User Reviews

This is one of those movies that you keep thinking about when you wake up the next morning. It will give you that warm, fuzzy feeling and leave you with a smile on your face.

Sure, we get fed the typical stereotype characters and stories, but it does do the trick: Entertain.

Being from Sweden and living in the US for quite sometime, it is funny how we react. "The deadbeat husband is going to kill him", "She (Gabriella) is going to die and then there will be a heartbreaking larger-than-life ending". We know how these things work, everything comes together at the end. And it did. The characters were somewhat simple, they were so elaborate that you didn't really think twice about it, nothing was really left for your own imagination. The closest would probably be Siv, she makes you ask yourself if she indeed was in love with Daniel, but that's about it.

But the movie is beautiful, set in rural Norrland, the music is absolutely amazing and the characters are lovable. Michael Nyqvist is truly genius, with his crazy unique look and Frida Hallberg is charming and approachable. Maybe a little too nice.

But most of all this movie makes you feel, and that is the most important thing. You cry, you laugh, you hate and you identify. I don't know about you guys, but that does not happen that often.

I was drawn to this movie the moment I saw a preview of it on Oscar night. When I read about Kay Pollak, I was hooked. We Americans are suckers for a comeback kid.

I understand this movie was a huge draw in Sweden. As a very provincial American I can only speculate on the reason. Perhaps it is because of the provocative joke that the Lena character makes at the beginning of the movie and other social comment but perhaps it is because of the central message which I believe has the same appeal everywhere in affluent societies.

The message of this movie for me is the same as the movie Titanic. Life is short people and as far as anyone really knows it's all we've got. It can be taken away at any time. So isn't it a pity that we spend so much time hiding behind walls separating us from other people because we're so afraid of being hurt? Tearing down the walls is painful but feeling alive lies on the other side of those wretched walls. Feeling alive is worth taking the risk. Give and you will receive. So start living NOW.

Many people are criticizing this movie for it's lack of characterization and other flaws. I say you are all pseudo-sophisticated. Get a grip folks, it's a parable, a fable for we affluent westerners who are materially rich but whose souls are in abject poverty.

So join a choir or a band or help build housing or distribute food for those less fortunate than you. Spread some joy and make the world a better place as long as you get out and commune with your fellow man. Writing a check is not enough. We are a social species by the way. Even the humblest of your fellow human beings can affect you in ways you never thought possible.

Rugged individualism has its place but it is over-rated.

Through music, humans can express the yearnings of our souls and form deep bonds with those around us. Kay Pollack's Oscar nominated Film, As it is in Heaven, explores the power of music and the lasting effects it can have on a community. Despite the film's tired and overused plot line, it shines with complex, appealing characters and an exploration of both the relationships and the isolation the villagers feel among each other.

The film takes off running, and within the first ten minutes, Daniel (played by a brooding yet charming Michael Nyqvist) experiences childhood bullying, watches his mother die, becomes a world famous conductor, and has a heart attack while conducting in Milan. Thankfully, the movie slows down after this introduction, and Daniel settles into a quiet life in his old hometown to spend some time "listening". What follows is a standard formula–the town pastor, a fussy, sin-obsessed man, gives Daniel control over the ragtag band of villagers who make up the church choir. Daniel's passion to "create music that will open a person's heart" succeeds, and his arrival in the town triggers sweeping changes.

The film works due to its vivid characterization of individual members of the choir and their journeys to self-discovery once Daniel enables them to learn how to truly listen to themselves and each other. The choir, often acting as a group therapy session, enables the villagers (all a little broken in their own way) to reveal their secrets and frustrations.

A running theme throughout the film is that though the townspeople are incredibly close (in some cases, spending their entire lives together), they are often too apathetic or scared to address each other's clearly present problems. Arne has bullied Holmfrid for 35 years. Gabriella's husband (and Daniel's childhood bully) beats her everyday, but no one acknowledges it. The whole town knew about Lena's boyfriend and his adulterous behavior, but no one bothered to tell her. Music allows these characters to break their isolation and overcome these experiences. In one example, Gabriella's empowering solo in which she finally proclaims "my life is only mine," gives her the courage to finally leave her husband.

The villagers aren't the only ones who learn how to open up and love themselves–Daniel is affected as well. He begins to take down his self-imposed walls of isolation with the help of Lena. Their relationship is sweet and fairly innocent (though the fact that Daniel was considerably older than Lena was somewhat off putting). Lena aids Daniel in regaining the simple joys of childhood, such as riding a bike ("You're the one always talking about balance!" she teases). "Welcome home," she tells him, when he tearfully reveals that he was raised in the village.

The spiritual aspects of As it is in Heaven are not as prominent as the title may lead a viewer to believe. Early on, we listen in on a church service very focused on sin and flawed human nature, but it's a long time before anything overtly Christian is mentioned again. The most interesting insights into spirituality come from the women in the film. The empowering experiences in the choir cause Inger to reveal the secret belief she has harbored for 20 years: sin is an invention of the church that only exists in your head. "God doesn't forgive, don't you get that?" Inger says to her husband, the pastor, "Because He's never condemned." This confession rocks their already unstable marriage, and ultimately causes Inger to leave. The revelation seems somewhat out of place, mostly due to the lack of religion overall in the rest of the film. Its controversial implications are never brought up again outside the scene. There are some obvious (perhaps too obvious) Christian metaphors in the movie–the cross falls when Siv slams the door on the "sinful" choir, and the women tending to Daniel and wrapping him in white cloth after Conny beats him is reminiscent of the women tending to Jesus after the crucifixion.

Lena's contribution to the film's spirituality is more typical of her character's behavior. Lena is often portrayed as an angel throughout the film, bringing a vibrant joy to all her interactions. It makes sense when, near the end of the film, she asks Daniel, "Do you believe in angels? If I squint, sometimes I see their wings." Lena helps Daniel see the good in everyone, and instinctively reassures him about his fears of death. "There is no death," she tells him. And she's right. Though the film ends with Daniel's physical death (a predictable and somewhat melodramatic note, compared to the compelling realism present in the rest of the film), he lives on through the music he has created and the community he has built around it.

** HERE BE SPOILERS **

Daniel Dareus (Nyqvist) a world famous conductor has a small heart attack and needs to slow down his fast paced life. He decides to return to the small village were he lived as a kid. His last name is changed so nobody recognizes him. He has decided to return to listen but decide to take the position as cantor and lead the small church choir. Maybe here he can fulfill his dream to create music that will open hearts. However, nothing is as easy as it seems. Each member in the choir is kind of a special character with a complicated situation and relationships around them. Some has a somewhat bad reputation and someone has a drunken violent husband. And in the small village everybody knows everything about each other, which further complicates matter. With his music Daniel slowly brings the choir together and emotions start to spark in the village. Pride and jealousy, but also joy and love, and all involve Daniel in some way. So, as he sort his own life out he must navigate through the conflicts around him, and maybe create music.

A little odd story with a lot of interesting characters that is kind of (stereo-)typical of a small village in Norrland (North of Sweden). The actors are all very good, especially Nyqvist and Hallgren (as Lena) in the main characters. Jähkel, Morberg and Sjöberg also portray interesting characters very good and Sjöholm is an experience to see and especially listen to. But unfortunately the story is somewhat ambivalent, it seems that it cannot make up its mind. On one level, it seems to want to be a portrait of life in a small village, one another it seems to want to be very dramatic with intense situations. Brought together it actually seems like the story itself overacts a bit. That is unfortunate and brings the viewing experience down several notches. Otherwise it is better than expected, there are some genuinely funny moments (extremely rare in Swedish drama in my opinion) and there are some interesting comments about everyday life. And the music is very beautiful and well used. Then there is the end, that doesn't work at all. It has such a strong resemblance to another (very well known) movie that makes it just seem cheap.

5/10

It is almost impossible to believe that Kay Pollack's As It Is in Heaven was made only ten years ago in 2004 for it feels dreadfully more dated than that. This Academy Award nominated film, which is essentially the Swedish version of a Lifetime Original Movie with a domestic violence plot line to boot, follows renowned conductor Daniel Daréus (Michael Nyqvist) as he returns to his childhood home in the north of Sweden after suffering a heart attack in the middle of one of his concerts. As a kid, Daniel was ruthlessly beaten and bullied by his peers, but he escaped this harsh childhood with the dream of making music that would connect with people. Upon his return home, Daniel becomes the cantor for the local church choir and starts to bring the townspeople together though what he sees as the spiritual quality of music. Complications arise when Daniel confronts a jealous church pastor, an abusive husband, and various choir members who doubt the sincerity of Daniel's project. Unfortunately, the only remarkable thing about Heaven is how painfully generic it is.

Everything in this film is simple and dull, as if the story arcs, characterization, dialogue, and music were all clumsily smashed into creation by a blindfolded kid with an unwieldy sledgehammer rather than by a skilled artist with a deft touch. The problem begins with a weak script that relies entirely on meager clichés. For example, our hero, Daniel, is the stereotypical passionate artist, but he's severely lacking in depth. All we know is that he loves music, falls in love with a girl, and then dies, both randomly and predictably. His foil, the uptight Pastor Stig (Niklas Falk), is disturbed by Daniel's free-flowing ways and surpasses Daniel only in one-dimensionality. In a particularly ridiculous scene, Stig gets into an argument with his wife, Inger (Ingella Olsson), over his conservative ideas about sexuality. Stig slut- shames his wife, explodes and has passionate sex with her, and then denounces the whole incident the next morning. This tired portrait of the repressed and hypocritical clergyman does nothing for the film, nor adds any interesting conflict or complexity.

Beyond the disappointingly shallow characterizations, Heaven makes a misstep with the plot's desperate grabs for sentimentality. There is, of course, the domestic violence plot line with the overdone, over-the-top abusive husband that makes a mere caricature of this real and important social problem. The issue is not that people like the outrageous abuser Conny (Per Morberg) do not exist in real life, but that he and his wife, Gabriella (Helen Sjöholm), are written in such a hollow way so as to make it seem like the professionals behind Heaven have never actually encountered a real human being who has been involved the cycle of abuse. In the end, Heaven exhibits a detached artificiality that undermines the film's attempt to say something meaningful about the tragedy of abusive relationships and about the empowering triumph for those who survive them. Then there's Tore (André Sjöberg), the young man who is at first shunned and underestimated by members of the choir for his intellectual disability and then ultimately accepted. Despite the fact that the film obviously casts Tore in a positive light, it is nothing more than cheap idealization. Heaven doesn't demonstrate respect Tore as person or a character, but instead uses him as bait for warm fuzzies and reduces him to the object of a patronizing smile.

The film's dialogue also betrays some serious flaws. Heaven takes little advantage of the filmic medium, and the characters often end up explaining their motivations and feelings outright rather than illustrating them through distinctive behavior, well-written characterization, and revealing cinematic techniques. For instance, when Stig shuts down the choir, he yells at Daniel unnecessarily, "I'm taking the choir away from you!" Later when Inger criticizes Stig's vendetta against Daniel, she shouts, "You're not angry at him, but at what he evokes in you!" Of course, the English subtitles may not capture the exact essence of the original Swedish, but the fact remains that a truly solid script would be able to communicate its themes without any of these clunky verbal explanations.

Some movies are disappointing in their failure to live up to their full potential, but As It Is in Heaven is not one of them. Wobbly from the start, Heaven is terrible in a boring kind of way. Perhaps time is partly to blame for how stale the movie feels, and it is possible that in its day, Heaven had some aura of charm and novelty. However, in 2014, it's difficult to see through the haze of bathetic storytelling and overdone conventions.

My expectations were quite high for this film. Everyone I know who saw this film at the cinema told me that everyone there stayed through the credits because they were so touched. My expectations could not have been any higher, anything short of wonderful would have disappointed me.

I was anything but disappointed by this movie. I loved how it dealt with difficult subjects without going through the usual steps a Hollywood film tends to include. In this film characters worked through problems they had had for decades, they worked through prejudicm, they learned to open up. But it did not come easily, and not just by singing a song or two. It was painful, it took arguments, it took confrontations. It felt like real life.

One scene that really stuck out to me was the scene in which Gabriella sings her song. Helen Sjöholm is one of my favorite singers, her voice is lovely, and you could tell that she was not just lip-syncing to a previous recording during filming (which I often find in other movies), she really sang with her whole body and soul. You could feel what Gabriella was feeling in that scene. Had this movie been made in Hollywood her song would most likely have been sung toward the end, and it would have made her husband open his eyes and see the error of his ways, as well as making the other people in the village realise a thing or two. Instead it came halfway through, and it did not bring any solutions. Her husband did not become overwhelmed and realise what he's putting her through, and it didn't seem to make anyone else in the village more open minded. It was beautiful, it was pure and it was touching but it did not magically solve all her problems. That felt real to me, that's probably what would have happened in real life. The whole movie felt like real life to me, nothing neatly wrapped up but everything with a sense of joy and happiness. You rarely find a movie which feels so realistic.

There were a few things that bothered me, but hey, no movie is perfect. If you haven't already you should go see "As it is in Heaven" and be filled with a joy for life, a sense of hope and the feeling that you've been touched on a level movies rarely reach. You will be sad, pained, happy and a dozen other emotions.

Someone once said that if every person in the world sang in a choir there would be no more wars. Having seen this film I might have to agree.

Kay Pollack's sometimes annoyingly uplifting moralistic film, "As It Is in Heaven", shows the story of a man returning to his hometown marked by his own sad memories of his childhood. Daniel Darius, played by Michael Nyqvist, is an extremely successful and gifted conductor, composer, and musician but is forced to question his career after a serious health scare. Daniel moves back to his hometown and is coerced into listening to a local choir, despite his protests. He eventually concedes to directing and teaching the choir once he discovers an interest in one of the choir members.

The influence of religion is heavy and rather obvious in this film. The choir is a church choir that sings religious songs, both in Swedish and English. There are moralistic themes in the storyline such as: believing in oneself, finding ones voice, going on despite the odds, etc. The fact that the main character, Daniel Darius, is shown to have risen from oppression into excellence and to have overcome odds propels him to some sort of Christ figure. If Pollack had intended to make any subtle comparisons or similarities to religion, he failed miserably. In a bit of an interesting contrast, Pollack also highlights violence, specifically violence perpetuated by men who are supposed leaders of their church or family. Conny, played by Per Morberg, is Daniel's childhood bully who has stayed in their hometown and married a woman whom he controls in almost every aspect beats his wife and Daniel when he is displeased. Also, the pastor, Stig played by Niklas Falk, turns to violent actions against his wife Inger, played by Ingela Olsson when she displays questionable actions in his view. It is difficult to understand why Pollack included this violence alongside the more moralistic and holy religious themes especially given the fact that the pastor is involved in this violence. So it almost seems as if Pollack is supporting spirituality and religion but not the hierarchical nature and old rules of the church.

Stemming from this strange side by side comparison of religion and violence, the idea of hypocrisy is shown through the entire film. Going back to Stig, the pastor, it is revealed to the viewer that he hides pornographic magazines in his house for his own sexual pleasure, and his wife knows of this but doesn't acknowledge it until a key point in their relationship. So while he claims to be this holy man, he is just as weak to sexual pleasures as any regular person, and instead of acknowledging this, he chooses to hide it and make himself a hypocrite. Towards the beginning of the film, it is shown how Daniel lives and breathes his music, which is the love of his life. Once he moves to his hometown, he initially refuses to help a choir who only wants to live and breathe their own music. It seems that Daniel understood what a hypocritical stance this was and decided to help the choir (it also helped that a beautiful woman was a member in the choir, but I'd rather give Daniel a bit more credit than that).

Now as to why I am only giving this film a five out of ten. I do not enjoy films that hit a viewer over the head with the intended theme or moral of the story. This is purely personal preference when it comes down to it, but I'd rather have a very open film that has many interpretations than a very closed one with a very intended result. It may be more approachable to more viewers because of how easy the meaning of the story is to grasp, but I'd like to think that I am not a normal, ignorant film-goer. This just wasn't a sophisticated plot that made me think. Nonetheless, Michael Nyqvist did a wonderful acting as Daniel Darius and his wide range of emotions, but even a good actor cannot save a movie like this one.

"As It Is in Heaven" most definitely had an agenda in its storyline, not that that is generally a bad thing, but how Pollack went about doing it made it too redundant for my taste. Although there were some interesting contrasts between religion, violence and hypocrisy, it did not feel as though those contrasts were as developed as they could be to make this film more thought provoking and profound. The film was most definitely intended to be uplifting and "warm fuzzy"-inducing, but rather I felt more annoyed than anything after the film ended.