August -- a pupil of Ingmar Bergman's -- manages to tell a tragic tale while avoiding the heavy-laden angst of a Bergman film.
Comment
06/05/02
A Song for Martin (2002)
85
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:27
Fresh:23
Rotten:4
Average Rating:7.3/10
Consensus: Grueling but honest depiction about the ravages of Alzheimer's. Yep, it's a downer.
Theatrical Release:Jun 28, 2002 Limited
Synopsis: Danish director Bille August's (PELLE THE CONQUEROR) touching tale is about finding a great love and losing it too quickly. Barbara (Viveka Seldahl), the first violinist in a Swedish philharmonic,... [More]
Starring: Viveka Seldahl, Sven Wollter, Reine Brynolfsson, Lisa Werlinder
Director: Bille August
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Reviews for A Song for Martin
More honest about Alzheimer's disease, I think, than Iris.
07/19/02
Top CriticViveka Seldahl and Sven Wollter will touch you to the core in a film you will never forget -- that you should never forget.
07/18/02
Top CriticA wrenching film about a romance between two people in their fifties, shattered when one becomes the victim of Alzheimer's disease.
06/05/02
Full of unforgiving irony and quiet realism, A Song for Martin stands as a powerful and moving achievement.
08/31/02
Top CriticIt's so downbeat and nearly humorless that it becomes a chore to sit through -- despite some first-rate performances by its lead.
10/18/02
I'm giving it thumbs down due to the endlessly repetitive scenes of embarrassment. There's got to be a more graceful way of portraying the devastation of this disease.
01/03/02
Top CriticNo review available.
08/14/05
The movie, for all its sincerity, becomes clinical and repetitious, though its unsparing vision of the fragility of identity can give you a shudder.
07/11/02
Top CriticOften gruelling and heartbreaking to witness, but Seldahl and Wollter's sterling performances raise this far above the level of the usual maudlin disease movie.
02/03/02
Painful to watch, but viewers willing to take a chance will be rewarded with two of the year's most accomplished and riveting film performances.
06/11/02
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01/28/04
The strength of the film lies in its two central performances by Sven Wollter as the stricken composer and Viveka Seldahl as his desperate violinist wife.
01/04/02
Top CriticFrom its invitingly upbeat overture to its pathos-filled but ultimately life-affirming finale, Martin is a masterfully conducted work.
01/04/02
Top CriticIt 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.
06/06/03
An almost unbearably morbid love story.
06/27/02
Top CriticThis 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.
06/28/02
Mr. Wollter and Ms. Seldhal give strong and convincing performances, but neither reaches into the deepest recesses of the character to unearth the quaking essence of passion, grief and fear.
06/27/02
Top CriticUpsetting 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.
11/15/02
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.
10/18/02
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