Do you enjoy reading and learning about history? I read this in the paper and it sounds interesting so I wanted to share with others in case they may be interested. It's perfect to take you older children to appreciate the freedoms and peace we have here in America.
Saturday, August 9, 2 p.m.
Mother of Mine how more than 70,000 Finnish children were evacuated to neutral Sweden to avoid conflict in World War II. Filmaker Klaus Haro tells the story through a 9-year-old child who feels abandoned by his biological mother but not attached to his surrogate mom.
Location: Perry Branch Library
Sheri Linden from the Hollywood Reporter writes a more detailed review if you are interested in the film.
PALM SPRINGS -- Finland's evacuation of more than 70,000 children to Sweden, Denmark and Norway during World War II, the world's largest such undertaking, receives affecting treatment in "Mother of Mine," the official Finnish submission to the Academy Awards. This fictional story of one of the "war children" unfolds with fierce restraint under Klaus Haro's helm, and the film departs from most memory pieces about the war in its emphasis on the complex psychology of its characters, brought to vivid life by the strong cast.
After his father is killed on the Finnish-Russian front in 1943, 9-year-old Eero (newcomer Topi Majaniemi) reluctantly leaves his mother (Marjaana Maijala), joining a large transport of kids promised dolls and bikes in the haven of neutral Sweden. At a remote farm on the coast, he's taken in by a childless couple in their 40s, though Signe (the terrific Maria Lundqvist), still grieving and blaming herself for the drowning death of her daughter, refuses to let him into her heart. Their conflict flares up in angry words and occasional physical tousles but mostly plays out in resentful silence.
Determined not to be touched by the tumult of being uprooted, Eero develops an easy rapport with Signe's good-natured husband, Hjalmar (Michael Nyqvist), a former sailor whose "boots got stuck in this dirt" when he fell in love with her. Signe forces Hjalmar to confront the lingering pain of their loss, but soon she's caught up in a new drama, when Eero's mother asks Signe to keep the boy, even after the war. Offended by this "appeal to her conscience," Signe nonetheless softens toward Eero, and they withstand, just barely, a series of devastating emotional reversals.
The lifelong wounds from this tug of war become clear in the film's present-day black-and-white sequences, in which the middle-aged Eero (Esko Salminen) visits his mother (Aino-Maija Tikkanen), eager to talk about the war. The screenplay by Jimmy Karlsson and Kirsi Vikman, based on the novel by Heikki Hietamies, delivers sharp insights into the ways people use children to fill their needs.
The contrast between Finland's frigid birch forests and the open expanse of the Swedish coast, captured in Jarkko T. Laine's striking camerawork, is a key element of the film's quiet power, but composer Tuomas Kantelinen tugs too hard at heartstrings.--Sheri
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