A visibly angry old lady, now a retired teacher and purporting to be Swedish, travels to Lapland for the funeral of her younger sister. The ceremony is a bizarre mix of Protestant and Sami religion and the subsequent reindeer roundup recalls the old lady’s Sami origins, initiating a long flashback that retraces her adolescence and her obstinate struggle to break free of her culture. In her nineteen thirties youth the ‘Lapps’ are quarantined from mainstream Sweden, given a special and limited education; and fed the belief that their ‘smaller brains’ make them fit only to stay where they are. Well-meaning (?) scientists measure the children’s skulls, check their teeth and photograph their naked bodies, while anthropologists organise ‘field trips’ from Uppsala to study cultural phenomena, for example the practice of ‘yoiking’, a repetitive and subtle form of mouth music that becomes part of the film’s haunting soundtrack and an ironical reminder of the racist scaffolding that has reduced a proud culture to the level of circus freaks or an under-class that bears watching. There are inevitable reminders here of ambivalent and/or racist attitudes to our own First Nations.
The wayward adolescent, played beautifully by newcomer Lene Cecilia Sparrock, presents an outsider’s view of mainstream Sweden, sanitised, gleaming and totally alien to this young woman who is determined to follow her love of books and become a teacher. The ironical placement of Ella-Marja against the everyday realities of (southern) Swedish life, from conversation and food rituals to gymnastics, generates a humour that is tinged with sadness for what is being lost in the transition between cultures. She is like Voltaire’s Huron (L’Ingénu), gob-smacked at the outlandishness of Parisian life. The old lady’s return to the starkly beautiful land finally brings to a head the pain of her loss, the resilience of Sami culture and the continuing racism of Swedes, who now go to Lapland as tourists and temper their complaints about the Sami by conceding that they are, at least, ‘closer to nature’!
The cinematography is stunning, as is the soundtrack – if you watched the series Midnight Sun on SBS you’ll know what I mean. I hope you will watch this movie when it comes to SBS on Demand, as it surely will.
