This is a very modern silent movie :it looks like melodrama ,but it's not,by a long shot :it's actually an initiatory journey : a young man,the son of a wealthy farmer does soul-searching ,the first sequence is deceptive: some kind of equivalent of Vivaldi's" Spring" or Boticcelli 's "the triumph of Spring", joie de vivre oozes from every picture :"there must be a siren in these woods" .But in spite of the farandole and the dancing , he's already left his first crush (scowling)for a modest servant.
He does not really care if his dad turns him out of the valuable property : the only person he seems to care about is his mom who knows better( "you're born to destroy "),a sentence which will come back in the cemetery,but slightly modified (....and to re-build)
All along this what one could call a "road movie" before the name was invented, Olof does not know where he stands ;he tries to impress a proud woman. And then a symmetrical scene of the quarrel with his own dad : he couldn't marry a simple servant;and Killikki's dad does not want a vagrant for son-in-law ("why didn't you say who you were before?"in the second meeting)
The initiatory voyage continues with some time in town where he finds back "Gazelle " the servant he wanted to marry (more to take a rebel stand against his father than because he did love her) ,who has become a destitute girl ,living with a prostitute : like Dickens' Little Em'ly ,her dreams of a prince charming have vanished.
Like Ulysses, Olof comes back to his roots ,but he's not the same man anymore.
Stiller's pictures are luminous ,particularly in the first episode ;the very short flashbacks are smartly introduced and all the scenes on the river ,be it wild or peaceful ,are the movies' piece of resistance.
He does not really care if his dad turns him out of the valuable property : the only person he seems to care about is his mom who knows better( "you're born to destroy "),a sentence which will come back in the cemetery,but slightly modified (....and to re-build)
All along this what one could call a "road movie" before the name was invented, Olof does not know where he stands ;he tries to impress a proud woman. And then a symmetrical scene of the quarrel with his own dad : he couldn't marry a simple servant;and Killikki's dad does not want a vagrant for son-in-law ("why didn't you say who you were before?"in the second meeting)
The initiatory voyage continues with some time in town where he finds back "Gazelle " the servant he wanted to marry (more to take a rebel stand against his father than because he did love her) ,who has become a destitute girl ,living with a prostitute : like Dickens' Little Em'ly ,her dreams of a prince charming have vanished.
Like Ulysses, Olof comes back to his roots ,but he's not the same man anymore.
Stiller's pictures are luminous ,particularly in the first episode ;the very short flashbacks are smartly introduced and all the scenes on the river ,be it wild or peaceful ,are the movies' piece of resistance.