JASPER CHRISTENSEN IN THE LAST SENTENCE

Public-private disconnect

The Last Sentence is a film by the senior Swedish director (The Immigrants, The New Land) based on the life of newspaper editor Torgny Segerstedt, who alerted the Swedish public to the threat of Fascism in the 1930s. "A lapsed theologian writing for a provincial newspaper can hardly set the world aflame," Segerstedt tells the prime minister, dining alone with him. He's been writing editorials blasting Hitler for the Gothenberg paper before the war began and he's continuing now that hostilities have begun, with Sweden remaining neutral. And obviously if the prime minister knows him and has dinner alone with him, he's setting something aflame. Later he's even called to see the king of Sweden, who also asks him to ease off. The foreign minister, whom he knows, is rude, and he slaps him, in a men's room. Finally the government censors a front page article, but in response Segerstedt replies by publishing the edition with a big blank where the article would have been. And so on. Segerstedt does this throughout the war, as long as he lives, though his wish of surviving Hitler can't be achieved because he becomes ill and dies first. Whether Segerstedt changed the course of Sweden in the face of the Nazis is doubtful, but he must stand as a hero of free speech and artists and writers celebrated him during his lifetime. However, this film is strongly drawn also in another, Bergmanesque, direciton, as a story of adultery and a bad marriage, and it doesn't all quite fit. Troell endows the domestic scenes with more emotional resonance than the political ones, undermining the accomplishments that made this man worthy of a biopic.

We wonder what this film is really about -- Segerstedt's affair with Maja Forssman (Pernilla August, Anakin Skywalker’s mother), the rich Jewish woman whose money funds his newspaper, and who's married to its publisher, the passive friend he cuckolds, Alex Forssman (Björn Granath)? Or is this about Segerstedt's tormented Norwegian wife Puste (Ulla Skoog), whom he humiliates in public and who suddenly dies of heart failure, and then is forgotten? (It can't be about just her, but her story sticks in the craw.) Or -- I really mean this -- is the film about Segerstedt's dogs, a big bulldog and two noble black hounds, which he loves so much that Maja says she could never live with him? This strange film interweaves cool Swedish angst with sketchy political drama. And is this filmmaker in his eighties aware that all his main characters are elderly looking, and, except for the tall, elegant Segerstedt, on the ugly side? (The actor who plays Segerstedt is in his sixties, but looks older.) The decadent feel of Segerstedt's life undercuts the high-toned, heedless morality of his anti-Nazi stance. The Variety critic, Dennis Harvey, complains that the realities of the Swedish people and the multiple events of the war are too distant and this feels too much like a closet drama. That's not such an issue. The problem is the undigested clash between Segerstedt's public idealism and his private nastiness. If the film isn't saying anything about this clash, then it shouldn't have such prominence.

The odd mood and the odd balance of subject matter are interesting, as failed experiments often are, even if it doesn't work, and certainly generates no warmth. Harvey accurately describes Jesper Christensen, who plays the editor, as "vinegary." Segerstedt's private life reminds me of the domestic frigidity Patrice Chéreau depicts so elegantly in Gabrielle, a stylized period drama of a high order: but that is about its domestic clashes and nothing else, and they assume truly heroic proportions, with Isabelle Huppert at the center of them in one of her best roles.

After the first hour, the political issues in The Last Sentence begin to play a stronger role because Gemany is invading neighboring countries and the prime minister is pressured to make compromises in order to placate Germany and still remain neutral. Segerstedt presses him -- publicly, in front of a lot of people -- to become militarily involved in protecting Sweden's neighbors from being overrun. There is no lack of dramatic scenes. But the chill of Segerstedt's personality dries them up, and the working, political side of the story continues to feel less crucial than the adulterous affair and the household turmoil. Eventually, in another Bergmanesque note, the three key women in Segerstedt's life, his mother, his wife, and his rich Jewish mistress, are all dead, all behind a doorway in dark veils haunting him. There is also a sad, dutiful daughter, and a long-suffering housemaid.

The film never succeeds in interweaving its two levels and two themes, domestic misbehavior, public nobility, in any meaningful way. Though as others have noted, the acting and black and white visuals are first-rate, due to its basic structural problem Troell's film remains distinctly minor. It has nowhere near the general appeal of his warm, old-fashioned 2008 film, Everlasting Moments.

Seattle Swedish-American blogger Erik Lundgaard sums up the meaning of this film perfectly: "being on the right side of history doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole."

The Last Sentence/Dom över död man, 124 mins., festivals; in Sweden and the Netherlands already theatrically released. Screened for this review as part of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, July 25-August 12, 2013. The film is currently showing (July 18, 2014) in San Rafael and at the Opera Plaza in San Francisco.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.