The Hypnotist/Hypnotisören (2012) - Hallström returns to the fatherland with thriller turkey

♥

 

Uncomfortably staring stars with bluish faces make up this poster for Lasse Hallström's The Hypnotist

A basketball trainer and an entire family have been stabbed to death: Only a big lad survives - but in a coma - and a hypnotist attempts to get answers from him.

 

The Hypnotist is written by Paolo Vacirca (Feed (2022)), with co-writer/director Lasse Hallström (En Kille och en Tjej (1975)) contributing story elements, adapted from Lars Kepler's (Stalker (2014)) same-titled 2009 novel.

Completely incompetent as a thriller, The Hypnotist is an assembly line 'Nordic noir' that also rests on a very dubious story. As seen before the Swedish setting has been robbed of almost all color and humor, and instead Mikael Persbrandt (King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)) here walks around and looks like a middle-age crisis-hit man with a bad case of hangover, who hypnotizes people. Lena Olin (Vinyl (2016, TV-series)) plays one of the film's snapping, commanding, sour females.

Violent but unexciting, the film has desperately dull relationship scenes, crisis of confidence scenes, crying children and general discouragement, darkness and ugly settings. Suddenly near the end a more dramatic action suspense is erected out on the ice (literally) but it is hopeless. The Hypnotist is a toothache-reminiscent torment of a film.

 

Related post:
 

Lasse Hallström: Chocolat (2000) - Delicious pairing in spite of Hallström's ghastly taste

 

Here is a video from a press conference for the film

 

Cost: 61 mil. SEK, approximately 5.91 mil. $

Box office: 7.1 mil. $

= Big flop (returned 1.20 times its cost)

[The Hypnotist was released 28 September (Sweden) and runs 122 minutes. Shooting took place from January - March 2012 in Sweden, including in Stockholm, and in Prague, Czech Republic. The film opened #1 to a 974k $ first weekend in Sweden, where it remained for another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#2-#3), grossing 3.8 mil. $ (53.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Denmark with 916k $ (12.9 %) and Spain with 646k $ (9.1 %). The film was only shown at a couple of film festivals in North America. It was chosen as Sweden's Oscar entry of the year but went without nomination. Hallström returned with Safe Haven (2013). Persbrandt returned in Mig Äger Ingen (2013); Tobias Zilliacus (Beck (2018, TV-series)) in 7 TV and short credits prior to his theatrical return in Onnelin ja Annelin talvi (2015); and Olin in Night Train to Lisbon (2013). 8.4k+ IMDb users have given The Hypnotist a 5.6/10 average rating.]

 

What do you think of The Hypnotist? 

Chocolat (2000) - Delicious pairing in spite of Hallström's ghastly taste

♥♥

Eating you, eating me ... the poster for Lasse Hallström's Chocolat

QUICK REVIEW:

Vianne and her daughter are traveling chocolate-sellers in post-war Europe, as they decide to settle in a little French town that savor tranquility above all else. And as an apostle of life's sensuousness, Vianne now slowly salvages their rigidly pinned down Catholic society.

Juliette Binoche (Three Colours: Blue/Trois Coleurs: Bleu (1993)) and Johnny Depp (The Rum Diary (2011)) are irresistible in Chocolat, a film which, if ingested with lavish amounts of succulent hot cocoa, may seem erotic, despite its almost complete lack of carnality.
Most of Chocolat is as predictable as a ride to the bus station, and what's left is criminally banal and silly bleeding heart liberalism. - Frankly, most Disney movies are more complex than Chocolat.
It is (of course...) directed by Swedish champ of twaddle Lasse Hallström (What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)), who does sometimes, - fair is fair, - hit the mark. - Chocolat, unfortunately, isn't even on the board.

 Watch the sugary trailer for the film here

Cost: 25 mil. $
Box office: 152.6 mil. $
= Big hit
[Chocolat was, incredibly, very popular among many audiences, (women particularly), and even critics stood up for it. The guilty pleasure even got so far as 5 Oscar-nominations, including Best Film. - Unbelievable...]

What do you think of Chocolat?
If you are one of the film's defenders, - please, defend it!

The Reader (2008) or, Guilt, Words and Love

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best Adaptation of the Year

Simple, elegant poster for Stephen Daldry's The Reader

The Reader is an adaptation of a bestselling novel by German writer Bernhard Schlink (Self's Murder (2001)).
Michael is a German, who is remembering times decades ago, when he was a teenager in post-war Berlin 1958 and had an affair with an older woman, Hanna. An affair with an intimate, romantic connection and a physical one that was also centered on another activity; his reading novels aloud to her.
The affair profoundly changes Michael, as he learns later on that SPOILER Hanna was an SS camp officer in Auschwitz, the worst of the Nazi concentration camps.
The question of guilt is an issue in The Reader, as Michael is harrowed by an indistinct sense of guilt, and Hanna is prosecuted for the murder of 300 Jews that burned under her supervision in a church no less. Her sense of guilt is never explicit or very obvious, but it is there, especially developing out of Michael's gift to her, the gift of literacy. Michael is a very different, more sensitive individual, who has to process and find peace within himself for having a passionate affair with that woman in the course of the film. 
I found the ending, in which SPOILER he decides to drive his daughter to Hanna's grave and tell her of their relation, profoundly moving and really, really good. Sometimes wounds are simply healed by letting the truth come out.
The Reader decides against mainstream dramatic solutions, e.g. said ending, and the fact that none of Hanna's crimes are shown. It is a romantic period drama for thinking audiences, and acquaintance with some of the literary classics used by Michael in the film will only heighten the experience. Knowledge of the death camps and Holocaust is essential to understand the weight of Michael's burden in his life following Hanna's incarceration.

Kate Winslet and David Kross in Stephen Daldry's The Reader

Contrasting the intellectual side of The Reader, however, is its sensual scenes with young German actor David Kross (Tough Enough (2006)) and Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road (2008)). This whole part of the film is beautifully achieved; The Reader seems to allow itself a human curiosity about sexuality and bodies, very much like a sexual novel often does, (and perhaps like Schlink's does.) Besides, both performers are extremely well-acting; Winslet won her first Oscar for her work, and Kross is actually as good as her, as the young man.
In other parts in the fine cast, we see great actors Ralph Fiennes, Lena Olin and Bruno Ganz.

David Kross, reading, and Kate Winslet, trying actively to understand what she is hearing, in Stephen Daldry's The Reader

The details:

Enjoyment of the film is heightened by general interest in its issues and Germany in the decades following WWII. The cast is comprised of Germans except for the few international stars already mentioned, and The Reader really 'nails' it in making its characters, though they speak English, seem very naturally German. Kross is naturally German, and Winslet, both in dress, physique, expressions and intonation, is so like a real, solid, German woman that she feels as though she could easily be Hanna Schmitz.
The film has a literary quality to it, beginning with a person's sickness and ending with that same person's confession many years later, and thus resounds its English writer David Hare and English director Stephen Daldry's previous masterpiece, The Hours (2002), which investigated English author Virginia Woolf and the impact of her novel Mrs. Dalloway in herself and other women in subsequent decades. The Reader is also a salute to the power of the written word and novels and has a complexity and depth to it that is intriguing and similar to what is often found in a good book.
The Hours is a very tough act to follow, and The Reader doesn't reach the searing, emotional heights and profundity of that film, but it remains a rock-solid narrative and a very fine film.
Daldry has since directed the interesting but (even) less good Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) and is now in post with his latest, Trash (2014), a really interesting-sounding film set in a Third World country with Martin Sheen and Rooney Mara. - Can't wait to see that!

Related posts:

2008 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2008 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  

2008 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2008 in films - according to Film Excess

Budget: 32 mil. $
Box office: 109.9 mil. $
= Big hit

What do you think of The Reader?