Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. Our own International Eye Candy column discussed ARN the other day. I have no idea if this is coming out domestically or not, but it sounds like one Swede’s tired of the status quo in film, and he’s focused on ARN as an example of what he means. Check it out:
Hey Guys. TheNorthlander here. I wrote the text below around the day after christmas when the first part of ARN was released here in Sweden. I WAS about to send it to AICN, but then a few pretty big things that happened in my personal life stopped me from editing the text down, and also I figured it would be a good idea to wait until it started to get international release dates. Anyway, here's my extremely ranty review of it along with heavy spoilers and some thoughts on the current situation of the Swedish film industry which might be interesting to you if you're into that sort of stuff. It's actually something I've been wanting to write about since before BNAT. So here it is. I have seen ARN: THE KNIGHT TEMPLAR, and it is evil. But it's not really fair to write about this film without writing about the why and how it exists. Let me explain a little something about filmmaking in Sweden. Over here, there are no studios. Ever since 1963, the money comes from the government through the Swedish Film Institute, which through counselors decide what project gets funded or not, mostly based on how well it fills a list of criteria that defines what "quality cinema" is supposed to be based on. In practice, this works very similarly to the Ephor system in the movie 300. In other words; not very well. It's hard to become established, because most of the people who do get funded are people who have been funded before or are friends/family with the decision makers. Now, recently there have been some developments in the Swedish Film Institute that change what and how films are funded. For instance, it's been decided that fewer films will be made for more money and also that smaller production companies will not be financed at all, and it's also harder for screenwriters to get the script developing support they need. What difference does that make? Well, there are a lot of pissed off unemployed indie filmmakers out there who want to make fun genre movies like horror, wacky comedies and things like that, and it's suddenly a lot harder for these people to get jobs because all the money goes to so called "quality cinema". In Sweden this has a tendency to mean 'cop drama' or 'bland comedy'. This is also why I wanted to review VARG the other day, since it's actually one of the first Swedish movies I've seen in a long time that's any good. The Swedish film industry is small, due to our small population which is roughly the same as that of New York City's, which means a lot of these 'quality cinema' productions that get made don't break even at the box office, and since the money come from the government, they don't have to either. In fact, very few films from Sweden break even. There's a lot that can be said about this, but I think you get the general idea. So what happened is, The Swedish Film Institute decided to put most of their eggs into one basket and gather money from all over Scandinavia and some other European countries including German television, and produce the biggest most expensive movie in Swedish Film History; ARN: THE KNIGHT TEMPLAR. They even decided to shoot the sequel right away, and it will also be re-edited into a television series. It's based on a trilogy of books by Swedish big-fish-in-small-pond author Jan Guillou (who also wrote the autobiographical novel Michael Håfström's movie EVIL was based on). The first movie, the one I'm reviewing here below, is based on the first two books in the trilogy. The second film comes this fall. And, with all this in mind, I bring you my spoiler heavy review of ARN: THE KNIGHT TEMPLAR - QUALITY MOVIE It starts out with a quick scene of Arn out in the desert surrounding Jerusalem, saving a couple of Muslims. It's a brief fight, in which he manages to throw his sword up in the air, catch it with his other hand for no particular reason other than that the director obviously thought it would be something the kids would think was cool. Then we flash back, to... ...Arn as an 11 year old Jake Lloyd look-alike, with same hair style, hair color and wardrobe as little Anakin. Cue annoying plot driving voice over monologue from narrator that fills us with on-the-nose exposition. So Arn and his best friend Knut play around for a while. Knut has a pet crow. Then Arn falls down from the roof trying to catch said pet crow, and his mom cuts herself on a piece of wood. We really don't care about any of this, but it happens anyway. In the hands of a capable writer and director, this would have been a powerful moment. But in this film, it just happens somehow. A few days later, as Arn is lying in bed unconscious after the fall his parents pray and promise god that if he recover they will send him off to a monastery to serve god. So he wakes up. His mom's wound has turned into a blood poisoning that she is convinced is god's way of saying "well now, you promised to send him off to the monastery", so she convinces Arn's father they have to. And they do. I guess this is where the first act ends, because it's also where the annoying monologue disappears never ever to reappear again. I don't know what's worse - the fact that it was there at all or the fact that they didn't even see it through. If you're gonna have a poorly made plot device, shouldn't you at least be consistent about it? I hated the voice over in Spider-man. But at least they kept it as bookends to the story, in the beginning and in the end. In ARN, they just leave it hanging after the first act. So Arn goes to a monastery, where they speak English for no explained reason. Maybe it's explained in the book, or maybe they do it because just in case somebody would make a movie about it a couple of centuries later, they could do it without it looking stupid. Or maybe it's just because this film is meant for an international audience. I don't know. It makes no sense in the context of the story anyway. But he goes to this monastery, where one of the monks teaches him to swordfight. We also learn that he's ambidextrous, which in this film means he can throw his sword up in the air in "look how cool this guy is" slow motion and catch it with his other hand, but nothing else really. This monk that teaches him, he's supposed to be some kind of mentor character in the story. But for some reason, we don't care. In the hands of a capable writer and director, he would have been Mr. Miyagi, Yoda or Ben Kenobi. These are mentors we care about. They are properly introduced in the story. Remember that scene in Karate Kid, where Mr Miyagi is introduced? "After." "After what?" "After after!" That's a great scene. It really sets up a dynamic between student and teacher, and shows us who these people are. Remember when Yoda steals Luke’s lamp? Or when Ben Kenobi talks about not hearing the name Obi-Wan in a long time? Great introductory scenes. We have none of that here. Arn comes to monastery, is settled in, then generic monk guy and him are fencing with sticks for no reason what so ever. And we don't care. I hope if you've read the books these things will mean more to you. So time goes by, Arn grows up, and one day in the woods he comes across a girl who is chased by some villagers who want to force her into marriage. He tries to protect her and ends up killing two of them with one of their swords. He's a bit sorry, or so he says anyway. You can't really tell from the acting. I wish they'd have chosen someone a bit more capable of actually displaying emotions on screen to play the main character, someone like say - oh I dunno - Keanu Reeves perhaps? But anyway, the guy goes back to the monastery and tells the head monk there that he's sorry and all, and the head monk goes 'well that's okay, no worries, Arn', and nothing really happens. He does eventually go back home though. The monk that taught him to fight was a former knight templar apparently, and he gives Arn his sword, telling him to use it only for good and stuff, and Arn leaves. So Arn comes back home, goes to church, some chick in the church choir looks at him, he meets his old friends and family again and learns that the king of Västergötland (an area in Sweden roughly 6400 square miles) has been killed by the neighboring tribe. His childhood friend, Knut, has fled to Norway because apparently he was next in line to become king. There's some squabble, Arn chops the hand off someone with his sword to defend his father, and becomes kinda popular. The church choir chick's sister tries to date rape him but fails, resulting in an unintentional funny moment in the film. Anyway, they end up falling in love (him and the girl from church), but we don't really care. We see it on screen, but there just isn't anything in there to make us believe in it. Maybe it's the annoying over-the-top soundtrack. But I'll get to that later on. Time goes by, Knut returns in the shape of Robin Hood, complete with men in tights, and Arn helps him kill the king. His wife to be is sent to a nunnery where she's punished by a mean old nun that in the hands of a capable writer and director would have been Nurse Ratchet from ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. Instead, she's generic mean old nun. She says evil things to Arn's girl Cecilia. We see that she's unhappy. But do we care? Not even when she gives birth to Arn's baby and it's taken away from her. Look. They shut her inside a dark cell. They bleed her dry. In the hands of a capable writer and director, we would have felt for her like we do for Steve McQueen in PAPILLION. But we don't here. We just don't care. So while she's in nun prison, Arn is sent off to Jerusalem on a crusade. He becomes like a hero or something there because we're told he is through on-the-nose expositionary dialogue, and then he defeats the big enemy down there. Do we care? No. Why? Because not even the main character has any emotions invested in this. He's got nothing to gain by going off on this crusade, it's not like he's doing it for a greater cause or anything. He just goes and does his thing, showing about as much emotion as Bruce Willis did in Die Hard 4. And the actual battle sequences in this film? How do they stand up to the battle sequences we're used to seeing in movies like this? Well the one that's actually in the movie is not awful. But it's in dire need of a good choreographer. It doesn't feel realistic, or brutal, or cool, or even engaging. It’s there though. Then, the movie ends and he rides off into the desert sunset not singing "I'm a poor lonesome cowboy", but almost. Now, there are a few other things in this film I'd like to bring up. The music. Is awful. When music in a film is great, you know it. My personal favorite music scene in any movie is in RINGU. In my opinion, Kenji Kawaii (RINGU, DARK WATER, GHOST IN THE SHELL) is a genius. You remember that scene - Asakawa is trying to convince Ryuji that she's got the curse and that he should take a polaroid of her. He does, and she looks at it really slowly. There is no music here at all. We see the fear creep across her face slowly as she watches the photo, but there is still no music. We know what she sees but without seeing it yet. Then we see it, and as soon as we see the photo with her distorted face on it the music hits us like a ton of bricks. That's great scoring. That's using the music effectively and when needed. The score in Arn is constant and over the top. You know that scene in the old Steve Martin comedy ROXANNE where that guy says to Darryl Hannah 'Your breasts are like melons! No, not like melons - like pillows! May I fluff your pillows?!" That's about as subtle the score in ARN is. It constantly, throughout the movie, yells 'MAY I FLUFF YOUR PILLOWS?!' to the audience. Just in case the expositionary dialogue telling us what to feel and think doesn't work (it doesn't), they turn the music score up to 11. Whatever happened to making the viewers care by dramatizing the events? Oh well. Another thing I'd like to add about this movie is that it lacks a proper villain. I left the theatre not knowing who the bad guy of the movie was. I mean, I know it has a few antagonists, but the MAIN villan, the Darth Vader or Cobra Kai Dojo Johnny villain - where was he? It wasn't the guy who killed the king and took the crown - he's clearly a bad guy but he's in the movie for only a few scenes and has very little to do. It's not the evil non-Ratchet nun, because although she's in the movie quite a bit and she's evil, she doesn't really have anything to do directly with the main character. It's not the muslim leader Arn fights in Jerusalem, because the scenes you see with him he's portrayed as a pretty okay kind of guy actually. Arn doesn't really have an antagonist, or a drive to do anything, and that's just bad storytelling right there. Your hero is only as great as your villain, and when you don't really have a villain, you don't really have a hero either. Overall, this is the kind of story that should have been a movie like John Boorman's EXCALIBUR, or John Milius' CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Instead, we get something that's less than ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES. At least that one had Alan Rickman in it. This one has Stellan Skarsgård, and although he's by far the best actor in this film, he doesn't get to do anything but stare grimly in a few scenes. So I'm sitting there in the theatre watching this, thinking 'this is my tax money? This is what we get instead of a whole bunch of movies from hungry independent filmmakers eager to work? I know they're out there - I know a few of them, and in a way I'm one of them myself. Filmmakers who might actually make something new and put Swedish film on the map? THIS is quality cinema?'. This thing cost 28 million US dollars to make - Sweden's most expensive production EVER. According to IMDb, after three weeks in theaters it had made the equivalent of 12,995,895 USD in Denmark, Norway and Sweden combined. And this is the state of the Swedish film industry today. /TheNorthlander
