America was founded on the principles of emigration; it is a country of emigrants. “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This isn’t just some nice words from Emma Lazarus’s sonnet, The New Colossus; it’s the very message our forefathers believed in when they set sail for the new land, fleeing tyranny or persecution, yearning for religious freedom. To hear people nowadays, what it feels like this country stands for anymore is the much more abrupt and final, “No Vacancy.” This is not an advocacy for illegal emigration, but a condemnation of how difficult it has become to emigrate the legal way. Even as I write this, the laws have been upended to make it even more difficult for those who want to do it the legal way, making it more tempting to try illegal means instead.
We forget the reason why people emigrate to this country. We forget the personal stories of people fleeing their home countries to provide a better life for their children and grandchildren. That reason hasn’t changed much in the last couple of hundred years. That ideal was the basis for Vilhelm Moberg’s four-novel series entitled Utvandrarna (Translated to The Emigrants). These novels explored the causes and the process of the major Swedish emigration to the United States that began in the mid-nineteenth century. They also explored the many hardships of the journey as well as settling in the frontier areas, especially Minnesota territory.
These novels were adapted into three films, two that were filmed simultaneously in the early 1970s and a third in 2021. There is also a musical based on these works, created by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of ABBA. The films from the 1970s (The Emigrants and The New Land) were directed and co-written by Jan Troell, a Swedish filmmaker who specialized in realism and a unique lyrical cinematography in which nature is a prominent feature, both the beautiful side and the ugly. We see this all throughout The Emigrants as one of the prevailing themes is man vs. nature.
The Emigrants was released in Sweden a full year before making its debut in American cinemas. As such, it was eligible at the Academy Awards in two separate years: once as the foreign language film of 1971, and again for other awards the following year, including Best Picture. This would be a rare distinction that changing rules at the Academy would no longer allow a single film to accomplish.
Our point-of-view character is Karl Oskar Nilsson (Max von Sydow), who lives on a small farm in Korpamoen in Ljuder Parish in the Swedish province of Småland. He is the eldest son of Nils, who has been injured trying to move a boulder off his farmland, crippling him. Now, Karl Oskar runs the farm and though he is a hard worker, the land is rocky and poor for planting, leaving the family in debt. On top of that, he has just recently married Kristina (Liv Ullmann) and, with the addition of each new child, their situation grows more desperate.
Elsewhere in the area, Danjel Andreasson (Allan Edwall), Kristina’s uncle, is being persecuted for rejecting the local clergy and reading scripture, offering services and communion, and speaking out against the local religious leaders publicly. This comes to a head when the provost brings the law with him to break up the religious services, threatening to have Danjel arrested. Danjel resists, but knows he can only resist so long before he will end up thrown in prison for blasphemy. He and his small congregation are looking for a way out of this situation.
Robert (Eddie Axberg), Karl Oskar’s daydreaming younger brother, is tired of being beaten and overworked as an indentured farmhand at a neighbor’s farm. It is his idea, based on things he has read, for the family to emigrate to America. Initially, though, Kristina refuses to abandon her homeland. But when tragedy strikes down one of her daughters, Kristina relents. Surprisingly, Karl Oskar has also been thinking heavily about emigrating, leaving behind this barren farm for the richer pastures America has to offer. The rest of the film covers, in painstaking detail and realism, the journey all these people take together as they travel first by wagon, then ship across the ocean and arrive in America. It ends with the two groups settling in Minnesota, ready to begin a new life in this new country.
It should be noted that the second film, made at the same time as the first, is really just the natural extension of this story, picking up immediately afterwards and covering the time the Nilssons are in America, building their new home, taming the land, growing old, and seeing the children grow up and lose their cultural identity as they become second-generation Americans. The two films combine for just over six and a half hours of screen time and do not need to be watched together, but the experience is all the more enriching if you do. As The Emigrants is the only one of the two to be honored at the Academy Awards, I will focus on that one, but both films are really must-see movies and together tell a more complete story.
This is not an easy picture for the average viewer to just pick up and get into. It’s slow-paced and depicts some things that many will find difficult to watch. It’s over three hours in length, and there is never a moment when the action moves things along more quickly. This is a deliberate choice by Jan Troell to emphasize the experience this family went through to relocate to a new country. He also glamorizes the wilderness while not glamorizing America as a country, choosing to represent things the way they actually were. We get a good sense of the lushness of the country but also the dark side of it with thieves and brothels there to greet everyone as they get off the boats in New England. This scene greeting them at port emphasizes that, while America was indeed a land of opportunity, it was hardly the paradise they were sold on.
But before we can even get there, we have to go through the journey, which we see the most of from the ship sailing westward across the ocean. This is no luxury cruise, filled with suites and amenities. This is a cargo ship with the cargo being humans. Sickness, lice, and death follow them out to sea, and not everyone will survive the trip. Making the trip all the worse for Kristina is her being pregnant on this journey. She fears losing the baby and also fears losing her identity, which she associates with her children. This carries over more heavily in The New Land, where she refuses to stop having more children, even at the risk of her life.
This film is not in a hurry to tell its story. At over three hours long, it has the time to make sure we fully understand and appreciate everything these people had to go through to find a new home, far from the hardships and persecutions they were facing back home. When it released in America a year after its Swedish release, forty minutes were trimmed from the runtime. The version I found, released on Criterion Bu-ray, was the original cut, as was the sequel. As deliberately paced as it is, I would not want to see a shortened version of it. There is a feeling of shared trauma in it that would be lessoned after all that trimming.
The Emigrants will test you as an audience member, but it will reward you, too. Karl Oskar is an amazing character that we come to understand and care for over this runtime. His motivations are clear, and we come to care about his family and their well-being. We see a bit of ourselves in his struggle, as we do with Kristina, too. The downside to this is that when the film ends, it feels incomplete. That is why I think viewing The New Land is a necessity. This story doesn’t end with The Emigrants. When those credits roll, there are simply too many unanswered questions. Those will be answered in the second film. That is why, though either film can be viewed on their own, it is far more enriching to view them as a whole.
Jan Troell has created a masterpiece in realism. It is stark at times, will destroy you emotionally, and has its moments that are uplifting, too. It shows the realities of life and the dangers of believing in the hype of the New World too much. In the film An American Tail, there is a scene where the mice are singing about there being no cats in America and the streets are paved in cheese. Robert is selling America with the same kind of misconceptions and exaggerations as Papa Mousekewitz is. He talks of so much gold and precious metals that everyone is rich and prosperous. While America was a land of better opportunities, we know from history that there were a lot of hardships, too, and as The Emigrantscloses, leading into The New Land, we know that things aren’t going to be as smooth and easy as Karl Oskar has been led to believe.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Foreign Language Film 1971: Jan Troell
Best Picture: Bengt Forslund
Best Director: Jan Troell
Best Actress in a Leading Role: Liv Ullmann
Best Adapted Screenplay: Jan Troell and Bengt Forslund
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Release Date: March 8, 1971
Running Time: 192 Minutes
Rated PG
Starring: Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg, Allan Edwall, Monica Zetterlund, and Pierre Lindstedt
Directed by: Jan Troell
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