My Life As A Dog (PG.)
Directed by Lasse Hallström. 1985.
Starring Anton Glanzelius, Melinda Kinnaman, Anki Liden, Tomas Von Bromssen, Kicki Rundgren, Ing-Marie Carlsson, Arnold Alfredsson. Swedish with subtitles. Released on Dual Format Blu-ray/ DVD edition by Arrow Academy on May 8th. 99 mins.
My motto in life, stolen from Homer Simpson, is always do a half-arsed job. There is nothing to be said for excelling, because if you do it will only be used as a stick to beat you with. So it is that the release of Hallström's most celebrated film, indeed an as widely a celebrated film as you could wish to find, in the same week that his new film - the canine reincarnation drama A Dog's Purpose - is out in cinemas, feels like a cruel dig. After the worldwide recognition this received he was able to transfer his talents to Hollywood and become a comfortably successful failure.
The triumph of My Life As A Dog was the skilful way it was made to look unforced. A coming of age tale, set in the late 50s, it tells of the awkward adolescence of Ingemar (Glanzelius) who is shipped off to live with relatives in the sticks when his mother becomes ill. The sticks is Småland, a cheerful place full of eccentrics and healthy, outgoing sporting activities. The plot, taken from a novel by Reidar Jönsson, is filled with contrivances and little bits of business. The dog of the title is Laika, the poor mutt sent up into space on a suicide mission by the Soviets, and against whose fate Ingemar always compares his own lot in an attempt to be upbeat. There are any number of potential sticking points here but Hallström's film glides gently over them, usually by employing the method of showing but not telling. For example Ingemar clearly has some kind of condiction, a behavioural problem (sometimes he'll be unable to hold a glass of milk) but the film shows us the symptoms but never offers a diagnosis. Which is its general approach to story telling: it shows us what it wants to show us and leaves us to make of it what we will.
This is definitely a film for anyone who has ever raged against Political Correctness Gone Mad, or the strictures of Health and Safety. The kids here, (and the adults) are just left to get on with it, playing with air rifles, boxing or falling through rooftop glass windows while trying to look at naked women. This being Sweden, everybody is of course sex mad, even though many of them are pre-pubescent. Bloody Swedes, they are always at it; and they probably enjoy it half the time. Ingemar works with his uncle at a glass blowing factory, scampering between the hot furnaces and slapping the backside of the comely Berit (Carlsson) who he shaperones when she does some nude modelling for the local artist. He also attracts the attentions of a local tomboy Saga ( Kinnaman) who is worried that the next growth spurt will end her football career.
(Because it is in subtitles and from Sweden the BBFC are quite happy to pass this as PG, saying it contains mild sex references, even though they are mild, underage sex references. They last classified it in 2005, and nobody has bothered them with it since. Around the same time, the initial release of Tampopo, which has some mild, playing-with-your-food nudity, got an 18 certificate.)
My Life As A Dog is every bit as good today as it was thirty years ago. At times it has something of the Bill Forsyth about it, that ability to be a little bit twee and for that tweeness to be sublime, to make humour where you laugh or smile without really knowing what exactly it is you are laughing or smiling about.
Strange how as soon as Hallström turned up in LA this suddenly became the worst kind of dull respectability – Merchant/ Ivory films without the edge. But maybe it shouldn't be a surprise; it is down to our stupid notion of directors being the authors of their films, when films are the result of labyrinthine creative process where even the people who were involved don't know who really did what. Prior to this Hallström was ABBA's go-to man for video shoots and after this he was the maker of respectable, middlebrow dramas: rather than see his career as one of unfulfilled promise, this film should be cherished as a moment when a bunch of people got together and created something that ought to have been beyond them.
Directed by Lasse Hallström. 1985.
Starring Anton Glanzelius, Melinda Kinnaman, Anki Liden, Tomas Von Bromssen, Kicki Rundgren, Ing-Marie Carlsson, Arnold Alfredsson. Swedish with subtitles. Released on Dual Format Blu-ray/ DVD edition by Arrow Academy on May 8th. 99 mins.
My motto in life, stolen from Homer Simpson, is always do a half-arsed job. There is nothing to be said for excelling, because if you do it will only be used as a stick to beat you with. So it is that the release of Hallström's most celebrated film, indeed an as widely a celebrated film as you could wish to find, in the same week that his new film - the canine reincarnation drama A Dog's Purpose - is out in cinemas, feels like a cruel dig. After the worldwide recognition this received he was able to transfer his talents to Hollywood and become a comfortably successful failure.
The triumph of My Life As A Dog was the skilful way it was made to look unforced. A coming of age tale, set in the late 50s, it tells of the awkward adolescence of Ingemar (Glanzelius) who is shipped off to live with relatives in the sticks when his mother becomes ill. The sticks is Småland, a cheerful place full of eccentrics and healthy, outgoing sporting activities. The plot, taken from a novel by Reidar Jönsson, is filled with contrivances and little bits of business. The dog of the title is Laika, the poor mutt sent up into space on a suicide mission by the Soviets, and against whose fate Ingemar always compares his own lot in an attempt to be upbeat. There are any number of potential sticking points here but Hallström's film glides gently over them, usually by employing the method of showing but not telling. For example Ingemar clearly has some kind of condiction, a behavioural problem (sometimes he'll be unable to hold a glass of milk) but the film shows us the symptoms but never offers a diagnosis. Which is its general approach to story telling: it shows us what it wants to show us and leaves us to make of it what we will.
This is definitely a film for anyone who has ever raged against Political Correctness Gone Mad, or the strictures of Health and Safety. The kids here, (and the adults) are just left to get on with it, playing with air rifles, boxing or falling through rooftop glass windows while trying to look at naked women. This being Sweden, everybody is of course sex mad, even though many of them are pre-pubescent. Bloody Swedes, they are always at it; and they probably enjoy it half the time. Ingemar works with his uncle at a glass blowing factory, scampering between the hot furnaces and slapping the backside of the comely Berit (Carlsson) who he shaperones when she does some nude modelling for the local artist. He also attracts the attentions of a local tomboy Saga ( Kinnaman) who is worried that the next growth spurt will end her football career.
(Because it is in subtitles and from Sweden the BBFC are quite happy to pass this as PG, saying it contains mild sex references, even though they are mild, underage sex references. They last classified it in 2005, and nobody has bothered them with it since. Around the same time, the initial release of Tampopo, which has some mild, playing-with-your-food nudity, got an 18 certificate.)
My Life As A Dog is every bit as good today as it was thirty years ago. At times it has something of the Bill Forsyth about it, that ability to be a little bit twee and for that tweeness to be sublime, to make humour where you laugh or smile without really knowing what exactly it is you are laughing or smiling about.
Strange how as soon as Hallström turned up in LA this suddenly became the worst kind of dull respectability – Merchant/ Ivory films without the edge. But maybe it shouldn't be a surprise; it is down to our stupid notion of directors being the authors of their films, when films are the result of labyrinthine creative process where even the people who were involved don't know who really did what. Prior to this Hallström was ABBA's go-to man for video shoots and after this he was the maker of respectable, middlebrow dramas: rather than see his career as one of unfulfilled promise, this film should be cherished as a moment when a bunch of people got together and created something that ought to have been beyond them.
