(courtesy IMDb)
Marie (Sofie Torp) and Rasmus (Thomas Hwan) are in love.
Really, really, all-in, in love, the beating of Danish film Meter i sekundet (The Land of Short Sentences).
He’s an up-and-coming poet, big on the Copenhagen artistic scene, and she’s a bon vivant city dweller and writer who loves the busyness and vibrancy of life in a city where anything is possible.
So, when Rasmus says he’s been sought out by a folk high school, an alternative form of secondary educations that eschews exams and grades in favour of collective, mutually supported learning, Marie is delighted for him because he’s always loved the idea of being a teacher and can finally live his dream of encouraging young, eager minds to find and live out their creative passion through writing.
Her delight lessens considerably, however, when it emerges that the school in question is out in heavily rural Jutland, the one place Marie has never wanted to live; in fact, she jokes at the hip bar where Rasmus breaks the news of his new teaching gig to her that she’s fine as long as it’s anywhere but there, only to watch her great love’s face drop as he sheepishly admits that that’s precisely where the job is.
Still, Marie loves sweet, gregariously happy Rasmus and so she moves with him and their infant son, hopeful that their new life will defy all her expectations and be the sort of idyll Rasmus, who she admits loves openly and honestly, clearly dreams it will be.
As far as Rasmus is concerned, everything works out even better than planned.
Though the staff are a little kumbayah and peace, love and mung beans, including the headmistress, played by Lotte Andersen and Maria Rossing’s eco teacher and they have a tendency to take their communal living ideals to boundary crashing extremes, they love learning and growing and developing and Rasmus finds himself buoyed by the fact that they all eat dinner together and that nights are taken up with choir singing and event after event after event.
It’s not a life for those that value privacy or individualism, nor those who sit anywhere but the far end of the left spectrum where capitalism is railed against, autocrats denounced and climate change warnings sounded, and while Rasmus takes it to without reservation, Marie finds herself deeply challenged by the fact that her old life is gone, she has no sense of what her new life could be and that she has no real connections with anyone, with her stand off response to the school and its teachers and students putting up a seemingly unbroachable barrier that simply isn’t there for Rasmus.
While she does get to know another loose-end spouse in Sebastian (Christian Tafdrup) and makes friends with local mum Krisser (Christine Gjerulff) who likes drinking and having fun as much as Marie does, she has no idea how she’s ever going to fit into a world that seems alien to her in every day and which is inimical, so she thinks, to everything she values and loves.
To its credit, The Land of Short Sentences doesn’t attempt at any point to paint Marie as a baseless malcontent nor her problems as lacking in substance or effect.
A lesser film might have attempted to wave some sort of sparkling magic wand and have Marie suddenly and completely find her place and her bliss in the town of Velling but The Land of Short Sentences doesn’t do that, allowing Marie to fall deeply into the chasm of disconnection in which she finds herself, and to explore with empathy and understanding, and a lot of quirky humour that sits beautifully alongside the film’s more serious elements, how this affects her once unwaveringly sturdy relationship with Rasmus.
Her attempts to gain independence via learning to drive don’t quite work out as planned, at least not initially, and while she does take on a gig as the advice writer at the local newspaper, with many of the letter writers appearing as people Marie sees and can talk back to her, she remains caught in a morass of loneliness and disconnection that stands in stark contrast to Rasmus’s blissful love of his new work and life situation.
What makes The Land of Short Sentences work so well is that, as observed, it doesn’t diminish the stark reality and pain of Marie’s new place in life and that it explores it with a beguiling mix of honest appraisal, an appreciation for how even the most together of people can fall apart when the challenges of new circumstances leave them lost and alone, and how it takes time, sometimes lots more time than we’re expecting, to find our feet and know what our new place in the world is and how we should inhabit and navigate it.
It also throws in a liberal dash of humour, courtesy of Marie’s Keystone Cops’ level of ineptitude driving lessons which see her traumatise three driving instructors one after the other, and also the school’s inhabitants’ inability to observe any and all boundaries including the sanctity of Rasmus and Marie’s relationship which looks challenged by the fact that a student named Emma (Malaika Berenth Mosendane) is convinced her new writing teacher is the man of her dreams.
In a place where no one appears to never get told no, Marie has a lot to contend with, and while she is often her own worst of enemy, not even trying to find a way to connect with the weird and wonderful citizens of the school and the wider town of Velling, The Land of Short Sentences is thoughtfully careful not to paint her as the “bad guy” and to help us to always see as someone adrift, rather than a villain of any kind.
It’s clear Marie loves Rasmus, and he loves her right back, and while their love comes under immense pressure, it doesn’t break, and by movie’s end, Marie might well be on her way to finding her place in Velling and the world as a whole, proof that if The Land of Short Sentences teaches us one thing, it’s that no matter how alien a new place might seem, it may yet have a place for you and you just have to be patient until that comes along and call on the village that surrounds you to love and support you as you work through it all.