The New Land (1972)

Academy Awards, USA 1973

Nominee Oscar

Best Foreign Language Film Sweden

Svensk Filmindustri
Directed by Jan Troell
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb Wikipedia
(Blu-ray, Criterion Collection)

The further adventures of the extended Swedish family introduced in The Emigrants the previous  year. Karl Oskar, the head of the family played by Max von Sydow, hurriedly finishes a small house before their first winter in Minnesota. Broke, they have to borrow a cow to survive, however by the following spring they are able to plant their first seeds and eventually, with much hard work, make a good living. Oskar's younger brother and a friend decide to leave for California in search of gold. Instead, they find only misery. Oskar's brother returns years later, lying that he had found gold and was wealthy, but the paper money he presents as proof turns out to be worthless. Oskar's wife struggles to bear more children, eventually becoming ill and dying. Oskar lives out the rest of his life alone, eventually giving up farming and tending to her grave. Just like the first film (they were made concurrently), this has incredible attention to detail. However, it also suffers from overlength and a tendency to be melodramatic. A couple of scenes of explicit violence are unnecessary, but are brief enough as to not completely ruin it. The hallucinatory tale of the younger brother's trek to California might be the most interesting part of both films.