Sweet Land is a sweet love story and one of the best movies I have seen at the theatres yet this year. It was one of those movies where I left the theatre saying to myself, “wow, now that was a good movie … a movie worth the money.” It had all the major elements working for it … a good story, good directing, and great actors!

We begin at the end … Inge’s (Elizabeth Reaser) husband Olaf (Tim Guinee) has just passed away and we learn the story of how Inge and Olaf came together through Inge’s retelling of it to their grandson. Yes, it’s a tried and true method to begin a story, but it’s a good one.

It is the early 1900s, just after the first World War, and a young Inge Altenburg has traveled to Minnesota from Germany to marry Olaf Torvik, a Norwegian who has settled there. It was an arranged marriage, neither knew anything of each other, not even what each other looked like. She speaks very little english and apparently no one knew she was from Germany which makes it very difficult for them to get married as suspicions of anyone from Germany are still high. And so begins the story of how they come to know each other and how they overcome the obstacles that face them, together.

As I said it is a good story and combine with that the directing and acting and it really comes to life. Tim Guinee does a wonderful job of playing the shy, stubborn, hard-working, good-hearted Olaf. And Elizabeth Reaser does an equally wonderful job of playing the young, naive, stubborn in her own right Inge. What I also like about this movie is that while it is a love story they do a nice job of interweaving other elements in there … such as how suspicions and prejudices against any one from countries you were at war with linger to showing a bit of how farm life and living in a small community was and the dichotomy of socialism and capitalism.

My one criticism would be the inclusion of the older character Frandsen. The inclusion of the young Frandsen (Alan Cumming) makes total sense and helps the story. But I didn’t understand who the older Frandsen was until nearly the end. Apparently he became a bit senile in his old age and I guess Inge and Olaf were maybe taking care of him, but it was never explained. The older Frandsen character just was not needed in my opinion.

Sweet Land is not action-packed and it’s not overly dramatic, it’s just a sweet love story. I guess it made its rounds on the film festival circuit and is now playing in art house theatres so look for it at your local art house theatre or maybe on dvd soon. It’s worth it.