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Wallander: The Troubled Man (2015)
It was author Mankell who was the troubled man.
Like Wikileaks founder Assange, the late Henning Mankell was profoundly hostile to all Western governments. The most Western being the US, he hated that country the most with the possible exception of Israel. It must have been very threatening to Mankell's belief system when the evidence unmistakably demonstrated that the ancient enemy Russia was as great a threat to Sweden today as in the time of Czar Peter the Great while America and the NATO alliance was his country's friend and protector.
Against the backdrop of Kurt Wallander's early onset Alzheimer's Syndrome-- resulting, in the previous episode, in his suspension for leaving his pistol behind in a restaurant--this episode's plot is a pathetic fantasy about the Soviet submarines that violated Swedish territorial waters being actually American submarines and collusion between the Swedish armed forces and the C.I.A. to destabilize the government of then prime minister Olof Palme.
Inasmuch as one of the submarines actually ran aground very near Sweden's main naval base (the celebrated "Whiskey on the Rocks" affair) with the captain and crew detained, the absurdity of the plot here is easy to see but hard to forgive.
Nybyggarna (1972)
On disc at last--Blu-Ray available!
In 2016 after years of waiting, Criterion Collection has released this two-part epic in Blu-Ray and standard DVD. For fullest effect, the two segments should be played as in the original, theatrical release: "The Emigrants" entirely in Swedish (with English subtitles), "The New Land" in English. It is in itself quite an achievement that the cast of both is virtually identical yet are competent in the new and old languages. Scandinavian immigrants to the Minnesota Territory in the 1850's--before the US Civil War-- found conditions both familiar and alien. The cold climate was like their native land but the soil of the New World was more fertile and not so stony. It was a place of open spaces and vast pine forests, few towns and no cities to compare with Stockholm or Oslo.
In the story, friendships are tested, some broken over issues of religion. Family life isn't always smooth or predictable. There are generational conflicts. Historical events are alluded to such as the Civil War or depicted, if briefly, like the 1862 uprising of the Eastern Sioux, starving on their Minnesota reservation, with deadly attacks on surrounding settlements until put down by the US Army. Yet the Indian side of the conflict is given play, also, with the emigrants coming to understand that The New Land had belonged to others before them.
King Charles III (2017)
Can They Do That?
This is a fictional story but using largely real, living people not even thinly disguised but under their real names. The time is the Day After Tomorrow, that is the very near future. My first reaction to seeing this is it is a blatant invasion of privacy and exploitation of their name and fame that would invite furious litigation in the USA. The portrayals of certain of the royals is quite defamatory, too.
On the other side, these are public figures and maybe under British law they have no expectation of privacy to defend. Or perhaps they all have given permission to BBC to portray them in any light it likes. The effect is startling here.
The musical score with its recurring bassoon motif is very similar to the music in the movie **Hamlet (2000)** starring Ethan Hawke as a modern day Prince of "the Denmark Corporation". Tribute or rip-off?
Westworld (2016)
They should sue!
That is, the owners of the original title "Westworld" should sue the producers of this monstrosity for theft and misrepresentation. The title theme park is just a backdrop for a soap opera plot. The action lurches from slow and tedious to sickeningly violent, downright sadistic. The characters, most of them, are more foul- mouthed than any reform schooler. More f- bombs are dropped per minute even than in that other HBO swear-a-thon "The Sopranos" and the champion potty mouth is female who smokes constantly. Wow, how liberated! There are long, way too long, sequences of two characters talking to each other in the behind- the-scenes areas of Westworld. They talk about the stories they have made up, the ethics of it all, company politics. It's frightfully boring. While the original movie "Westworld" featured Richard Benjamin as a shy, citified man, emotionally wounded by a divorce, who discovers he has heroic characteristics when everything goes haywire and he has to fight for his life. Men come off badly, either brutally sadistic or shrilly bitchy in this digitally dependent remake obviously pitched at the soap opera audience.
United States (1980)
Talked Itself to an Early Death
Comparisons to that other whine-fest "Thirty-Something" are apt. This show was 90 percent talk with virtually no action! The topics were mundane, to say the least, the effect quite snooze-worthy.
It might do better today when broadcast TV is an entirely female medium with prime-time soaps dominating the schedule. This transformation was incomplete in 1980 so naturally a good portion of the audience said "Huh?' when the show premiered and never again tuned in.
After this experience Beau Bridges, a very talented actor, stayed away from TV. The idiosyncratic Helen Shaver has since found her true métier: as a director.