| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | Sweet Land (2005) |
| Director | Ali Selim |
| Writer | Will Weaver, Ali Selim |
| Lead Actor | Elizabeth Reaser |
| Cast | Elizabeth Reaser, Lois Smith, Patrick Heusinger |
| Genre | Drama, Romance |
| Release Date | July 31, 2008 (Brazil) |
| Duration | 1h 50m(110 min) |
| Budget | $1 million |
| Language | English |
| IMDB Rating | 7.1/10 |
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If you want to feel good about America, go see Sweet Land. It’s an offbeat love story, set in 1920, that celebrates Midwestern values, love for the land and eyes-open pride in our immigrant identity.
Inge (Elizabeth Reaser) is a mail-order bride who speaks virtually no English. She practices basic idiomatic phrases from a book while she waits with her luggage including a large, improbable gramophone at a train station somewhere in Minnesota for Olaf (Tim Guinee), a man she knows nothing about.
When Olaf finally arrives with his friend Frandsen (Alan Cumming), the first stop is at the church to get married. But when the language Inge speaks turns out to be German rather than Norwegian, the preacher (John Heard) will not marry them. The fear of Germans lingers after the Great War (WWI), and she is deemed to be a threat to the community. “Everyone knows” that Germans engage in prostitution and espionage!
Olaf will not have the woman in his house until they are married, and so Frandsen takes her in with his wife and nine kids.
This love story is framed as a flashback as Inge’s grandson contemplates today whether to sell her farm to developers after her death. Will the lure of money triumph?
Central to our American identity is the fact that we are all immigrants. Whether or not we favor Israel Zangwill’s metaphor of “the melting pot,” we take pride in our national diversity. Yet in today’s politically charged environment, we often ignore the fact that the lot of newly arrived immigrants has always proved challenging, from the days of “Irish Need Not Apply” to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
The story of Inge and Olaf is bound up with the way the community sees a stranger in their midst. When Inge eventually flees the chaos of Frandsen’s household, Olaf takes her in, giving her the bedroom while he takes the couch. As they share the work of the farm and come to know one another, they become committed chaste partners, and a scandal in the eyes of the unbending minister, who declares, “She is not one of us. We have our language, and culture and customs.”
While the rest of the local farm community pools resources and works to bring in the harvest, Olaf and Inge are left to struggle alone. But when Frandsen’s farm is threatened with foreclosure, Olaf puts everything on the line for him.
The film is mythic in tone. Gorgeous visuals evoke iconic images by such American painters as Andrew Wyeth, and create a sense of place for its characters that idealizes the land and the hard work that made it so rich. The film is written and directed by Ali Selim, a Minnesota native and himself the son of an Egyptian immigrant.
Sweet Land is a small film, with distribution growing based on word of mouth, and destined to become an American classic.
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