Pelle erobreren
Tags: tragedy, romantic, murder, atmospheric, sentimental

Plot synopsis:
In the late 1850s, the elderly emigrant Lasse Karlsson and his son Pelle arrive to the Danish island of Bornholm from Skåne County, in southern Sweden. Lasse tells Pelle a better life awaits them in Denmark after the death of Pelle's mother, and seeks work. He immediately finds it difficult to find employment, given his advanced age and Pelle's youth. The most they can find is work at a large farm, where they are generally mistreated by the managers. The managers work under the tyrannical Kongstrup, who has a history of affairs leading to illegitimate children. One of them is Rud, who befriends Pelle and helps him learn Danish. Eventually, Pelle becomes more confident in his work at the farm, and begins going to school, though he is still discriminated against as a foreigner. Pelle also befriends the Swedish worker Erik, constantly harassed for alleged sloth. Erik shares his dream of visiting America, China and "Negroland" with Pelle, to "conquer" the world.
Lasse begins an affair with Mrs. Olsen, who is believed to be a widow since her husband has not returned from a long sea voyage. Pelle consequently faces ridicule at school for being the son of a lecher. Erik is also injured and rendered disabled after attempting to lead a mutiny against management. Mrs. Olsen's husband returns from his voyage, and Lasse is overcome with depression and alcoholism. The two appeal to the Kongstrups for aid against their harassment, with the benign Mrs. Kongstrup offering support, while her husband, who she has castrated for his abuse, is largely silent. Pelle is initially given a promotion, but upon seeing Erik removed from the farm, vows to leave. Lasse at first resolves to go with him, before deciding he is too old to travel, and sends Pelle alone into the world.

Review: Max von Sydow has probably been given proper recognition for his body of work in Europe, but I don't think we have acknowledged that talent sufficiently in America.This is a superbly made film for which more knowledgeable reviewers than I can make appropriate comments concerning everything from the original story line to the scenic shots covering changing weather and the years of growth of all the characters.My only contribution is this: Where else do you have a male lead role where certain aspects of being a hero are necessary to the role, yet the fact of the story is that the male lead is failing in almost every, public aspect of his life.
At the end they are offered an employment at a large farm, but find the life would present many challenges to them.The acting is very good  the young Pelle Hvenegaard who plays the role of Pelle is so good that one can thing that he has a dozen of movies in his carrier and probably that is the reason for which 2 years after the movie is released he wins two award for the Best Young Actor in 1988 at the European Film Awards and for Best Young Actor in a Foreign Film in a Foreign Filmat the young artists awards for his role in Pelle the Conqueror.I watched this movie with constant hope to see happiness in the eyes of Pelle and the moments in which he felt happy was shining like a real diamonds surrounded by the dust of the harsh live he had to deal with.
Although Pelle is often refused friendships from the local Danish boys he shows his good heart befriending a boy who has some physical disability  and their friendship through a little odd at times shows that people can find someone to care for , even in the toughest places.Pelle the Conqueror is classic movie and although some may thing that the story gets a bit depressing at times I recommend it to anyone who treasure excellent coming of age movies..
It is an unsparing tale of the life of a Swedish immigrant father and son (Max von Sydow and Pelle Hvenegaard) who have come to Denmark following the death of wife and mother and found work as laborers on a farm in a desolate seaside landscape.
Max von Sydow, a famous actor in his day, is superb as the elderly father of young Pelle but the child's role is also very well acted, and the direction by Bille August who also wrote the screenplay is unobtrusive but sure-handed.
Lessons in Becoming a Man. PELLE THE CONQUEROR may now be twenty-three years old as a film but the power and beauty of this epic masterpiece from Denmark still retain the brilliance of its original 1987 theatrical release.
Based on a four volume novel by Martin Andersen Nexø the screenplay by writer/director Bille August, Per Olov Enquist, and Bjarne Reuter granted takes only a small portion of the original story and that explains why so much of what happens in this 2 1/2 hour film is only vaguely explained, but the end result is a marvelous drama of the relationship of a father (Lassefar, brilliantly realized by the venerable Max von Sydow), who has pride but has not the courage of his convictions, and a son (Pelle, a masterpiece of young acting by Pelle Hvenegaard) who dreams of finding a life better than the bitterly poor existence he shares with the father he loves.
The film takes place in Denmark near the turn of the 19th century over the course of a year and during that time the Pelle encounters peer prejudice from being a Swedish immigrant who has traveled to Denmark for the good life, class distinction between the wealthy landowners and the poverty stricken workers, the double standard of morals of the learned 'role models', death, physical abuse, young love between two lovely people who out of fear drown their infant at birth, the harsh realities of gathering sustenance from laboring the land and the sea, the bonds of true friendship with a bastard child of the land owner, and the disappointment of losing hope of conquering the world by means of accompanying a friend who must remain a vassal for two years who becomes brain damaged in an alteration with the foreman.
In the admirable winner of both the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film, Max von Sydow (in his only Oscar nominated performance) is Lasse, a Swedish middle- aged widower who takes his young son Pelle from impoverished ninetieth century Sweden to Denmark in search and hope of finding a better life.
Many awful things happen through the course of the film--murdered babies, people getting pounded in the head by a large stone, rapes, and Pelle ultimately learns that through all this, his father is a spineless wimp.This movie does seem to illustrate just how tough life was and does a great job of showing the lives of illiterate workers, but it's also a real chore to stick with it.
It tells the story about Pelle and his father whom he calls Lassefar who during the late 1800s travels from Tommelilla in Sweden to the Danish Island of Bornholm with a group of Swedish emigrants in the hopes of a better life and ends up living in a barn at a place called Stengården which is managed by an exploitative boss and his complaisant son.Finely and precisely directed by Danish filmmaker Bille August, this quietly paced fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints though mostly from the main character's point of view, draws a tangible and heartrending portrayal of a relationship between a widowed middle-aged man and his adolescent son, a degrading manager and his unruly employee and a young woman and man who's romance is damned and forbidden by the man's father due to their class differences.
While notable for it's naturalistic and distinct milieu depictions, fine production design by production designer Anna Asp, exquisite cinematography by Swedish cinematographer Jörgen Persson and fine costume design by Swedish production designer and costume designer Kicki Illander, this character-driven and narrative-driven story which examines themes like survival, human dignity, friendship, prospects and the human condition, depicts two empathic and interrelated studies of character and contains a good score by Swedish composer Stefan Nilsson.This historic, at times romantic and literary coming-of-age tale which is set in the late 19th century on an Island in the east of Denmark in the Baltic Sea, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, subtle continuity, various characters and the reverent acting performances by Swedish actor Max Von Sydow, Danish actor and writer Pelle Hvenegaard in his debut feature film role, Swedish actor Björn Granath, Danish actress Astrid Villaume (1923-1995) and Danish actor Thure Lindhardt in his second feature film role.
The opening scene in Bille August's "Pelle erobreren" ("Pelle the Conqueror" in English) shows a father and his son moving from their native country to a new one in search of a better life.
There are more than enough characters and plot lines to fill a movie twice its length, with the magnificent Max Von Sydow in a comparatively small but commanding role as Pelle's weak, submissive father.
Actually,August's movie seems closer to "l'albero degli zoccoli":it's a rather static work-not meant pejoratively- which lacks Bertolucci's lyricism and epics.Except for Pelle,and Erik,all are resigned,and day in, day out,we attend the simple and hard life of the farm workers;sometimes it's heart-wrenching,and sometimes it drags on a bit.The most interesting character is the central one,Pelle.He's a very ambiguous one;the title "the conqueror" is thoroughly justified:unlike Erik,he intuitively understands that rebellion is pointless.You've got to know the rules of the game,and the way to the conquest goes through education,therefore school.His relationship with his father (Von Sydow) is not so warm it appears at first sight.Pelle feels humiliated when he sees, through the keyhole ,his father unable to defend himself against his very young boss;it could recall "laddi di biciclette",but in that latter work,the child did not despise his father,in August 's Work,he does.And eventually,he leaves his father alone ,a father whose life was never fulfilled and now would have to die on his own.Under an academic veneer,it's an apology of individual social advancement-as the scene in which Von Sydow marvels at his son's school prowess shows-,and too bad for those who fall by the wayside..
Film Review: "Pelle The Conqueror" (1987)Based on the Danish novel "Pelle Erobreren" from 1910 written by Martin Andersen Nexo (1869-1954) and adapted by Writer/Director Bille August in tedious work unfolding the story of a father, portrayed by heartbreaking fragile actor Max von Sydow as the character of Lasse, and his son Pelle, performed by career-sacrificing actor Pelle Hvenegaard born in 1975, given the title-given character a face to strive through a film that balances the lives of master and slave, poverty and riches on a farming entity at the end of 19th century Danemark, where father & son get lured to in order to survive in a life full of beatings, constant fighting and a few kisses along the way by finding happiness in the tiny little moments where life makes sense.Director Bille August skillfully turns a bible-like script with all its beats, blocking movements and vocal lines already prepared for the indulging cast, led by Swedish actor Max von Sydow born in 1929, who strips his soul in this picture to the raw of an shattered existence of a slowly dying man, who despite alcoholism and constant states of insolvency keeping his head high to lead his son to an existence of an higher society under the banner of embarrassment, bullying torture and ongoing hard-working hands.
So become the strongest scenes in the picture, when the character of Lasse has been invited by Madame Olson to get served with a decent meal after weeks of sleeping in the barn accompanied with a grateful cup of high-quality liquor in order to conclude the visitation with kiss toward a relationship that never fulfills itself and Lasse remains a man broken by life, yet with the relentless drive to present his son Pelle with a better life, which eventually happens for the teenage boy in getting promoted on the farm to a foreworker of employees, who deal with pigs, cows and hens that his dream of immigrating to America burns like a flame in his heart that for the spectator becomes the eternal struggle of survival evident; the impossibilities of being too old as the character of Lasse or too young as in the case of Pelle to confront such a life-changing, root-annihilating endeavor."Pelle The Conqueror" initially premiered in Sweden on December 25th 1987 before conquering the Cannes Film Festival 1988 in its 41st edition under jury president director Etorre Scola (1931-2016), which led to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Feature on March 29 1989, building the counterpart to the fairy-tale like Best Picture Winner "Rain Man" (1988) directed by Barry Levinson, establishing a controversy with international spectator in which world one likes to dive into by reflecting two pictures as mirror for a generation born in the 1980s, where all fundamental conflicts in life result out of the constant complaint of a current situation as between the characters of Raymond & Charlie in "Rain Man", portrayed respectively by actors Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, and the close to mutiny raging foreworkers led by actor Björn Granath (1946-2017) in the role of Erik on the farming estate in "Pelle The Conqueror", which shares further dark secrets of fetus river burials, planting wild strawberries from Sweden on a plain for taste, Cognac-drinking estate owners to kill the pain of a meaningless existence and an extreme bullying attack of whipping nature to stripped child skin, leaving the picture in a mesmerizing state to prevail time itself.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC).
I mean the Scandinavian countries.We all need people like Lassefar, poor but honest and hard-working, and Pelle, smart and willing to change the world for better.Hereby, I invite you to watch Argentinean films, which are getting better every time.
But there is not a bad performance in the movie, and the young actor, Pelle Hvenegaard, is quite convincing, having been literally born to play this part, as in real life he was named after the character in the original novel.
"Pelle the Conqueror", a misnomer,  is a tale of a old man and his young son who immigrate from Sweden to Denmark in search of work near the end of the 19th century.
Thankfully, there are films that dare to bring down to earth, so to speak, such a highly-inflated belief(whether on an epic scale, like Gregory Nava's 'El Norte' or on small terms, like Jim Jarmusch's 'Mystery Train')--and August's and Von Trier's cinematic pieces further add a bitter flavor to the sweet taste of success.Of course, the two directors' methodologies in their respective films differ significantly from each other, but the harsh and unapologetic tone undeniably resonates throughout in both.In 'Pelle the Conqueror', August lets the father-and-son immigrant(Max Von Sydow and Pelle Hvenegaard, respectively)struggle through life in a foreign land "other" than America before finally deciding to try their luck once again in "that" land.It's tempting to comfort oneself with the thought that America might just be the long-fantasized wonderland for these hopeful wanderers, but what the father and son have gone through in Denmark makes me want to think otherwise.It may only be the foreboding of things "still" to come.How August depicts old Lasse's and young Pelle's everyday life--and that of the people around them--in the farmland of their work is in the justifiable manner of what is termed as Cinema of Abjection(Mira Nair's 'Salaam, Bombay!
and Vitali Kanevsky's 'Freeze-Die-Come to Life' would be fine examples).Again, how it is to live in utter destitution and decrepitness is presented in its ugliest but, ultimately, truthfully humane form:the fly-infested stable, the body of a lifeless infant in the river, the stolen cow's milk being fed to a hungry cat, the dead teacher in front of his class, the mere appearance of the circus-loving bastard son, the accident-trigerred dumb-like behavior of the farmland's rebellious stablekeeper.It now probably appears to the father and son that dying of hunger in one's native land is no worst off than suffering the brutal conditions of work in a foreign country.But rather than dampening his spirit, it has only fuelled the young Pelle to "look further ahead." But is it for the good?The film ends with a far-angle shot of the young boy approaching the vast sea, determined to "conquer" the Land of Dreams that is America.The very distant camera, the frosty coldness of the surroundings and the indifferent yet uneasy stillness of the sea may only foreshadow the risky possibility that the land-to-be-sought is just as unwelcoming and unfeeling as the land-to-be-left-behind.Meanwhile, the heroine(Björk as Selma)in 'Dancer in the Dark' has already found her means of livelihood in America(in an aluminum factory), working herself to the limits in order to save up the necessary amount needed for her only son's eye operation(even if she herself is in urgent need of one).Things appear to run smoothly, until, of all people, a police-neighbor(David Morse), whom Selma considers as a trustworthy friend, is tempted to do an unimaginable deed(for reasons that are "economic" in nature), further leading to an "involuntary" gruesome act that seals the young mother's fate.The viewers know throughout that a great injustice has been done to Selma.But then, it's to be borne in mind that this was partly "willed" by herself, since she never for once deviated from the true purpose of her saved-up money, which could've been used otherwise to pay for a more competent private lawyer.Mother surely knows best, as they say--to the point of denying herself in favor of others.Thinking further, however, while the American jury that tried Selma's case may be only doing its job, couldn't it have been swayed by mere sentiment?
It didn't help at all that what the embattled mother testified in court was part of her "musical fantasies", incomprehensible in a place that purportedly adheres to strict logic.We can now state that in filtering out the bright promise of America through their respective cinematic lenses, August, on the one hand, focused mainly on the harsh working conditions of a migrant job, in a reflexive manner(as the characters are in Denmark),while Von Trier, on the other, turned his attention primarily on the American jury system and its own interpretation of "justice."I've only seen a couple of the Swedish filmmaker's works(the other one was the later 'The Best Intentions'), but I hope I'm justified in saying that his dramas have a heart for struggling characters, those who are on the crossroads of their lives.While the Danish auteur's audacious cinematics--the kinetic and intrusive hand-held camera, the "unprocessed" cinematography by Robby Müller, an incredible portrayal by a first-time film actress, the "extreme" factor in the narrative--are again in full force in his Cannes Grand Prize-winning piece, though you may sometimes feel that you've already had enough of those in 'Breaking the Waves'(so what would that make of his upcoming 'Dogville'?).It's a curious thing, too, that the key scenes appear to be derived from some early classics:like the one where Selma pathetically provides a semblance of normalcy to her solitary confinement(similar to what Giulio Brogi did in the Taviani bros' 'St. Michael Had A Rooster')and the other where she's in deeply-felt terror as she literally walks with heavy feet toward the death stand(comparable to what Isabelle Huppert movingly displayed by the end of Chabrol's 'Story of Women').Anyway, cinematic derivation is an accepted practice in filmmaking--even with someone as original as Von Trier!.
Life As It Is. At the end of the 19th century, Lasse and Pelle, father and son, cross the sea separating Sweden from Denmark in pursuit of prosperity and happiness.
Max Von Sydow alone is reason enough to watch this movie.Pelle Hvenegaard, who was 13 at the time, also gives an excellent performance.