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A Song for Martin (2001)

tomatometer

85

Average Rating: 7.3/10
Reviews Counted: 27
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 4

Grueling but honest depiction about the ravages of Alzheimer's. Yep, it's a downer.

75

Average Rating: 7/10
Critic Reviews: 12
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 3

Grueling but honest depiction about the ravages of Alzheimer's. Yep, it's a downer.

audience

70

liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 1,003

My Rating

Movie Info

After a number of big-budget international projects, writer and director Bille August scaled himself back with this intimate story about two people who find both love and tragedy late in life. Martin (Sven Wolter) is a well-known and highly respected classical composer and conductor in his early sixties. While rehearsing for a concert, Martin becomes aquatinted with Barbara (Viveka Seldahl), the orchestra's concertmaster who is ten years his junior. While both Martin and Barbara are married,

PG-13, 1 hr. 57 min.

Art House & International, Drama

Bille August, Ulla Isaksson

Aug 12, 2003

Nordisk

Cast

All Critics (30) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (23) | Rotten (4) | DVD (4)

August ... steers this story to its stirring conclusion with firm lack of sentimentality.

July 19, 2003 Full Review Source: Washington Post | Comment
Washington Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Full of unforgiving irony and quiet realism, A Song for Martin stands as a powerful and moving achievement.

August 31, 2002 Comment
Denver Rocky Mountain News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

More honest about Alzheimer's disease, I think, than Iris.

July 19, 2002 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | Comment
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Viveka Seldahl and Sven Wollter will touch you to the core in a film you will never forget -- that you should never forget.

July 18, 2002 Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune | Comment
Chicago Tribune
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The movie, for all its sincerity, becomes clinical and repetitious, though its unsparing vision of the fragility of identity can give you a shudder.

July 11, 2002 Full Review Source: Entertainment Weekly | Comment
Entertainment Weekly
Top Critic IconTop Critic

This slow-moving Swedish film offers not even a hint of joy, preferring to focus on the humiliation of Martin as he defecates in bed and urinates on the plants at his own birthday party.

June 28, 2002 Full Review Source: New York Post | Comment
New York Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It may sound like a mere disease-of- the-week TV movie, but A Song For Martin is made infinitely more wrenching by the performances of real-life spouses Seldahl and Wollter.

June 6, 2003 Full Review Source: Miami Herald | Comment
Miami Herald

Upsetting and thought-provoking, the film has an odd purity that doesn't bring you into the characters so much as it has you study them.

November 15, 2002 Full Review Source: Oregonian | Comment
Oregonian

It's so downbeat and nearly humorless that it becomes a chore to sit through -- despite some first-rate performances by its lead.

October 18, 2002 Full Review Source: Deseret News, Salt Lake City | Comment
Deseret News, Salt Lake City

Director-writer Bille August ... depicts this relationship with economical grace, letting his superb actors convey Martin's deterioration and Barbara's sadness -- and, occasionally, anger.

October 18, 2002 Full Review Source: Salt Lake Tribune | Comment
Salt Lake Tribune

Martin and Barbara are complex characters -- sometimes tender, sometimes angry -- and the delicate performances by Sven Wollter and Viveka Seldahl make their hopes and frustrations vivid.

August 15, 2002 Full Review Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press | Comment
St. Paul Pioneer Press

A delightfully simple, splendid love story between two older people ... a journey of life and love you won't want to miss.

August 1, 2002 Full Review Source: Zap2it.com | Comment
Zap2it.com

An extraordinary Swedish film about the soul adventure of marriage -- the kind of intimate and character-driven film that Bille August does best.

June 28, 2002 Full Review Source: Spirituality and Practice | Comment
Spirituality and Practice
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for A Song for Martin

A very well acted, written, & directed film about a romance fighting a losing battle with an untreatable disease. The film itself is slow paced, but heavy on emotions since it addresses the progressive deterioration of the man's health, and it's crippling effect on him and his family. Even though the two met and fell

November 30, 2010
itsjustme2004

Super Reviewer

This one was tough to watch, as a man who had been a brilliant composer slowly succumbed to Alzheimer's and his wife tried her best to keep him going. Absolutely brilliant portrayal by Steven Wollter as Martin and Viveka Seldahl as Barbara. The supporting cast was excellent and the emotions were never far from the

January 24, 2012
Mark Abell

Super Reviewer

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