LGM Film Club, Part 438: Songs of Earth

Margareth Olin is a well-known director in Norway but her films have gotten almost no play in the United States. But her new one has. Songs of Earth is a lovely tribute to the relationship between Olin’s parents and the beautiful but unforgiving nature of the western Norwegian fjord where the family farm has been for generations. This is a combination of your beautiful nature film (it’s not really that hard to make fjords and glaciers look good; similarly no one shooting the Great Plains at sunset should ever win a cinematography award again. The real challenge is shooting a dingy apartment the right way.) and honoring your parents, which is the more interesting part of the film. Olin’s father is the real star of the show. He’s well into his 80s and is still out there hiking all the time and telling stories of the past. Olin goes very up close in her choices on how to film her father. His wrinkles and the fjords are one and the same here. Her mother is a bit less centered in the film, partly because she is a decade younger and probably has more years left and (I would guess) partly because she is a bit more camera shy. Some critics have compared this film to a poem. I confess I don’t know what that means, in part because in 2024 I don’t know what a poem means exactly. It’s not as if a poem is a thing anymore. It’s any number of things and so is this film. Either way, between the landscape and the film’s deep humanism, it is well worth your time.