Often a prosaic formulaic film can be a financial success based on casting and marketing decisions that provide anticipation of the release. Having viewed this just by chance last night on Netflix (not dubbed, as commenters have criticized) the film combined a rare and intriguing immersion of a different time and place.
Few films are made from Nobel Literature Prize winning novels, as this described by the prize winner Henrik Pontoppidan in 1917. "But the subjects which especially attracted me demanded a more spacious form and a broader style. I turned to the novel, an artistic form which had in former days been neglected and had thus acquired a bad reputation, but which during the nineteenth century had developed and elevated itself to the ranks occupied by drama and the ancient epic. In a trilogy, including Lykke Per written over a decade period, I have attempted to give a continuous picture of the Denmark of today through descriptions of human minds and human fates which reflect the social, religious, and political struggles of the time.
Rather than being unduly slow moving, this film conveyed the life of several strong willed characters along with an accurate depiction of two cultures of the era - fundamentalist Christianity and Secular Judaism. The three hours of the film could only define the contours of the radical Christianity, while dramatizing the cultural-financial-humanistic world of this class of Jews, that also illustrates this same group in neighboring Germany.
The film brilliantly depicted the era on two levels, a brilliant man who bristled under this form of Christianity; and his lover who was part of the vanguard of enlightened humanist sensibilities, soon to be destroy by the disaster of the Third Reich.
The acclaim by other commenters who saw the Danish language version, indicates this film should have been an artistic and financial success. As produced, it is a rare gem, that fulfills the original writers goal of capturing a time of transition in Denmark, and of Europe
