Sweet Land (2005) on Netflix
In 1920, Inge Altenberg, German by birth, travels from Norway to Minnesota for an arranged marriage to Olaf Torvik, a farmer. The town refuses her, and no minister will wed them.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.1/104,452 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes85%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1968, at Olaf's grave on the Minnesota farm, Inge tells her grown grandson how she came to America. In 1920 she is an orphan from Snåsa Municipality in Norway, German by birth, and Olaf's parents, still in Norway, arranged for her to emigrate and marry their son. The farming village of Audubon, Minnesota, wants nothing to do with a German bride. Inge carries no papers, and among the documents she does have is a Socialist Party membership. The minister and the county clerk both turn the couple down, so Inge and Olaf live together without a wedding, and the town keeps its distance. They bring in their harvest by hand and alone.
Cast
- Stephen Pelinskias Old Lars
- Sage Kermesas Mae Torvik
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sweet Land (2005)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Ned Beatty, who has a summer home in his wife's hometown in northern Minnesota, said he took a role in the film to impress his in-laws, although he later confessed that he also liked the script.
- Elizabeth Reaser signed on after another actress dropped out because of a scheduling conflict. Reaser balked at having to master her multilingual dialogue on such short notice and tried to back out of the audition; her agent talked her out of it, and she got the part.
- Sweet Land was filmed in 24 days in October 2004 in and around Montevideo, in Chippewa County, Minnesota. Elizabeth Reaser does not speak German and had to learn her lines phonetically, despite only four sessions with a dialogue coach.
- Director Ali Selim first read Will Weaver's short story “A Gravestone Made of Wheat” in 1989 in the Sunday magazine of the Star Tribune, a Minneapolis newspaper. After purchasing the film rights he spent much of the 1990s working on a script in his spare time while working as a director of television commercials.
- The northern lights in the scene where Inge walks through the fields to Olaf's house to take a bath were computer-generated, and that scene was actually filmed in the daytime; the geese flying over Olaf's house later in the film were also CGI.
- Dan Futterman was originally cast as Olaf but had to drop out when his film Capote went into production. Futterman suggested Tim Guinee as his replacement.
