Conquered
Cinema can never have the immediacy of theatre, yet some performances are marked by such a grace of empathy that they leave the spectator with an awed sense of presence notwithstanding the screen’s mediation. To see Max von Sydow in Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror is to see a humiliated father who has long since relinquished a sense of dignity for his own sake yet tries to maintain a semblance for the sake of his son. It makes you ache. Hal Hinson wrote: ‘This is a performance that comes from the joints and ligaments; it’s conceived in marrow. […] Von Sydow’s style has the essence of poetic compression’. Hinson is rather dismissive of the rest of the cast. I do not agree. I was stunned by this film when I first saw it 35 years ago. I find myself stunned now, having seen it again. For being an historic drama it speaks timelessly of degradation, of dreams nurtured and lost, of the complex relationship of fathers and sons, and of the startling tenderness that stirs in the human heart despite all.
