Perfect cast and a good story

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Best movie of this year hands down!

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

I found this film on Netflix and watched it without expectations, except for an ongoing interest in films that are in some way about WWII and the Holocaust. I wasn't disappointed, though felt that it may have been a bit drawn out toward the end. What I liked most was its unpredictable plot turns. I liked the way the two boys pretty much switched families, that the parents of each were able to go along with what seemed to feel right. As a student and practitioner of psychology, I was fascinated with the way the concept of "genetic memory" was included vis a vis a boy feeling as if he had already heard music without knowing he had a father who was a violinist. I gave it a 7-star vote because I think there may have been too much going on which made the film feel more superficial than it should have.

a film about family. values, secrets, members' links, fight for survive, fears, miracles. a film about the levels of life for a boy. and, sure, about oaks. impressive in that case is not only the high performances or the atmosphere, the story or the testimony of the lead character about his universe but the splendid strange feeling. it seems be one of stories who are parts of viewer life. in a special manner. Bill Skarsgard as Simon is brilliant but its art has a great frame. the landscapes, the flavor of the old world behind the war, the nuances of acting from his partners. a film like a web of emotions. a good source of reflection. about the life and about its truth. and about the price of each human age.

I always wonder what exactly kitsch is. This movie makes it more clear to me. All the drama and tragedy in life is in it but it is only the outside of it while avoiding the real pain of life. It is worse than being sentimental to have such a pretense. Its making a feel good movie out of stories of life which are in reality each in itself a feel bad event. And because it avoids the real tragedy it needs so many stories to fill up this pretense of really having to tell us something worthwhile about human life. Of course the movie needs the blackest story of the European history to hide the emptiness: the holocaust. And then it does not show or even tell anything true about that genocide, the dark abyss of human nature. The Jew who barely survived the camp to die shortly after that, leaving a violin to his bastard son which he begot with a Nordic nymph in the woods of Sweden at a brook. A nymph who growing up turns out to be a schizophrenic woman living alone with pigs in that same wood. That's two cliché's with the strange twist of the pigs.I mean how much do you need Mrs Fredriksson (the author of the novel) to make a story? A lot more, a lot more.

Two boys meet at school in Gothenburg 1939. They become friends. One is a Jew and one is supposed not to be. One is upper middle class and one comes from a working class background.Quite much is foreseeable here, but the greatest problem is the acting. Not that it's disastrous or even bad during the circumstances, but there are plenty of anachronisms here. From the laboring father, who is something out of the 60s, more than 1939. To the boys, who have a way of staring into the camera, which is common-piece in every Swedish movie, which tries to portrait harsh times. Especially if it's the 40s. "Something is going on inside that boy". The problem is that we know exactly what, when he has those eyes.That is disturbing and takes quality out of this film.