For her latest documentary, Songs of Earth, Norwegian director Margreth Olin (Childhood, The Self Portrait) traveled back to the Oldedalen river valley where she was raised, capturing the extraordinary landscapes in which her aging parents still reside.
There’s no shortage of natural beauty in this meditative and poetic feature, which contains scant dialogue, lots of music (by Rebekka Karijord, All the Old Knives) and enough jaw-dropping camerawork (credited to four DPs) to merit its own Nat Geo series. But beyond the stunning visuals and locations, the film could have used a little more substance — even if Olin does make connections between her family and the bucolic wonder that surrounds them, questioning how long both will continue to last.
The staggering valley backdrop, where the elderly Jørgen and Magnhild continue to make their home, may be familiar to anyone who saw Tom Cruise leap from a motorcycle in the last Mission: Impossible movie, many scenes of which were lensed in western Norway. It’s the kind of place where you can stick a camera virtually anywhere and get breathtaking footage.
To her credit, Olin goes far beyond shooting things with a tripod, stretching her modest budget to the max. She makes extensive use of drones to capture every nook and cranny of the valley from up high as well as below, with one underwater scene revealing the remains of a cemetery that was flooded over. The camera soars into the air for a bird’s eye view, plunges above a frozen lake to reveal an entire mountain range reflected in the ice, burrows around a glacier several times over, or hovers above a pine forest to portray a spruce tree that gets tastefully decorated by the family for Christmas.
At such moments, Songs of Earth brings to mind both Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s photos and documentaries of the planet seen from the sky, and recent doc series like Netflix’s Life on This Earth, where state-of-the-art digital technology is employed to capture animals and insects in close-up, and often in slow-mo, in the most exotic of sceneries.
But whereas those projects were pure exposés of the natural world, Olin attempts to connect the environment with the steadfast life of her parents, who hail from several generations of Norwegians raised in the same remote village. Jørgen, an 84-year-old in excellent physical condition, takes long hikes in the hills and recalls an idyllic childhood with occasional hardships — there were avalanches and mountain slides, as well as natural deaths — eked out in a place that seems closer to heaven than to earth. “We are very small in a big world,” he remarks, and Olin illustrates that sentiment time and again when her camera flies up to shoot her father from high above.
As visually mesmerizing as Songs of Earth can be, the film never delves deep enough into the looming planetary issues that are sure to perturb the Oldedalen region, which is already suffering from rising temperatures and melting glaciers, one of which we see towards the end. Nor does Olin’s family story offer much in terms of dramatic conflict. Indeed, her parents are still very much in love after so many decades together, which is definitely great for them but perhaps less interesting for us to watch.
The director doesn’t add much else in terms of background or history to the proceedings, which can be frustrating given the highly original setting. At best, her movie works as an aesthetically gripping, superbly shot meditation on her homeland — and one that should be seen on the biggest screen possible (which, sadly, was not the case for this critic, who watched it on a link).
With both Wim Wenders and Liv Ullmann onboard as executive producers, not to mention a slew of festival bows over the past year (TIFF, CPH:DOX, IDFA) and several awards nominations, Norway’s official Oscar submission should continue to reach viewers who want to be whisked away to a special location that Olin manages to record in all its majesty.
Director, screenwriter: Margreth Olin
Cast: Jørgen Mykløen, Magnhild Mykløen
Producers: Margreth Olin, Lena Faye-Lund Sandvik
Executive producers: Wim Wenders, Liv Ullmann
Cinematography: Lars Erlend Tubaas Øymo, Herman Lersveen, Torbjørn Martinsen, Dag Asle Mykløen
Editing: Michal Leszczylowski
Music: Rebekka Karijord
Production company: Speranza Films A/S (Norway)
World sales: Cinephil
In Norwegian
90 minutes
