogue. The commentary track informs that “section 623.3.B of the legal code” was really the case; but this is merely sophomoric posturing unless an effort is made to really understand what might have motivated such legislation.

What doesn’t ring true about the characterizations is in the first place the utter lack of hospitality (with the heart-warming exception of Brownie [Alex Kingston]). The local folks are shown with a smug self-righteousness, unwillingness to try to understand the other, indeed downright rudeness, that simply does not resonate with what we know of the Scandinavian character, whether encountered in the old country or Minnesota. Everything is fake: the ushering the girl straight from the train station to a church, already filled with congregants, for the wedding ceremony; the subsequent refusal of the pastor (John Heard) to marry her; the manner in which Inge learns English; the shunning-announcement from the pulpit.

Indeed, there is only one way to “make sense” of the story: to suppose that this is a study of what would happen if jewish spirits occupied the bodies of Minnesota Norwegians. Then everything clicks into place. The dismissive attitude toward everything other (read: goyish). (And note the clever double-deception, in that the viewer is trained to direct his resentment of goy-rejection at the Aryans depicted in the story — of all people!) The religious play-acting. The sexual preoccupation of every sympathetic character, even of the geekish but loyal friend Frandsen (Alan Cumming) in a particularly silly scene. There is the childish touché of catching the pastor in an inconsistency when he objects to the idea of being “married in the heart.” (You see, God is in the heart, right?)  But the final proof that this is a depiction of jews in Nordic bodies occurs in the pivotal scene for depicting Olaf’s transformation:

Inge: You believes God?
Olaf: Something makes the crops come up.
Inge: Ja. But not church. Not Jesus.

For all I know, the writer (Will Weaver) and adaptor (Ali Selim) may be goyim. But then, it would only go to show how we are all jews now.

Well… not all of us.