{"id":3934,"date":"2015-01-27T05:55:39","date_gmt":"2015-01-27T10:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3934"},"modified":"2015-02-11T07:11:24","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T12:11:24","slug":"the-last-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3934","title":{"rendered":"The Last Sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/strong>It was troubling to view Swedish director Jan Troell\u2019s 2012 film (trailer<\/a>) based on the experience of crusading journalist Torgny Segerstedt, so soon after the recent tragic events in Paris. Segerstedt was editor-in-chief of one of Sweden\u2019s leading newspapers, and between 1933 when Hitler came to power and his own death in 1945, Segerstedt was a fierce opponent of Naziism, even though much of Sweden\u2019s leadership, including the king, was determined to remain neutral and out of the war. The struggle for journalists\u2019 right\u2014some would say duty\u2014to speak out despite risks to themselves and others has not ended.<\/p>\n

Beautifully played by Jesper Christensen, Segerstedt left himself open to criticism and to the devaluing of his motivations by his long affair with a Jewish woman, wife of his publisher. Hollywood\u2019s crusading journalists are noble and flawless (think All the President\u2019s Men<\/em>), their presumed moral authority overshadowing any rough spots in their personalities, whereas Segerstedt\u2019s uncompromising character is pompous at times and unpleasant at others, he basks in his celebrity, and he\u2019s downright cruel to his wife. \u201cEasy to admire, but very hard to like,\u201d said RogerEbert.com reviewer Glenn Kenny<\/a>. Truth told, he loves his dogs best.<\/p>\n

Producing this film in black and white may have symbolic significance or may be just the preferred Scandinavian style\u2014the film is Swedish, after all. In another Bergman-like touch, Segerstedt sees and converses with the black-clad ghosts of his mother and other women. Slow-moving, like the clear stream (of words?) against which the opening and closing credits appear, there is only a fleeting soundtrack to support the action.<\/p>\n

The film left me with a lot of unanswered questions. What happened with his writing? When the authorities demanded that a particular edition not be distributed because of its anti-Nazi editorial (which suggests they had imposed some censorship regime), Segerstedt printed it with a big white space where the editorial would have been. Nice. But we never learn whether he was allowed to continue writing after that (or how he was stopped) until a scene that takes place years later. How did the war affect the Swedish people? There\u2019s little hint of that, beyond putting up blackout curtains. It seems they had electricity, they had food, petrol, champagne at New Year\u2019s. It\u2019s primarily the awareness of Nazi behavior that the viewer brings to the film that explains and justifies both Segerstedt\u2019s simmering outrage and his country\u2019s policy of appeasement. He and his mistress both have suicide plans, if it came to that, but in the absence of any tangible, on-screen threat, their preparations seem self-dramatizing and almost childish.<\/p>\n

Segerstedt in a sense provides his own epitaph, which is also the Swedish title of the movie\u2014\u201cJudgment on the Dead\u201d\u2014 based on a line from a famous Old Norse poem, which says the judgment on the dead is everlasting. History\u2019s judgment on Segerstedt would be that he was of course right about the Nazis. And if, as the King believed, it would have been his fault if the Germans invaded the country, he would have been among the first to die. NPR\u2019s Ella Taylor<\/a> called the film \u201cA richly detailed portrait of a great man riddled with flaws and undone by adulation.\u201d Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating 76%, audience score 44%.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was troubling to view Swedish director Jan Troell\u2019s 2012 film (trailer) based on the experience of crusading journalist Torgny Segerstedt, so soon after the recent tragic events in Paris. Segerstedt was editor-in-chief of one of Sweden\u2019s leading newspapers, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Last Sentence - Swedish biopic a powerful statement about journalistic freedom","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[269,265,56,261,268,104],"tags":[417,128,304,129],"class_list":["post-3934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-biography","category-film","category-journalism","category-politics","category-the-morgue","tag-film","tag-history","tag-sweden","tag-wars-and-conflicts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-11s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3936,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934\/revisions\/3936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}