Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

eyeintrees My goodness, this film is nothing short of superb. On many levels it addresses the most prevailing themes of humanity and yet it is entwined with the beauty and majesty of music.Superbly acted, cleverly crafted, something of a little masterpiece.Where fear prevails there is suspicion of even the most innocent circumstances and where repression of the most basic human needs take place there can only be mayhem.How love and the enduring commitment to feel joy wins the day and leads the viewer to a bittersweet conclusion.This is one to watch again and again and revel in each and every time.

przgzr First: I really liked this movie, though I don't find it one of three or five best Swedish movies. But any among twenty best Swedish movies is better than top three of most other countries.Nothing is perfect, including movies. However, I find some objections from other comments not important or completely mistaken.It is true that people in the village (in choir or out of it) show a great range of different characters. It is true that they can be described as clichés. But this is not unrealistic. I wonder how many of these comments have been written by people who live and know the life in distant, separated villages. It is normal that you find very different people there, on one place. In big cities (where most of IMDb critics live) so different people usually don't appear together, they tend to be in groups with people of similar interests, education, social status, hobbies etc etc. In small villages people are rather unique, they can't be in groups with similar people because there are no similar ones, so any group contains different characters. Which can more or less look like clichés.Sweden, as other Nordic countries, really pays big attention to home violence. But distant villages are again world of its own. Have you seen any policeman in the movie? We don't know how far away is the closest police station. Village lives their tradition rules and law. That's why Gabrielle stays longer with Connie than most city woman would. And it's not illogical to expect a person who was able to suffer and bare Connie for so many years to do what she has done when he finally had to face the law. Despite a comment that finds it unbelievable, people who are still more bound to tradition than to modern trends still have some ability of forgiveness, something that's unpopular and almost extinct in our culture. But if we look in books or movies made few decades ago, this wasn't such a rare and unbelievable characteristic, so it can still appear in traditional, especially religious communities.What me leads to final and most important reason why I wrote this comment.This is an deeply religious movie, and it must have been done either by a deeply religious or complete atheistic author. It rejects the cold, heartless demagogy and extreme pharisee-ism of narrow-minded fundamentalists that seem to be trapped in Old Testimony, and shows the expression of life and faith that can be reached once given a freedom and love (one that New Testimony offers). Such a devotedness to one final aim, closing circles of his life and simultaneously rotating in a spiral to its top, achieving the final point, the climax of his life, fulfilling everything he was living for...That's why I can understand how somebody compared Daniel to some kind of Jesus. However, I don't see him as Jesus. David isn't sinless, sometimes he has hidden motives and isn't free of manipulation and vanity. But I can compare him to St Peter. His faith/devotion isn't equally strong all the time - something like Peter's when he denied Jesus. Jesus ended his life on Earth on the top of the mountain, while Daniel's death in the basement looks more like St Peter's crucified upside-down on a Roman square, now basement of St Peter's Basilica. And Daniel's work looks more like following Jesus' words to Peter: "you are Peter (Petros), and on this rock I will build my church": he had his work done, he was a rock firm basement of the choir that doesn't seem to be turned to dust after Daniel's death.However, Daniel's devotion was not to faith or God but to art. On the other hand, he finds his fulfillment through church choir and the more we follow his work, the more we see that he accepts religious music to achieve his aim. So it is up to each of us to interpret if it is music and art, or it is faith and God that fulfills one's life as the final and eternal aim. And this is why, depending on the premise, I can't tell if the authors are truly religious or completely atheistic persons. But no matter what is in their hearts and soul, their movie is a true art that gives us freedom to chose for ourselves.

Cinemucho It is almost impossible to believe that Kay Pollack's As It Is in Heaven was made only ten years ago in 2004 for it feels dreadfully more dated than that. This Academy Award nominated film, which is essentially the Swedish version of a Lifetime Original Movie with a domestic violence plot line to boot, follows renowned conductor Daniel Daréus (Michael Nyqvist) as he returns to his childhood home in the north of Sweden after suffering a heart attack in the middle of one of his concerts. As a kid, Daniel was ruthlessly beaten and bullied by his peers, but he escaped this harsh childhood with the dream of making music that would connect with people. Upon his return home, Daniel becomes the cantor for the local church choir and starts to bring the townspeople together though what he sees as the spiritual quality of music. Complications arise when Daniel confronts a jealous church pastor, an abusive husband, and various choir members who doubt the sincerity of Daniel's project. Unfortunately, the only remarkable thing about Heaven is how painfully generic it is. Everything in this film is simple and dull, as if the story arcs, characterization, dialogue, and music were all clumsily smashed into creation by a blindfolded kid with an unwieldy sledgehammer rather than by a skilled artist with a deft touch. The problem begins with a weak script that relies entirely on meager clichés. For example, our hero, Daniel, is the stereotypical passionate artist, but he's severely lacking in depth. All we know is that he loves music, falls in love with a girl, and then dies, both randomly and predictably. His foil, the uptight Pastor Stig (Niklas Falk), is disturbed by Daniel's free-flowing ways and surpasses Daniel only in one-dimensionality. In a particularly ridiculous scene, Stig gets into an argument with his wife, Inger (Ingella Olsson), over his conservative ideas about sexuality. Stig slut- shames his wife, explodes and has passionate sex with her, and then denounces the whole incident the next morning. This tired portrait of the repressed and hypocritical clergyman does nothing for the film, nor adds any interesting conflict or complexity.Beyond the disappointingly shallow characterizations, Heaven makes a misstep with the plot's desperate grabs for sentimentality. There is, of course, the domestic violence plot line with the overdone, over-the-top abusive husband that makes a mere caricature of this real and important social problem. The issue is not that people like the outrageous abuser Conny (Per Morberg) do not exist in real life, but that he and his wife, Gabriella (Helen Sjöholm), are written in such a hollow way so as to make it seem like the professionals behind Heaven have never actually encountered a real human being who has been involved the cycle of abuse. In the end, Heaven exhibits a detached artificiality that undermines the film's attempt to say something meaningful about the tragedy of abusive relationships and about the empowering triumph for those who survive them. Then there's Tore (André Sjöberg), the young man who is at first shunned and underestimated by members of the choir for his intellectual disability and then ultimately accepted. Despite the fact that the film obviously casts Tore in a positive light, it is nothing more than cheap idealization. Heaven doesn't demonstrate respect Tore as person or a character, but instead uses him as bait for warm fuzzies and reduces him to the object of a patronizing smile. The film's dialogue also betrays some serious flaws. Heaven takes little advantage of the filmic medium, and the characters often end up explaining their motivations and feelings outright rather than illustrating them through distinctive behavior, well-written characterization, and revealing cinematic techniques. For instance, when Stig shuts down the choir, he yells at Daniel unnecessarily, "I'm taking the choir away from you!" Later when Inger criticizes Stig's vendetta against Daniel, she shouts, "You're not angry at him, but at what he evokes in you!" Of course, the English subtitles may not capture the exact essence of the original Swedish, but the fact remains that a truly solid script would be able to communicate its themes without any of these clunky verbal explanations. Some movies are disappointing in their failure to live up to their full potential, but As It Is in Heaven is not one of them. Wobbly from the start, Heaven is terrible in a boring kind of way. Perhaps time is partly to blame for how stale the movie feels, and it is possible that in its day, Heaven had some aura of charm and novelty. However, in 2014, it's difficult to see through the haze of bathetic storytelling and overdone conventions.

mistymountain First of all, I am in LOVE with Michael Nyqvist. I just can't get enough of him!!!!!!! I first saw him in the Millennium trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc, he did with Noomi Rapace. Here he plays Daniel, a burnt-out conductor who moves back to his old town, after suffering a heart attack. He is then asked to give some suggestions to help improve the local church choir, which then turns into him leading the choir. He meets 2 ladies from the choir, Lena, a young musician, who falls in love with him, and Gabriella, a battered mother, who eventually flees from her abusive husband. Nyqvist gives a STELLAR performance here. The film makes you experience every kind of emotion possible. I laughed and cried. This should have won an Academy award for Best picture of 2004.