MC Consensus: Nordic Countries

[Spinal]

Submit your FIVE TO TEN favorite films from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark or Iceland and .... eventually .... I will give you a top TEN TO TWENTY. Films should have one of these countries listed as a country of origin in IMDb. Hopefully, I won't have to make a ruling on this and it will be self-policing. But the purpose of the thread is to specifically address films that are from one of the Nordic Countries.

The point system is as follows

1st Place- 10 points
2nd Place - 8 points
3rd Place - 7 points
4th Place - 6 points
5th Place - 5 points
6th Place - 4.5 points
7th Place - 4 points
8th Place - 3.5 points
9th Place - 3 points
10th Place - 2.5 points

(Point system is weighted to give your top film a boost and to minimize the discrepancy between the films in the bottom half of your list.)

There will be no restrictions on short films. A list must have ten films to be eligible. If you list more than ten films, I will assume that the top ten films are the ones you want to receive points. If you do not list your films 1-10, I will assign the points from the top on down.

If you decide to edit your ballot, please make a new post indicating the changes. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

If, for some reason, you would like to like to submit your ballot via private message, I will accept those as well. However, your ballot will be revealed after the final results are posted.

You may begin now.

[Spinal]

See first post for eligible countries. Once again, I will be accepting ballots of 5-10 films.

[Spinal]

1. Breaking the Waves
2. Dancer in the Dark
3. Songs from the Second Floor
4. Winter Light
5. Dogville
6. The Virgin Spring
7. The Celebration
8. The Seventh Seal
9. Day of Wrath
10. Let the Right One In

Apologies to Manderlay, Antichrist, Fucking Amal, Together, Hour of the Wolf, Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage, Wild Strawberries, Persona, etc., etc.

[Lazlo]

1. Scenes From a Marriage
2. Fanny and Alexander
3. Let the Right One In
4. The Act of Killing
5. Force Majeure
6. Lilya 4-Ever
7. The Look of Silence
8. Manderlay
9. Zero Kelvin
10. Oslo, August 31st

Added the Oppenheimer films.

[Melville]

Now we're talking.

1. Edvard Munch
2. Ordet
3. Persona
4. Cries and Whispers
5. Fanny and Alexander
6. Hour of the Wolf
7. The Act of Killing
8. The Look of Silence
9. Force Majeure
10. Oslo, August 31st

11. The Seventh Seal
12. Let the Right One In
13. Nymphomaniac Vol I
14. Breaking the Waves
15. A Swedish Love Story
16. Dogville
17. Miss Julie
18. Songs from the Second Floor
19. Gertrud
20. Assorted Lars von Trier movies

[Spinal]

Now we're talking.

Yeah, this is probably my favorite region. So many great films I had to leave out.

[Grouchy]

Really? More than Italy?

1. The Seventh Seal
2. Persona
3. The Virgin Spring
4. Pelle the Conqueror
5. Dancer in the Dark
6. Häxan: Withcraft through the Ages
7. Cries and Whispers
8. Let the Right One In
9. The Idiots
10. The Bohemian Life

[Spinal]

Oops. I forgot The Celebration.

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Fanny and Alexander (1982)
2. The Virgin Spring (1960)
3. The Phantom Carriage (1921)
4. The Sacrifice (1986)
5. Ingeborg Holm (1913)
6. Lilya 4-Ever (2002)
7. The Celebration (1998)
8. Shame (1968)
9. Dancer in the Dark (2000)
10. Play (2011)

[ContinentalOp]

1. Ariel
2. The Man Without a Past
3. The Virgin Spring
4. Hamlet Goes Business
5. Leningrad Cowboys Go America
6. The Seventh Seal
7. Pusher II
8. The Match Factory Girl
9. Pusher
10. Let the Right One In

[Gizmo]

1. Let the Right One In
2. My Life as a Dog
3. Nymphomaniac Vol. 1
4. Melancholia
5. Dogville
6. Persona
7. The Act of Killing
8. Nymphomaniac Vol. 2

[baby doll]

• The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöstrom, 1921)
• Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943)
• Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
• Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman, 1963)
• Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)
• A Passion (Ingmar Bergman, 1969)
• Drifting Clouds (Aki Kaurismäki, 1996)
• Songs From the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, 2000)
• The Man Without a Past (Aki Kaurismäki, 2002)
• Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014)

[Yxklyx]

1. The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
2. Songs from the Second Floor (Andersson)
3. Fucking Åmål (Moodysson)
4. Pelle the Conqueror (August)
5. Lilya 4-Ever (Moodysson)
6. The Celebration (Vinterberg)
7. Breaking the Waves (von Trier)
8. The Hunt (Vinterberg)
9. The Element of Crime (von Trier)
10. Scenes from a Marriage (Bergman)

Honorable Mentions: Medea (Von Trier), My Life as a Dog (Hallström)

[Peng]

1. Fucking Amal
2. The Celebration
3. Persona
4. Dogville
5. Dancer in the Dark
6. Force Majeure
7. The Virgin Spring
8. Let the Right One In
9. The Hunt
10. We Are the Best!

[dreamdead]

1. Ordet
2. Breaking the Waves
3. Shame
4. Scenes from a Marriage
5. The Celebration
6. The Act of Killing
7. Persona
8. Oslo, August 31st
9. The Virgin Spring
10. Force Majeure

One of the great regions, for sure.

[Spinal]

Lots of films getting strong support this time around. We could have a shot at a top 20 this time around with a few more ballots.

[Stay Puft]

I forgot about this. Lemme take a crack at a quick five:

1. Oslo, August 31st
2. The Act of Killing
3. Fucking Amal
4. The Virgin Spring
5. Songs from the Second Floor

I need to see more from Bergman, Dreyer, etc. I'm woefully lacking here.

[Raiders]

Don't have too much to add to the same films that are being mentioned already... I'm even throwing LVT a bone for his one true masterpiece.

1. Persona (1966)
2. Fucking Amal (1998)
3. Edvard Munch (1974)
4. Day of Wrath (1943)
5. Songs from the Second Floor (2000)
6. Dogville (2003)
7. Drifting Clouds (1996)
8. Together (2000)
9. Ordet (1955)
10. Oslo, August 31st (2011)

[Melville]

3. Edvard Munch (1974)

Nice.

[Spinal]

#20


You can't buy me. You can't buy my heart and soul.


Lilya 4-Ever

Director: Lukas Moodysson

Year: 2002

Sixteen-year-old Lilja and her only friend, Volodja, live in Estonia, fantasizing about a better life. One day, Lilja falls in love with Andrej, who is going to Sweden, and invites Lilja to come along.

Won 5 Guldbagge Awards (Swedish film industry awards) including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Actress (Oksana Akinshina). Also nominated for Best Actor (Artyom Bogucharskiy).
Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Akinshina and Moodysson had to communicate through an interpreter because Oksana spoke neither English nor Swedish at the time.

"It's a long way to the bottom, even from the lower depths, and with Lilya 4-Ever, Moodysson captures the wrenching vertigo of an accidental look down." - Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club

[Spinal]

#18 (tie)


Lord, please let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped.


The Phantom Carriage

Director: Victor Sjöström

Year: 1921

It's New Year's Eve. Three drunkards evoke a legend. The legend tells that the last person to die in a year, if he is a great sinner, will have to drive the Phantom Chariot during the whole year, the one that picks up the souls of the dead.

Based on the novel Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! (1912), by Nobel prize-winning Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf.

The film was a powerful influence on Ingmar Bergman who also utilized the figure of Death in The Seventh Seal. Bergman cast Sjöström in the leading role for Wild Strawberries, which also features references to the film. Bergman has said that he first saw it at 15 and watched it at least once every year.

"The special handmade visual beauty of The Phantom Carriage has never been equaled. When Georges drives to a rocky seashore to pick up a woman who has drowned after a wreck, the coach glides through the crashing waves. When he goes down into the sea to get her, the effect of the ghostly figure under the swirling water is delirious, a hallucination of drunkenness. The film itself is drunk. The carriage is an emblem for cinema as a phantom form capable of the documentary (Lumière) and the imaginary (Méliès) at the same time." - Paul Mayersberg, screenwriter of The Man Who Fell to Earth, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Eureka, and Croupier

[Mysterious Dude]

For once, I'm glad Baby Doll posts his lists in chronological order.

[Spinal]

#18 (tie)


I felt as if invisible threads from her hair still twisted themselves around me. And, when she completely disappeared there, over the ocean, then I felt still how it hurt, where my heart bled, because the threads could not be broken.


Edvard Munch

Director: Peter Watkins

Year: 1974

Following a rough chronology from 1884 to 1894, when Norwegian artist Edvard Munch began expressionism and established himself as northern Europe's most maligned and controversial artist.

Won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Foreign Program.

The film was screened at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition.

"Not only does it dare to approximate a documentary—narration, direct-camera address—as Watkins has always done, the film also places industrial-age class injustice, including the small matter of pervasive child labor, in the foreground so relentlessly that Munch himself often disappears into the social weft ... Meanwhile, the film's angry gravity and smoky visuals create an indelible period ambiance, and the fidelity to both the art and the people surrounding it is breathtaking. If you're starving for a masterwork, this may be the only one playing the city as we speak." - Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice, 2005

[Spinal]

#17


There is nothing so quiet as a heart that has ceased to beat.


Day of Wrath

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

Year: 1943

The young wife of an aging priest falls in love with his son amidst the horror of a merciless witch hunt in 17th century Denmark.

Named one of the year's 10 best films by the National Board of Review.

When it premiered, the film received poor reviews and was unsuccessful financially, with many Danes complaining about the film's slow pace. It later gained a better critical reputation after World War II. While Dreyer denied the film was about the Nazis, during the war it had resonated with the Danish resistance movement.

"Day of Wrath may be the greatest film ever made about living under totalitarian rule. Astonishing in its artistically informed period re-creation as well as its hypnotic mise en scene (with some exceptionally eerie camera movements), it challenges the viewer by suggesting at times that witchcraft isn't so much an illusion as an activity produced by intolerance. And like Dreyer's other major films, it's sensual to the point of carnality. I can't think of another 40s film that's less dated." - Jonathan Rosenbaum

[Spinal]

#16


There's nothing in your head that you haven't said!


Force Majeure

Director: Ruben Östlund

Year: 2014

A family on a ski holiday in the French Alps find themselves staring down an avalanche during lunch one day; in the aftermath, their dynamic has been shaken to its core, with a question mark hanging over their patriarch in particular.

Won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes.
Won 6 Guldbagge Awards including Best Film, Best Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Supporting Actor (Kristofer Hivju). Nominated for 4 others.
Won Best Foreign Language Film at the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards.
Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes.
Nominated for Best Film not in the English Language at the BAFTAs.
Nominated for Best International Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Despite being a winter film, the recurring main music theme of the movie is from Antonio Vivaldi's Summer Concerto.

"What makes Force Majeure much more than a clinically accurate depiction of a middle-class marriage in crisis is its keen understanding of how, in modern civilization, people increasingly imagine that they can control nature. But what about human nature? Until it smacks them in the face, they ignore their irrational, atavistic drives. No matter how well we talk the talk of technological mastery and rationality, there are crazy parts of us that remain beyond the reach of language to explain or resolve." - Stephen Holden, The New York Times