Sweet Land (2007)

Let us hope we are preceeded in this world
by a love story.

R: The review of this in The Onion made me think that this would be, you know, subversive. Maybe I misread the review, but this really isn't the point. The film is sweet, without being overly so, and I'd say it's fairly conservative. It's certainly interested in the immigrant experience, and returns more than once to anti-German prejudice during WWI (not coincidentally, the director's name is "Ali Selim"), but it's basically a love story, and a good one.

It's based on a short-story, which comes across quite clearly. The different stories take place at three different times, and there are not just characters missing in those various times, there are whole generations that never appear. So while I love the things that are in the film, there were times when I missed the things that weren't.

One final observation: Lars (Tim Guinee) has apparently stolen his jaw and, heck, most of his face from Nathan Fillion, best known as Mal from Firefly. But it's not him! At least, that's what the internet tells me.

If you get the chance, I think this one is worth actually seeing.

K: Not being from the middle of the country, Ross missed the other wonderful thing about this movie--the scenery. This movie was beautiful in a big-sky, sea-of-land, prairie-newly-converted-to-farmland kind of way. And on the big screen, it will warm the heart of anyone who has ever loved a very rural place in the middle of the country. There is a love of land and home and family that pervades this movie, and feels like home to me.

Otherwise, Ross hit it on the head. This movie is sweet without being saccharine and nonlinear in an interesting, non-gimmicky way. It certainly makes me wish that I had been preceded by such a love story.

Summery: Worth seeing on the big screen, if only for the scenery.