SPECIAL MONDAY NIGHT SCREENING

SWEET LAND (2005), 110 minutes

“Let us hope that we are preceded in this world by a love story.”

This is the sentiment behind the independent film, Sweet Land––a project that took director Ali Selim sixteen years to realize, starting from the time he first read Will Weaver’s short story, "A Gravestone Made of Wheat."

The film opens and is framed with the passings of beloved grandparents Olaf and Inge in 1968 and 2004, and they are indeed hard scenes. It falls to their grandson Lars to ready the Minnesota family farm for sale, and when he finds an old hand-colored photograph, the love story that preceded him is set in motion, recalling when his grandmother Inge came over from Scandinavia as a mail-order bride in 1920.

As played by Elizabeth Reaser, urbane and educated Inge is an awkward match for the shy, taciturn Olaf. When it is revealed that she is actually German––and therefore a recent enemy––the neighbors are scandalized, as they are Norwegians determined to become upstanding Americans. With the local minister refusing to marry them, and with no where else to go, an exasperated Inge stays on with Olaf, causing both of them to be shunned by the community. Alone and facing a near-impossible harvest without the cooperation of their fellow farmers, a love story commences.

BE ADVISED––This film is rated PG-13, with some mild profanity, off-screen sexuality, grieving, foreclosures, too many children for one bathtub, and all the things that refuse to dissolve in the Melting Pot.