REAL LIFE, REEL LIFE, STILL LIFE: Movie Reviews of The Last Sentence and Jersey Boys by Howard Casner

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Warning: SPOILERS

Last_Sentence_3If you’ve seen the previews or read about the new Swedish film The Last Sentence, you will most probably come to the conclusion that the movie is about a brave man, one Torgny Segerstadt, who spent his later years as a newspaper editor fighting against fascism in the 1930’s during the rise of Nazism.

 

But if you actually see the movie, you quickly discover that this is only a small part of the story, and that the film is really about Segerstadt’s relationship with three women: his mother who died when he was young and whose death haunted him the rest of his life; his disintegrating marriage to a woman who spiraled into a depression after the death of one of their sons and for whom he has lost all affection; and his love affair with the Jewish owner of the newspaper he runs, a drug addict whose husband knows about the affair and who is not particularly bothered by it. Read the rest of this entry »