What I've Seen

This is sort of what I got from this movie:

1. Erik has killed 73 people. He seems completely fine with killing others.

2. Erik murders the farmer. When trying to justify the murder to his brother, asking Knut if he saw the axe, Knut did not see it. He defended the murder as trying to protect his brother, although it didn't. This shows that Erik is justifying what he did rather than to look at it for what it truly was, a cold blooded murder.

3. Erik is trying to protect his brother from the captain because he thinks the captain is gay. Honestly, I think Erik doesn't like him and if Erik had decided to kill the captain, he would have tried to justify it by protecting his brother from what he saw as a deviant. It's more aversion on Erik's part.

4. Knut seeing the girl is a symbol of his uncertainty as to what actually happened. Erik's attempts at using the excuse of protecting his brother to hurt people backfires because it causes Knut pain that these things are being done in the name of his protection.

5. Erik mentioned that the farm girl would not be his most innocent victim. The cleanliness of the villagers, who obviously represent the people he killed, proves that they were innocent.

6. The girl is the farm girl. She is disguised as a boy due to the uncertainty of her fate. She's out of place in the village because he hasn't admitted she is a victim yet.

7. When the girl tries to escape the village, this is the uncertainty of her fate again. If Erik does not return to see the body, he can convince himself that the girl found a way to ESCAPE the cellar. He can convince himself he did not kill a 74th victim.

8. The girl not being able to escape demonstrates that as much as Erik may try to rationalize that she could have escaped the cellar, he is just fooling himself. It is when Erik finally faces up to his sins at the end that the girl is attacked. Erik had come to face the truth that regardless of what he thinks, the girl in the cellar is dead and it is his fault that the girl died.

9. There was also the idea of the Sauna being able to wash away your sins... the sauna was a symbolic representation of the church. Think about it like this: the Swedes and the Russians were trying to divide the land up between them, not always agreeing. They are much like the conflicts in religion that exist as no one can ever agree on the same thing as to what religion, including the same religion, actually is. But mostly, there is the idea that no matter how much horrible things you do in your life, religion offers you a way out. Even in war, people can justify what they do because religion will eventually bring them to forgiveness.

10. The border agreement both give the swamp village area to the other side. This is symbolic of trying to put the blame of the war on the other country. We know that every country in every war does this. The sins are always caused by the other side.


As far as Musko and killing Semenski and a few other things, I will have to watch it again to have a real opinion. But so far, this is what I see in it.