Like in heaven
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Like in heaven |
| Original title | Så som i heaven |
| Country of production | Sweden |
| original language | Swedish |
| Publishing year | 2004 |
| length | Cinema: 133 minutes DVD: 127 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 12 JMK 10 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Kay Pollak |
| script | Kay Pollak, Anders Nyberg , Ola Olsson , Carin Pollak , Margaretha Pollak |
| production |
Not so Birkeland , Göran Lindström |
| music | Stefan Nilsson |
| camera | Harald Gunnar Paalgard |
| cut | Thomas Tang |
| occupation | |
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| chronology | |
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Successor → |
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As in Heaven (Original title: Så som i himmelen ) is a Swedish musical film - Drama in 2004 by the director Kay Pollak with Michael Nyqvist and Frida Hallgren in the lead roles. As in heaven, acting with music is a corresponding adaptation for the theater by Kay Pollak.
action
Daniel Daréus is an internationally successful conductor from Sweden . Brief flashbacks initially show the adolescent's defining stages: The boy grows up without a father in Ljusåker, a village in northern Sweden. During his school days he was teased and beaten up by his classmates. Later, his extraordinary musical talent as a violin virtuoso comes to the fore. At the age of eight he moved to town with his mother, where the music agent Mircea took him under the wing. As a teenager, he watched his mother die in a car accident while he was about to take part in an international youth music competition. Eventually - in his mid-forties - Daniel Daréus becomes a celebrated star conductor. During a concert, Daréus had a heart attack ; he therefore gives up his work.
Daréus moves back to Ljusåker, the place where he grew up, where he buys the former village school and moves in there. Since Daniel Daréus is only his stage name, nobody in the village recognizes him at first. Daniel dreams of music that opens and connects people's hearts. He meets the young saleswoman Lena, who sings in the local church choir . The village's sports shop owner, Arne, wants to get him to lead this choir . Daniel initially reluctantly attends a choir rehearsal , but then decides to take on the vacant position of cantor , to give the choir members singing lessons and to get them excited about the music. The initially small and bad choir grows. The mentally handicapped Tore is also allowed to take part, as he has an original approach to singing. Daniel is very well received by the choir members, also because he introduces idiosyncratic teaching methods that help the choir members to open up and find access to the music.
Two further storylines represent the domestic problems in village life: that of the talented singer Gabriella and her violent husband Conny as well as that of the pastor couple Stig and Inger. In the case of the latter, the narrow-mindedness of the pastor is revealed in a conflictual manner.
Daniel experiences intensive hours with the choir, and the cohesion grows through the mutual support with the worries and problems of individuals, which are due to the narrowness of village life and which are impressively represented in sideline scenes or individual fates. Pastor Stig, whose wife also sings in the choir and who supports the new cantor, sees his status and his authority undermined by Daniel's popularity and dismisses him on the basis of defamation before the end of the probationary period by a resolution by the church council. However, the choir follows Daniel and continues to rehearse in his house. Daniel and Lena build an increasingly intense relationship. It becomes evident, however, that the conductor has difficulty trusting a love affair and indulging people personally.
Arne, the informal leader of the group, registers the choir for the Let the Peoples Sing singing competition in Austria . Daniel is initially against it, but the others persuade him, and so he agrees.
A few days before departure, in the middle of the choir rehearsal, Gabriella shows up with her children. She has facial injuries and has announced that she will not be returning to her abusive husband. A short time later he appears and wants to bring his wife back by force, but is prevented by the group. He then threatens to take revenge, and when he sees Daniel bathing in the river some time later, he beats him unconscious. He is arrested and ends up in prison. Daniel reveals to the group who he really is and that he spent his childhood in Ljusåker.
Finally the choir group takes the bus to Innsbruck . Once there, Daniel immediately receives media attention due to his previous popularity. There he also meets his former music agent, whom he explains that he has now found his dream of connecting people's hearts through music. He realizes that the choir loves him and vice versa. Then he finally manages to reveal his love to Lena. The two sleep together in their hotel room.
Euphoric by the events, Daniel later rides his bike through town and forgets the time. Finally, he remembers the competition and rushes to the venue. On the way to the hall he suffers another heart attack. He can barely drag himself into the toilet in the building, falls staggering with his head against the radiator and collapses injured.
His choir is already on stage. Since the leader does not appear, Tore is irritated by the resulting unrest and begins to audibly and permanently sing his tone. In doing so, he evokes questioning faces in the hall until Gabriella also sets her tone, followed by the others, who now also sing her own note. The members of the other choirs are so spellbound that they gradually all join in.
Daniel lies bleeding in the toilet and can still hear over the loudspeaker that the improvisation is reaching and connecting the people in the hall. Finally, with a smile on his face, he stops breathing.
background
The first film by director Kay Pollak in eighteen years was like heaven . Pollak had given up directing in 1986 because the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme had been murdered after going to the cinema. However, the evening before his murder, Palme had not seen a Pollak film - as was often wrongly stated - but the film Bröderna Mozart ( The Mozart Brothers ) by Suzanne Osten .
The sequel Wie auf Erden ran in German cinemas from December 3, 2015 . The film could not build on the success.
Reviews
| source | rating |
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| Rotten tomatoes | |
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| audience |
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| IMDb |
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"A choir film with a spiritual overtone, which conveys its message of the necessity of solidarity only through honest craftsmanship and does not understand how to convince even as an artist drama."
"Rightly nominated for an Oscar, a moving festival of music and life."
"Even if the end beats all pathetic threads, here the director shares for the first time the confidence of his protagonist that a great message does not need words."
“After a break of almost twenty years, the director Kay Pollack has succeeded in producing an intense film: The beginning, with its compilations of Daniel's childhood and destructive career, and how it ends in the narrative with a long drive through a Swedish winter landscape, is as original as it is impressive. With his turn to people he doesn't seem quite as original afterwards, but he remains impressive until the end. "
Awards
The film was at the Oscar ceremony in 2005 as Best Foreign Language Film nomination, but could not against the Spanish contribution The Sea Inside by Alejandro Amenabar prevail. At the International Norwegian Film Festival in Haugesund it was nominated for the Amanda Award in the same category and at the Tromsø Internasjonale Film Festival 2005, also in Norway , the work won the Tromsø Audience Award . At the European Film Awards 2005 , Stefan Nilsson was nominated for Best Composer , Kay Pollak was nominated for the Audience Award for Best Director .
At the award ceremony of the Swedish Guldbagge Film Prize in 2005, the film received nothing from eight nominations. He was nominated for Best Film , Mikael Nyqvist for Best Actor , Frida Hallgren for Best Actress and Kay Pollak for Best Director .
On September 14, 2006, Wie im Himmel received the Gilde Film Prize for the best foreign film at the 6th Leipzig Film Art Fair.
Web links
- How in heaven in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Like heaven in the lexicon of international film
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for As in Heaven . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , October 2005 (PDF; test number: 103 978 K).
- ↑ Age rating for As in Heaven . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ Granskningskommissionens betänkande: Brottsutredningen efter murders på statsminister Olof Palme. Elanders Gotab, Stockholm 1999, ISBN 91-7610-896-1 . Official investigation report, p. 148. ( Memento of December 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (Swedish, PDF 1.1. MB; 1.2 MB)
- ↑ Long review of How on Earth. In: filmdienst.de. Retrieved December 2, 2015 .
- ↑ a b As in Heaven at Rotten Tomatoes , accessed May 27, 2015
- ↑ As in Heaven in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ↑ KulturSpiegel , edition 10/2005 of September 26, 2005
- ↑ Singing makes you free in editing - Das Filmmagazin , issue 40/2005
- ↑ Happy with the soprano in Berliner Zeitung on October 20, 2005
- ↑ Tromsø Internasjonale Film Festival: Power to the people . Retrieved April 5, 2011 (Norwegian)