Ingemar's Disasters

Hi Cine!

So how can we now get Zam to feel a little happier about this film Jamo?? Any ideas?

To me this is such a lovely happy ending. I’m seriously planning to get a screen dump of that image (Saga and Ingmar peacefully sleeping together) and use it as wallpaper in my main net comp. To constantly remind me of good hope and better times.

Hi Cine!

One thing that has been on my mind about the story as depicted in the movie since my last viewing is that Ingemar gains a "father" in the course of the story. I think an easily overlooked scene, yet one that is quite poignant and touching, is the scene where Ingemar is defending his father to his little female friend in his home town. It's the scene where she is questioning why his father is off in another part of the world instead of being home helping his mother raise the family.

But Ingemar hides his hurt by defending his father and the important work he is doing. Certainly Ingemar and his brother are willing to sacrifice a relationship with their father knowing that the world's banana supply is being kept safe and in tact by the heroic efforts of his father in loading the bananas!!! That scene rings as authentic to me from the standpoint that children often mask their feelings of loneliness or abandonment by defending their parents' shortcomings and building up the improtance of whatever supplants them in their parent's eyes. At young ages, children look at their parents as gods who must know what is best in all circumstances.

I find it very interesting and effective in the storytelling that Ingemar builds a relationship with his uncle after he leaves home. In fact, Lasse Hallstrom (and perhaps the book's author as I have not read the book) make a very interesting and smart decision by having the aunt's character be a smaller, more minor character in the story. When Ingemar's mother dies (who Ingemar is most close to), she is not replaced in any way by another woman or surrogate mother. But Ingemar has already begun to develop a strong relationship with his uncle.

Ultimately Ingemar gains a father-figure by the end of the story which was a void that already existed in Ingemar's life before losing his mother. And mother is not diminished or trivialized by a superficial replacement of another woman. The whole transition flows very smoothly and in a touching way. The look on Ingemar's uncle's face while listening to his sobs is another easily overlooked point in the movie.

You know the more I watch and consider this movie, the more it grows on me!



Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.