Hamsun

Legendary director Jan Troell tells an uncompromising story from the Second World War in epic breadth and opulent images. His work avoids clear separations between good and evil. With Hamsun Jan Troell now makes use of a central protagonist who is both anti-hero and a victim of delusion. Late Max von Sydow offers the best portrayal of his life in the formation of Hamsun, an aloof, neck-wielding writer who was almost deaf completely dependent on his wife (Ghita Nørby). The film's plot begins in 1935, when Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun's passion for Hitler became increasingly known to everyone. The national bard is on the spotlight and becomes a traitor when he publicly speaks out for the German occupiers in 1940. It also portrays the relationship between Hamsun and his wife Marie in the years 1935 to 1952. They both sympathized with the Nazis, and this led to a lengthy trial against Hamsun which is one of the best highlights of the films.

Jan Troell tells of relationship and emotions at the end of the Second World War. He wraps the whole thing up in a melancholy drama, which is also loosened up again and again with a lot of dialog wit and humor. From the start, Troell has managed to break with classic clichés and shuffle the cards again and again. Hamsun is not what you would call entertainment, nor is it 100% clear who its audience is, but a good film nonetheless. The whole tragic tale is one of Jan Troell's yet again magic moments. He has so many of them. RIP Max von Sydow. there is plenty of competition, but his performance as Hamsun will be his greatest.

This Norwegian-Swedish-Danish-German coproduction directed by Jan Troell is quite a compelling watch.

Max von Sydow playing a great role as the old writer In his early 80'ies. The Norwegian Nobel laureate has written some profoundly world-renowned novels made into films since 1916.

This film takes on Hamsun's legacy as an anti-British and pro-nazi spokesman. It tells the naïve older man's belief in the 3rd Reich, but with Norway as a sovereign nation. He meets up with Hitler, who he admires, to ask him to save Norway from Reichskommisar Terboven.

Following the last years of Hamsun's life (he died in 1952) this film gives an upright depiction of the national hero ruining his reputation with his nazi sympathies.

The film lets Max von Sydow and Danish Gitte Nørby as his wife Marie Sydow speak their own native languages, even if both Knut and Marie was Norwegian. This is it first off-outting but you soon forget it. Why it's done? Maybe making it easier to accept that he was a traitor?

In Scandinavian filmography this is a must watch.

To put it nice and simple, this movie is wonderful.

Von Sydow delivers a performance worth of every Award on Earth, Ghita Norby as Hamsun's wife is also splendid, the movie is written and directed with a nice but firm hand, even on the most unpleasant portions of Hamsun's life.

Knut Hamsun had a controversial and tormented relationship with everything and everyone in his life, as self-centered as he was. The stigma of the true genius indeed.

His sympathy for Nazism caused him a lot of troubles when the war ended and Norway was free from the Nazi occupation and from the collaborationist government.

Hamsun's previous opinions, albeit somewhat changed as the Germans were showing their true colours, still were enough to get him accused of treason. After the trial and an humiliating detention in a mental hospital, Hamsun got labeled as "insane", despite still managed to write a sharp and honest apologetic memoir, at 90 years of age.

The movie capture all of that, with a level of immersion that is truly engaging and astonishing. And side-by-side with Hamsun's public success and subsequent downfall, we follow the downfall of his personal life, to a point where public and private become one.

As said, acting is nothing short of brilliant

The only, marginal, problem is the language... Everyone speaks Norwegian, while Hamsun and his wife speak Swedish and Danish. It's a tad weird hearing arguably the best Norwegian author in history and his wife talking to each other in a different language (neither of them being their actual one).

But in all honesty, if the lack of language consistency was the price to pay to get such a good performance, I would gladly have Hamsun and Marie speaking French...

FINAL VERDICT: Hamsun is graceful and brutal at the same time. A true gem.

One of the elements that make this film one of the most fascinating ever made is the use of language... while Knut and Marie Hamsun were Norwegians, Max von Sydow and Ghita Nørby speak Swedish and Danish respectively throughout the movie. To those not well-versed in Scandinavian languages, there is a very big difference. Most Swedes cannot understand more than 20% of spoken Danish and perhaps 60% of Norwegian. To make the comparison easier to grasp, imagine a Spanish movie where the main characters speak Portuguese and Italian. I don't know why this linguistic device was used, but the effect is remarkable. At first I figured it was a way to distance Norwegians from the main characters whom were regarded as traitors, but that theory doesn't hold since the character who plays Quisling (the man who "sold" Nazism to many Norwegians) speaks Norwegian throughout the film.

Trivia: throughout Scandinavia the name "Quisling" is not just synonymous with "back-stabber"... it has actually become a commonplace word and is found in most dictionaries. It is comparative to the phrase "his name is Mudd" in the U.S.

First of all I'd like to say that this movie was more exciting than I would have thought it to be in the start. Which is always a plus. In the beginning it was odd to me that Knut Hamsun were played by a Swedish actor and his wife Marie Hamsun were played by a Danish actor. But to tell you the truth, after a while you hardly noticed the language difference. And they could probably not have found a better Knut and Marie for this movie. The movie starts right before the second world war, and the 'action' in it is mostly about the Hamsun family's life during the second world war and afterwards. It was kind sad that the movie started so late in Hamsun's life, seeing that he was around the age of 80 (?) in the war years. Because Knut Hamsun had an utterly exciting life before that, and the most of his writings were written before that. It was confusing to me who his kids were at times, seeing that they weren't introduced to us that well. This is a great movie about an Norwegian author who rather took side with the Germans during the second world war, since he despited the English. Or was he on the German side? this movie takes up this dilemma, which no one yet can be a 100% sure about. But just remember. This movie only takes the Last years of Knut Hamsun's life. You should know a few things about his life before this, if you want to understand the movie properly.