Review: Simon & the Oaks (2012)

[Mark Leeper]

SIMON & THE OAKS
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: Two boys grow up in Sweden before and after
WWII comes to Europe. Isak is Jewish and Simon
discovers that he is adopted and half Jewish. Director
Lisa Ohlin tells us about how that affects the boys,
but it also is very much about the relation of Simon to
the woman he as been brought up thinking was his mother.
SIMON & THE OAKS is based on the novel, a bestseller in
Europe, by Swedish author Marianne Fredriksson. Though
the story does not seem to go into new or even
unexpected territory it is engrossing and ultimately
affecting. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10

I particularly like films like SOLDIER OF ORANGE, HOPE AND GLORY,
or WINTER IN WARTIME or the TV series WISH ME LUCK that develop
characters and then show the affect that World War II had on them
individually and upon their relationships. Both the horror of the
war and the prejudices fostered by the Holocaust change people in
these dramas.

Growing up in neutral Sweden, specifically in Gothenburg, during
the years just before and after World War II, Simon (played by
Jonatan S. Wachter and later by Bill Skarsgard) is protected from
the violence happening in much of Europe. But the imaginative but
odd boy is lonely. His best friend is an oak tree and he likes to
find pictures in clouds, behavior out of place in a family of farm
stock. Simon's mother (Helen Sjoholm) is sympathetic, but his
father (Stefan Godicke) wants his son to toughen up. Simon gets to
go to a forward-looking school in spite of his father's misgivings.
There Simon meets Isak (Karl Martin Eriksson and later Karl
Linnertorp) a Jewish boy from the same school. The other boys
bully Isak for being Jewish, but Simon and Isak become fast friends
and bring together the two families. Isak is the son of a
prosperous bookseller Ruben (Jan Josef Liefers) who takes a liking
to Simon. Ruben sees potential in the boy and is interested in
helping the boy live up to his intellectual potential and want to
help Simon without alienating the boy's father. Ruben had brought
his family to Sweden to flee the Nazis and their sympathizers, only
to face prejudice in Sweden. And Simon finds out not only is he
adopted, but also that he himself is half Jewish.

One would think that the most dramatic years of this relationship
would be during the war years. Director Lisa Ohlin tells the story
in segments separated and flanking the war, which eliminates the
need to show the actors playing the characters as boys transforming
into the different actors who play them as men. Ohlin gives us a
view of the forces on the two youths and then tells what happens to
them as adults. The war and the Holocaust hang over the story but
stay at arm's distance from the two. We see more the affect on
Simon of his adoption and his actual parents. Simon, who had
always been close to his stepmother, all the while thinking she was
his biological mother, searches for what his new attitude should be
to the woman who gave him loving care while all the while tacitly
leaving him deceived.

Dan Laustsen's photography captures those all too rare days of
really pleasant weather in Swedish summertime seasoning them with a
touch of fantasy in showing us the lonely boy who has befriended
trees and sees camels in the clouds. Liefers is particularly
strong as Ruben. Unexpectedly he becomes a more central character
than Isak. If anything, Isak seems to drop out of the story after
a point. The story is more compelling in the prewar years. Later
as the characters to keep track of proliferate it is a little
troublesome to keep them all straight. Somehow the plot loses its
some of its forward momentum. The story has done well in Europe,
both as a novel and a film. The film comes to the US on October
12. I rate SIMON & THE OAKS A low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.

Film Credits: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375669/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/simon_and_the_oaks_2012/>


Mark R. Leeper
mle...@optonline.net
Copyright 2012 Mark R. Leeper