Three Suns

I came here and read the reviews before I watched this on TV last night. After reading the bad reviews here I thought "it can't be that bad surely, it is at least watchable for novelty value... I like nordic films so from that perspective sure I can get something out of it...". I wish I hadn't wasted my time. It is 100 mins of really badly scripted, utterly irrational nonsense about someone who the script writers can't decide how her emotions and actions should resemble each other, in a continuous manner with regards to the plot, and therefore ends up looking ridiculous and being forgettable. (Forgettable other than the fact I will continue to rue wasting 2 hrs of my life).

There is just no point to this movie. And no I don't "not get it", but what's it about? A woman loves her husband? not overly deep. Human relationships? The weakest movie on this topic I have seen for quite a while. A history movie? The era and the plague don't come in to it at all other than excuses to make the ridiculous script lines excusable on the basis of something like "it's set centuries ago, people talked crazily back then". A middle-ages Odyssee? Stick with the ancient Greek one.

I am just glad I can't speak Swedish (and had to read subtitles), when you listen to the talking you can just tell it would be even more embarrassing to listen to it proper than it would be reading the subtitles.

As happens, one's own views on a particular movie will vary the majority received opinion. Most of the time, the reason for an under- or over-rating is comprehensible. In the present case, however, I am at a complete loss as to understand such an extraordinarily low vote. Is this the same movie that I saw? The date, the cast and plot description would indicate that it is. The only reason I can think of is that since the other reviewers currently listed are Swedish, perhaps the majority of ratings are from Swedes also. Is a native Swede, therefore, able to pick out some particular aspect of the film which I was oblivious too - a cultural or linguistic point perhaps? A brief look at the film will be required first. Three Suns is set in Sweden in the Middle Ages. Some of the men have left to join the crusades, and the black death is a recent arrival. The film focuses on one woman who is waiting for news about her husband, Ulf. Upon hearing about his imminent return, she leaves her two children in the care of her father in law and sets out for the coast to meet him there. Without giving away too much of the slender plot, she meets various people, good , bad, generous, selfish, infectious, healthy, along the way.

Generically speaking, then, this is a road movie, the journey of a woman done very much in a woman's terms - and I think this is where so many of the negative reviews stem from, not out of conscious sexism, but from the terms on which this journey is carried out, its tempo, its motivation and its denouement. Without wishing to push a particular stereotype, I think it is possible to comprehend much of the action in terms of a womanly response to certain situations, complete with certain foibles like impatience, vanity, impulsiveness and the occasional lapse of logic. The action makes more sense when seen in this light, with the only caveat being whether a woman would have been permitted to behave in such a manner at such a time in history, or be allowed to express so openly her opinions and attitudes. As for the other characters, I found them utterly believable, especially insofar as superstition and selfishness surge forth when disaster seems imminent.

As for the actors, I thought they did well. I haven't seen many recent Swedish films, so wasn't thinking about how a particular actor or actress usually looked (something which also seems to have irked some reviewers). Nor was I particularly distressed by the wigs, having had the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy to get used to them. The clothing, buildings, carriages, and so on, all seemed authentic enough to my untrained eye. The scenery was lovely to look at, and in my mind was the high point of the film. As for the language, I was reading the subtitles, so the subtleties of older versus modern Swedish were not an issue for me - the language in the subtitles seemed appropriate enough, with no glaring lapses into modern idioms. The dialogue was fairly standard, with occasional humour. There is none of the pondering depth found in, say 'The Seventh Seal', set in a similar time and place, but there is enough to occupy the viewer in the simple human interactions. The music was standard, but pleasant, complimenting the action well.

For me, this was, at face value, an enjoyable film. It was hardly earth-shatteringly original, but was competently done, with the interesting setting and attractive photography making up for a relatively uncomplicated plot, and some unusualness regarding character actions and motivations, which I've examined in this review already. I'm glad I took a risk on this one, in spite of its incomprehensibly poor rating.

"Tre Solar" could have been the top Swedish movie of the year, instead it is rather the low-point for the last five years. It's surprising why - we have the current Swedish actor elites, nice filming and authentic outfits and environments. Yet, tre solar doesn't pull much off - due to the really lame script. For minutes barely ANYTHING happens. Woman walks in, sees man, talks to him, he answers in absent words, tragic discover. Next scene. Repeats again. I have absolutely no idea what went wrong during the production, but it seems very strange to me that actors with such experience as these, making all the top roles in recent movies, wouldn't see this coming. Perhaps "Tre Solar" is the perfect example of the majority of Swedish films - some wish-to-be-made movie is granted financial support not because it is something people want to see on the big screen, but rather because it seems like an interesting aim to some people (namely the academy granting money to support Swedish film-making). Much as it pains me, but Tre Solar cannot earn more than 2/10 by me.

Yet another failure for swedish cinema! There should be no question that Sweden has the most pretentious and arrogant film-makers in the world. They simply don´t make the films people want to see, they make this crap instead. Which would be perfectly alright if part of the films budget didn´t come from tax money, which it does!

This is a sorry mess of a film. The only hint that a quite substantial amount of money (in Swedish terms) has gone into this project is the technical aspects. The photo is not too bad and the music is tolerable. Also the cast are almost all swedish "stars". Unfortunately most of these actors seem to think the movie is as silly as i do, sometimes they come terribly close to making fun of the movie.

And there is actually a lot of things to make fun of. First off the acting is mostly terrible. Only the lead actress (Lena Endre) really seems to take this film seriously. The rest act like they´re out on a masquerade or something, talking like it´s 2003 instead of 1300-something. Also the actors look silly, especially due to the horrible whigs they are wearing throughout the movie.

But most of this could have been forgiven if not for the one most fatal flaw. Namely the total lack of a decent script. Seriously this movie is about nothing. Mostly it´s just people riding back and forth through a desolate landscape. The story is... nothing really. Which ultimately makes this film utterly pointless.

This is truly a 1/10.

Tre Solar takes place in Sweden just as the terrible plague hits the country, Hanna, a mother of two children, is awaiting the return of her husband Ulf who has been away for four years, fighting a war for god, suddenly gets the message that her husband is returning in a few days. She heads off to meet him, not aware of the plague. This is the beginning of an dangerous journey through the leftovers of the plague, a nasty killing-cult and a crazy barber in the search for her husband.

This movie goes deeper than just being entertaining, its about people who have lost everything finding comfort in each other, and how people act to save their own skin when endangered. I actually enjoyed the entire movie, finding it both funny and scary. It has some pretty gross scenes, not by visual images but what you imagine they have been going through. Tre Solar leaves a lot of room for you to imagine, normally i hate this kind of filmmakeing but in this case its actually more effective.

The acting is superb! The elite of Swedish actors is casted, I don't think it would have been all that great with another casting. Kjell Bergqvist and Rolf Lassgård are the hearts of the movie even though Rolf only has a small role. Lena Endre pulls through all the way making a believable character. Almost every newspaper in Sweden gave this movie a bad review, I can't see why. This is actually a GOOD movie and the most interesting work of art coming out of Swedish filmstudios in a long time. Well worth seeing!

7/10