The Swan (2017) User Reviews

Haunting vignette teaches odd lesson.

[TrTm316 · 6/10 · 9 May 2021]

A coastal Icelandic nine-year-old girl, who stole something not important enough to identify, is shipped off to inland cattle farmer relatives to learn... something. Perhaps her parents assume hard work and country living will teach better behavior and morals. Or maybe they just want to place her where temptation is limited and where bad role models are lacking. In such a place, the resulting story would be pleasant and boring. This wasn't that place.

The film's production is excellent. The acting is fine, demanding just enough from the young lead actress to demonstrate that her brooding, outwardly silent nature was a directoral choice, not a child's limitation. And although not terribly complex, the plots are intriguing enough, and at times uncomfortable enough, to keep your attention. The cultural disconnect between a city-reared child and a family that raises its animals for food elevates the tension.

Unfortunately, the motivation for some characters' actions was unclear. So was the symbolic link between real world events and a pair of independent but congruent fictional tales, one narrated by the girl and one written by the farmhand.

Vignettes such as The Swan often have less than satisfying closure, and this film was true to type. On the other hand, when this finished I wasn't shrugging with disinterest. Instead, the climax and denouement left me extremely discombobulated: the child's lesson learned is apparently not one of how the world should be, but to accept the worst aspects of how it is. Wow.

It's slightly frustrating, but worth watching.

Bad mix of ingredients

[wg123456789 · 5/10 · 5 July 2020]

They had all the ingredients for a beautiful film but just could not produce it.

When you try so hard to be artistic

[emilgrims · 2/10 · 21 May 2018]

Oh my god. I get it it was supposed to be artistic but all I got was utter boredom and a hope that it would end as soon as possible. I thought it was super pretentious and confusing at the same time. The title of the movie is literally after this one scene in the end where the girl meets a swan who flies away. It was supposed to mean something but all I got was a bad cgi and a wonder why I decided to watch this movie.

Nine-year-old delinquent girl discovers the force of nature.

[maurice_yacowar · 9/10 · 6 February 2018]

The opening shot establishes the film's primary value: the powerful force of natureBut the film shifts from the untrammelled ocean tide to the more stable, sweeping fertility of the land. That's what provides the humans with sustenance and grounding. The central family's three generations have different relationships with nature. Consequently, they differe in their self-knowledge and integrity. The oldest, Karl and Olof, live modestly but comfortably off their land and cattle. Their marriage is also easy, tender, solid. They have been taking in wayward kids - like Olof's niece's nine-year-old daughter Sol here - in hopes that they will find meaning and maturity in the rhythms of farm work. They've had better luck with these charges than with their own daughter. Asta has lost their harmony with the land. She's gone to university, lost her husband, has slept around, and comes home pregnant and having blown her final exams. She ridicules her parents' small-scale of dairy farming, asserting they will be doomed if thy don't go to larger-scale robotic milking. Even the city has failed to steady her restless spirit. She has no patience for Sol. Even Asta's ardour for the black stallion is intermittent and selfish. The itinerant hand Jon is more comfortable with nature but shares Asta's hunger for something more. She ridicules his dedication to writing and capriciously takes him as an occasional lover. She ultimately drops him, possibly to his death. Jon romanticizes Asta and thinks he could free and satisfy her passionate nature if only she would let herself go. But that is a writer's fantasy, not an accurate response to her mercurial wildness. With no grounding or self-acceptance, Asta takes her husband back for a fervid, disappointing one-night stand. Jon's scenes with Sol show him sensitive, caring, understanding. When she comes upon him masturbating in the meadow we see his loneliness, his comfort in nature, but the very weakness and indulgence that will drive him into his drunken stupor at the fair. These adult worlds are a mystery to young Sol, whose perspective governs the narrative. At her oceanside home she had stolen and lied. In the fields she encounters the serious cycle of life. She witnesses the birth of a calf and is heartbroken at its inevitable slaughter and eating. She witnesses the puzzling to-and-fro of Jon's relationship with Asta, who constantly denies Sol the sisterly relationship she craves. Asta's fullest conversation is her frightening story of a monster at the lake who will try to seduce Sol into death. In the climactic scene at that lake, the monster Sol experiences is the magnificent swan that swoops down from the heaven, regally sails toward her in the water, then soars back away. In addition to its beauty and grace, the swan represents a natural integrity lost to the generation that has detached itself from nature. In that model Sol may find the lesson she needs to live a natural, integrated life. We might be tempted to read the swan in either the Leda or Ugly Duckling contexts, but this film seems rather to luxuriate in the Icelandic mythic force of the land. Much of the film's power and effectiveness derives from Gríma Valsdóttir's performance as Sol. Her child's face seems to grow ageless as her experiences deepen her emotional range and expose the aspirations and failings of the generation she is about to grow into. She seems to have the potential to embrace the passion of that wild tide, but rooted in the soil.