Mother of Mine

This movie is amazing as it is simply beautiful. Never a movie I have seen with such a delicate subject made into big screen so beautifully. Its a story of a kid who has to leave his mother to be safe from bombing and gets into another country to other parents who lost their child in some accident. The kids longing for his own mother and in time love for his new mother is depicted amazingly by the child, he is absolutely brilliant kid actor. Also brilliant acting by both the women in the central character's and also the kid's new father is superb in his role. The movie shows how the war has affected everyone using a simple story yet based on some true events of evacuating kids to a safer land, removing them from their birth parents. Its a very touching movie. I am actually beginning to love foreign language movies for their excellent depiction of human nature in a very caring and sensitive ways.

I liked this movie for several reasons: 1. It differs from other similarly-themed movies by focusing on the one "war child" (Eero) and his relationship with the two mothers in his life. That was fresh for me.

2. Great cinematography! Many beautiful shots of the Swedish countryside and other nicely-framed shots. One that impressed me was the shot of Eero sitting inside the concrete bunker with the sea and sky in the window next to his head. This movie is worth it just for the camera work.

3. Great acting by all of the actors.

4. Excellent story/plot that kept moving at a good pace.

The one negative comment I would make is regarding Eero's young female peer. She tries to be his friend, but he ignores her and their friendship is never developed, so I wondered what was the use of her character, since she had such a minor role. Maybe it ended up on the cutting room floor?

All in all, I highly recommend this movie.

I used to think that it's silly to cry over something like a movie and that it's only girls that do so - until now. I felt like being torn apart when realizing the pain Signe felt when she realized that there was nothing in the world she could do to keep Eero.

It was beautiful to see the development of the bond between Signe and Eero, and it made the outcome so hard to bear. It was easy to understand how deep wounds were left in the souls of the Finnish children that were sent to "safety" in Sweden during WWII.

This is a film everybody should see. It shows a depth I have NEVER seen on the movie screen.

Thank you Klaus Haro!

I saw this at the 2006 Palm Springs International Film Festival and of the 35 films I saw there this one was my #1. The audiences at the festival seemed to agree in that it won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. Actually it tied with the film Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont for the award in a rare first place tie. I was hoping this would gain a nomination for Best Foreign Language film at the Academy Awards but it's submission didn't make the final five. Director Klaus Härö, Producer Ilkka Matila and Music Score Composer Tuomas Kantelinen were on hand to present the film and take Q & A after. I was happy that they brought with them the guy who scored the music soundtrack because the music was a perfect fit for this film. Topi Majaniemi as Eero is charming and Michael Nyqvist as Hjalmer Jönsson is excellent but Maria Lundqvist as Signe Jönsson is superb and really carries this film. This is a very, very good film and I would rate it a 9.0 and highly recommend it.

Haven't been so totally blown away by a movie for quite a while - it's rare in Hong Kong that all the 5 audience in the cinema all ended up soaking in tears - if that didn't tell you enough about the movie..

There were movies, like the Dutch movie Simon, that tried to capture the subtle dynamics among fathers and sons, or the Canadian one, Barbarian Invasion. This movie, however, has yet overrode those movies by its subtle but yet delicately constructed interplay among father, mother and the son. More so it touched so much upon young man's hope and tie with the mother. Just when you think that was the whole thing about the movie (i.e. mother and son, anti-war wake-up call), the movie got brilliantly galvanized by the two women in how they dealt with themselves and the motherhood, and what they wanted, adding a potent twist to the narrative as well as gently tweaking the emotions of the audience.

For such a long time there was no movies that was able to employ such a basic and simple setting but yet so able to capture the multi-faceted humanities in such an embedded, compiling way.

Highly recommend this movie.