Reteamed after the very different 'The Hypnosis,' Asta Kamma August and Herbert Nordrum star as an unworldly couple adapting to fast-changing times in Hans Petter Moland's handsome new film.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
@guylodge See All
Courtesy of 4 ½ Fiction The wind deserves above-the-title billing in “Growth of the Soil” — even in the most serene scenes of Hans Petter Moland‘s muscular period epic, you can hear it rattling and wheezing and moaning away in the background, or at the very least, you think you can. The elements are crucial characters in this saga of a naïve young couple building a homestead from the ground up in early 20th-century Norway, especially at the outset, where there’s nothing to separate our human protagonists from their battering impact; before they can live off the land, they must live on the land, and surviving it is no guarantee. But it’s not long before this wild, unyielding country is harnessed by progress and gentrification: In the sturdy, sweeping mold of films like “The Emigrants,” “Growth of the Soil” charts the growth of a people via that of a household.
Related Stories
