One of the best films i have seen

An absolute waste of money

A Disappointing Continuation

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Utvandrarna and Nybyggarna The Swedish film Utvandrarna was shown in the U.S. with the title The Emigrants (1971). The film Nybyggarna was shown with the title The New Land (1972). Both movies were co-written and directed by Jan Troell. Troell was also the cinematographer and the editor of both. (Sounds crazy, but he did it.) The films are actually one long film, broken in half so that each could be seen separately. As can be guessed from the titles, the first film sets up the plot by showing us that, despite intelligence and hard work, many families couldn't make a living on the small plots of land in Sweden. The second film follows the family from Sweden to the United States. The situation for them in the U.S. isn't that much better when they arrive, but they have reasonable hope that they will succeed. Max von Sydow plays the husband, Karl Oskar, and Liv Ullmann plays his wife, Kristina. Both are extraordinarily talented. In addition, Von Sydow is handsome, and Ullmann is impossibly beautiful. The remainder of the cast is strong, and the acting by the children is wonderful. These movies will work better on the large screen, but we had to settle for the small screen. Both films carry very high IMDb rating of 8.0. I gave each a 10.

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.

In the 1970s, The Emmigrants and The New Land became a combined surprise success in America. I saw them on back to back nights at a theater in Northern California.They even spawned a short-lived TV series on ABC in 1974, also called The New Land, and featuring a young Kurt Russell. Today, no bottom line fixated TV executive would green light such a drama series. What? No cops, no doctors, no forensic experts? No go. I guess the 70s were a more adventurous time in TV programing. In any case, the series was canceled after one season. I recently read Vilhelm Moberg's novel (I think there were really three novels in this saga), The Last Letter Home, and while Karl-Oskar dies at the end of the novel, he does not suffer quite the humiliation his character suffers in the film. At the end of the film, I seem to recall that he had been forced (by bad health, perhaps?) to leave his farm and live in as an anonymous shuffling old man in some urban setting. In the novel he is still on his farm when he dies. Perhaps Jan Troell, the director of the film was trying to make a point about how the struggles of the pioneers are not remembered or honored by those generations who came after them. it's too bad these films seem to have also slipped from our collective memory.

"The New Land" is the second half of a story started in Troell's "The Emigrants," which depicted the struggles of a band of Swedish peasants in their move to America. Here, several of the settlers- such as the priest and the prostitute- move away in the first half-hour and reappear here and there throughout the rest of the film. The plot focuses on Karl-Oscar, his wife Kristina, and the family they try to raise in the Minnesota wilderness.Von Sydow and Ullmann are given a chance to embellish on their characters, and they both do excellent work. Axberg also does a fine job of lending more depth to the character of Robert, Karl-Oscar's rebellious younger brother. There is also material worked in that examines the mistreatment (and eventual uprising) of local Native Americans and the futile searches for gold in the north. These other elements do not always seem to fit with the central story, but they effectively add to the sense of time and place anyway."The New Land" does not have the same emotional impact that "The Emigrants" had, but it develops the two central characters more and intelligently explores how they learn to adapt to their new life. Put together, these two films convincingly illustrate the plight of those who forged our frontier.