Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

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Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Tweekums This film 'inspired by real events' is set in the borstal on the Norwegian island of Bastøy in the winter of 1915. We are introduced to the establishment with new inmate Erling, inmate C19. It quickly becomes apparent that life there is harsh; the boys are expected to work hard and any infringement of the rules will incur severe punishments. Erling befriends Olav, inmate C1 who is the senior inmate in their dormitory. Olav is due to be released soon so doesn't want to rock the boat but when he witnesses Bråthen, the housefather, abusing a boy Erling persuades him to inform the governor. Rather than investigate the governor accuses him of lying. The events that follow lead up to Erling and Olav being moved to solitary confinement however they escape and soon there is a full scale revolt against the prison staff. As the military arrive to quell the uprising Erling and Olav attempt to escape the island by crossing the frozen fjord.While this certainly isn't a feel-good film it has enough feel-good moments to get us through the more gruelling scenes and the sheer bleakness of the setting. The cast do a fine job; Benjamin Helstad and Trond Nilssen are great as Erling and Olav; Kristoffer Joner nicely captures the cowardly unpleasantness of Bråthen and Stellan Skarsgård puts in a fine performance as the governor who clearly thinks he is doing a good job helping the boys when it is clear that his regime is far from good. The story moves along at a decent pace; neither feeling rushed nor dragging. The film has a very cold feel; it isn't just the snow on the ground; the light has that permanent blue tint of an overcast winter day and the boys are clearly not dressed for the weather. While the regime we see is harsh the film doesn't show anything too unpleasant meaning the film is suitable for teenagers and older. Overall this might not be a film to 'enjoy' but it is certainly worth watching.These comments are based on watching the film in Norwegian with English subtitles.

grantss Good Norwegian drama, but could have been great. Good plot, well developed. The set up and build up to the inevitable climax was great, and set the scene for a fantastic conclusion. Character development is also good.However, the final scenes isn't as satisfactory as the build up. There are a few scenes and events which just don't gel, and which make the last quarter or so of the movie feel a bit contrived. Credibility is restored somewhat by the moving ending, however.Good performances all round. The only known actor (to us non-Norwegians, at least) in the cast is Stellan Skarsgard, who seems to appear in every Scandinavian movie. He is excellent, as always, as the governor of the prison.

Laakbaar This film tells the story of what happens in "house C" at a Norwegian reform school in 1915. Bastøy is a strict, prison-like environment situated on an island, and the conditions are very harsh. It was a different time when people had authoritarian inclinations about religion, child-rearing and delinquency.The story hinges on three characters and their stories: the struggles of a newcomer to adapt (Erling, played by Benjamin Helstad), the moral dilemma of a long-term inmate who has succeeded in this environment (Olav, played by Trond Nilssen), and the housemaster who enjoyed this world far too much, despite the low pay (Bråthen, played by Kristoffer Joner). The other main characters include an abused boy and a self-serving headmaster. Near the end, the movie takes an unexpected turn as things get out of hand. However, I don't want to give anything away. Let's just say the ending might remind you of "Lord of the Flies".Like Bastøy itself, the film has a brooding, trapped, isolated, cold and colourless feel. The director (Marius Holst) succeeds brilliantly in recreating this world and showing the moviegoer, in a spare and direct style, what an institution like this might have been like for the boys who had to stay there. I think much of the power of this movie is simply in recapturing this world in detail, including the hollowness of the constructs that allowed it to exist. I can't remember a movie where this has been done so effectively, although parts of this movie reminded me of "The Magdalene Sisters". I appreciated the director not dealing with this hastily, glibly, sensationally, explicitly, romantically or melodramatically. This is a deliberate, understated film.We are shown a primitive, limited and non-verbal place filled with challenged and affectionless boys. I'm not sure how much character development you can have (without resorting to Hollywood stereotypes); however, still the director and writers succeeded in developing these characters incrementally by letting us hear their dialogue and especially by showing us their actions. The moviegoer has to pay attention though. I can't say I was moved by this movie, but I found it gripping and did come to care for the characters.The modern human spirit sinks when confronted with the reality of institutions like this. Many countries are struggling to understand nowadays why they set up schools like this in the not-so-distant past. The film feels uncomfortably familiar. As we all know now, places like this were abusive institutions that provided a haven for small-minded and abusive men, including a few with pedophile tendencies. Bastøy was no different. I would like to hear the justifications of those who used to run these places, but of course few of them are around now. Of those who are around, few are willing to defend themselves. What could they say?The direction, the writing, the cinematography, the acting — all of it was excellent.Surely I am not the only one noticing that little Norway is producing rather good movies lately? Is anyone in the Netherlands producing movies of this quality? If so, I don't know who.

OJT Kongen av Bastøy is based on actual events happening on the Bastøy correctional facility for difficult boys, back in 1915. The Norwegian island Bastøy is located in the Oslo fjord, between Horten and Moss, about an hours drive south of Norway's capitol, what until 1919 was called Christiania before changing name back to original Oslo.Marius Holst has made another good film about young boys coping with coming of age. This time he has gone to the core of coping with misplaced childhoods. Well acted, and very true to it's time frame, Kongen of Bastøy, is very believable story made with a 10 million dollar budget. Stellan Skarsgård, Kristoffer Joner, Benjamin Helstad and Trond Nilssen does the very best of method acting of their characters.The story is both sore, dramatic and tragic, as well as true. It tries to both tell Norwegian history back when the country was poor, and when it was likely to be sent on a whaling ship, being a youngster from difficult background. So why is this film not a 10 out of 10. so many of these heart-wrenching stories easily make you get tears in your eyes.Well, I'm afraid to say that this is a true story's dilemma. Making the best possible story come out in a film, you have to love of eel for the characters. The young boys on this facility is not the ones easy to love. They are brutal, uneducated, cheeky, unable to show affection and victims of a difficult past. Though Marius Holst tries to make us understand and feel affection for both the kids and the "wardens" in this boys home, I simply can't really start to like any of the characters.Well acted, well written, but does director Holst really make us care? He has shown he know how to do this in the great story of "Cross my heart and hope to die", In Norwegian: "Ti kniver i hjertet" and "Mirsush" or "Blodsbånd", and succeeded well there. In Kongen av Bastøy which is a story of 10 years in progress, the trouble is that he had to face reality.Telling a story on difficult boys, obviously has to show the boys how they are. And Marius Holst is no "tears-seeker". Neither is his leading actor in this. He obviously has felt this story has to be told. And as a historic manuscript on how one solved this cases of difficult boys back then, it functions very well. Just don't expect to really care. Maybe this makes the film even better. It should, but I'm afraid I still feel it lacks this. To really be able to touch a movie-goer, the fictional adding would have done the trick. making the film an even better story, but less true. That's the dilemma of telling a true story. If you want the story to be loved, you gotta add the elements of heart and soul, even if it would be untrue to the story told.So for this cold bastard, I'm afraid this is just a good told story, and not a classic as I'd like it to be, and maybe also therefore not the possible box office hit it would have been, if made as a heart wrenching story.Making a film like this loved, really need us to identify. This is the only true trouble with an otherwise great film.Bastøy correctional facility was closed down in the fifties, when Norway was recovering from the 2nd World war. Now there's a prison out there. I'm sure a lot of kids was growing up hating Bastøy. Bastøy still have a negative sound for Norwegians, well deserved.