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A Song for Martin (2002)
Runtime: 1 hr 59 mins
Synopsis: Danish director Bille August's (PELLE THE CONQUEROR) touching tale is about finding a great love and losing it too quickly. Barbara (Viveka Seldahl), the first violinist in a Swedish philharmonic, is immediately, deeply attracted to Martin Fischer (Sven Wollter), a famous composer who is... Danish director Bille August's (PELLE THE CONQUEROR) touching tale is about finding a great love and losing it too quickly. Barbara (Viveka Seldahl), the first violinist in a Swedish philharmonic, is immediately, deeply attracted to Martin Fischer (Sven Wollter), a famous composer who is guest conducting his new work. Both Barbara and Martin are good-looking, middle-aged, and married to other people. Despite the obstacles, they fall passionately in love, and soon enjoy a blissful, charmed life together as husband and wife. They live in a quaint house by the sea, and work together on Martin's compositions. However, Martin begins displaying some unnerving behavior--he forgets his manager's name, and has sudden, terrifying moments of blankness where he doesn't recognize the house. When Martin is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he tries to continue composing his new opera, but the cruel irony of an artist's instrument--his mind and memory--being destroyed (as in IRIS) is soon apparent. Meanwhile, Barbara struggles to cope as her virile, brilliant husband deteriorates into a confused, weak man she doesn't recognize. Wollter embodies the shambling, empty physicality of Alzheimer's to perfection, while Seldahl (Wollter's real-life wife) realistically portrays the frustration, anger, and sorrow of the loved ones forced to watch. [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Viveka Seldahl, Sven Wollter, Reine Brynolfsson, Lisa Werlinder, Linda Kallgren
Reviews
August ... steers this story to its stirring conclusion with firm lack of sentimentality.
It may sound like a mere disease-of- the-week TV movie, but A Song For Martin is made infinitely more wrenching by the performances of real-life spouses Seldahl and Wollter.
Upsetting and thought-provoking, the film has an odd purity that doesn't bring you into the characters so much as it has you study them.
It's so downbeat and nearly humorless that it becomes a chore to sit through -- despite some first-rate performances by its lead.
Director-writer Bille August ... depicts this relationship with economical grace, letting his superb actors convey Martin's deterioration and Barbara's sadness -- and, occasionally, anger.
Full of unforgiving irony and quiet realism, A Song for Martin stands as a powerful and moving achievement.
Martin and Barbara are complex characters -- sometimes tender, sometimes angry -- and the delicate performances by Sven Wollter and Viveka Seldahl make their hopes and frustrations vivid.
A delightfully simple, splendid love story between two older people ... a journey of life and love you won't want to miss.
Viveka Seldahl and Sven Wollter will touch you to the core in a film you will never forget -- that you should never forget.
The movie, for all its sincerity, becomes clinical and repetitious, though its unsparing vision of the fragility of identity can give you a shudder.
An extraordinary Swedish film about the soul adventure of marriage -- the kind of intimate and character-driven film that Bille August does best.
This slow-moving Swedish film offers not even a hint of joy, preferring to focus on the humiliation of Martin as he defecates in bed and urinates on the plants at his own birthday party.
Mr. Wollter and Ms. Seldhal give strong and convincing performances, but neither reaches into the deepest recesses of the character to unearth the quaking essence of passion, grief and fear.


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