Latest / Film Moon Stone - Film Reviews and Recomme / S01 - The Shadows of the Frozen Pine and the Rebirth of Nordic Folklore Cinema

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S01 - The Shadows of the Frozen Pine and the Rebirth of Nordic Folklore Cinema · Film Moon Stone - Film Reviews and Recomme

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  Speaker 1: Deep inside the frozen boreal forest of northern Norway, a
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  Speaker 1: dead silence in the snow, broken only by the agonizing
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  Speaker 1: groan of a hundred-year-old pine tree snapping in two. Through
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  Speaker 1: the darkness of the trees, a mountain of cracked granite
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  Speaker 1: stands up, shakes the frozen moss from its shoulders, and
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  Speaker 1: breathes cold mist into the night air.
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  Speaker 2: No green screens, no computer-generated plastic.
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  Speaker 1: Tonight, we venture far into the frozen north, discovering how
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  Speaker 1: Scandinavian cinema turned ancient folklore and dark wilderness into modern
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  Speaker 1: masterpieces of dread and wonder. This is Phil Moonstone. I
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  Speaker 1: am Alberto Vanstone. Welcome back into the darkness of the
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  Speaker 1: screening room, my friends. Before we unlock the gates of
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  Speaker 1: the northern woods tonight, a quick and heartfelt bow to
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  Speaker 1: our cinephile community.
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  Speaker 2: Over on Instagram, Astrid in.
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  Speaker 1: Oslo, handle at Astrid in Oslo, sent a lovely photograph
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  Speaker 1: of her antique volume of Nordic folktales resting beside a
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  Speaker 1: cup of dark coffee on a snowy windowsill.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you, Astrid. Your photo captured the exact mood of
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  Speaker 2: tonight's discussion.
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  Speaker 1: On YouTube, Julian from Edinburgh wrote in to say that
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  Speaker 1: he misses the tactile weight of analog filmmaking, where monsters
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  Speaker 1: were carved from clay, wood, and shadow, rather than polished.
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  Speaker 2: On a computer screen. Julian, you are in very good
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  Speaker 2: company here.
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  Speaker 1: And on Facebook, Clara Vance commented that she longs for
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  Speaker 1: cinema that treats the viewer's imagination with reverence, rather than
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  Speaker 1: treating fantasy like a disposable carnival ride. Our standout comment
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: across all platforms, with over 7,800 likes on YouTube, came
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  Speaker 1: from a dedicated viewer named Eric, handle at nordiccinephile99.
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  Speaker 2: Com.
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  Speaker 1: Eric asked, Alberto, modern blockbuster fantasy has become so sterile,
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  Speaker 1: full of glossy green screens and shiny digital monsters. Why
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  Speaker 1: does Scandinavian cinema still possess this terrifying hypnotic power to
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  Speaker 1: make the hair on your arms stand up? How do
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  Speaker 1: Nordic filmmakers take ancient folklore creatures from old storybooks and
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  Speaker 1: make them feel so profoundly, dangerously real on screen? Eric,
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  Speaker 1: my friend, that question goes straight to the beating heart
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  Speaker 1: of cinema. Because while the rest of the world was
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  Speaker 1: busy building artificial digital theme parks, the storytellers of the
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  Speaker 1: North remembered an ancient sacred truth. True fantasy does not
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  Speaker 1: live in computer software. True fantasy lives in the landscape itself.
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  Speaker 1: Today's chapter is called The Shadows of the Frozen Pine
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  Speaker 1: and the Rebirth of Nordic Folklore Cinema. To understand Scandinavian
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  Speaker 1: fantasy cinema, you must first understand the silence of the North.
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  Speaker 1: In Hollywood, fantasy is almost always painted in broad, heroic strokes.
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  Speaker 1: It is bright, it is loud, and it is operatic.
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  Speaker 1: The landscapes are digital backdrops designed to look magnificent, but
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  Speaker 1: you never truly feel the mud beneath the boots, the
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  Speaker 1: biting frost on the breath, or the terrifying weight of
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  Speaker 1: absolute isolation. In Scandinavia, across the granite shores of Norway,
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  Speaker 1: the endless pine forests of Sweden, and the volcanic deserts
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  Speaker 1: of Iceland, nature is not a picturesque postcard. Nature is
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  Speaker 1: a towering, ancient sovereign. The winter nights last for 18 hours.
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  Speaker 1: The granite mountains plunge vertically into black waters that have
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  Speaker 1: never seen the sun. And when you step into an
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  Speaker 1: ancient boreal forest of spruce and pine, where moss hangs
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  Speaker 1: like gray beards from dead branches and the snow swallows
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  Speaker 1: every sound, you understand instantly why the old sagas were born.
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  Speaker 1: In the Nordic mind, folklore was never an escape from reality.
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  Speaker 1: Folklore was an explanation of the wild, The creatures of
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  Speaker 1: Scandinavian myth, the giant mountain trolls, the hidden spirits of
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  Speaker 1: the woods, the shapeshifters of the lakes, were not cartoon
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  Speaker 1: monsters created to scare children at bedtime. They were the
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  Speaker 1: personification of the forest itself. They represented the indifferent, primeval
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  Speaker 1: power of the earth, waiting quietly just beyond the lantern light.
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  Speaker 1: Consider for a moment the year 2010, when Norwegian filmmaker
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  Speaker 1: Andre Overdal released a film that completely blindsided world cinema, Trollhunter.
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  Speaker 1: On the surface, it was presented in the found footage format,
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  Speaker 1: a genre that was already suffocating under a mountain of
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  Speaker 1: cheap imitations. Yet Trollhunter succeeded where so many high-budget studio
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  Speaker 1: films failed miserably.
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  Speaker 2: Why?
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  Speaker 1: Because the director treated his mythical beings not as cinematic spectacles,
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  Speaker 1: but as endangered primeval wildlife. Remember the first time the
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  Speaker 1: camera pans up into the frozen pine canopy at night.
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  Speaker 2: There are no orchestral fanfares. There is no heroic dialogue.
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  Speaker 1: There is only the howling arctic wind, the sound of
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  Speaker 1: branches snapping in the dark, and the heavy subterranean.
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  Speaker 2: Thud of footsteps vibrating through the frozen moss.
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  Speaker 1: When the creature emerges into the dim glow of the
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  Speaker 1: halogen work lights, it doesn't look like a computer asset.
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  Speaker 1: It looks like the mountain itself stood up. Its skin
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  Speaker 1: is cracked like weathered stone. Its head is covered in moss, lichen,
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  Speaker 1: and ancient birch roots. the filmmaker anchored the monster in physical,
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  Speaker 1: biological reality, giving it the territorial aggression of a wild
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  Speaker 1: bear and the ancient exhaustion of a creature that has
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  Speaker 1: outlived its era. And notice the psychological brilliance borrowed directly
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  Speaker 1: from 19th century folklore collections. The trolls cannot stand the
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  Speaker 1: smell of human hypocrisy, and when exposed to ultraviolet light,
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  Speaker 1: their ancient calcium-rich blood crystallizes, turning them back into the
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  Speaker 1: very stones from which they rose.
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  Speaker 2: That is not modern screenwriting. That is visual myth-making of
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  Speaker 2: the highest order.
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  Speaker 1: And then, we must examine the year 2018 and the
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  Speaker 1: extraordinary film adaptation of author John Lindquist's acclaimed story, Border. Lindquist,
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  Speaker 1: the literary master who also gave the world Let the
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  Speaker 1: Right One In, did something utterly revolutionary with Nordic folklore.
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  Speaker 1: Instead of turning the ancient myth of the troll into
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  Speaker 1: a horror spectacle, he turned it inward, transforming the mythological
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  Speaker 1: creature into a profound exploration of human alienation, empathy, and
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  Speaker 1: ancestral memory. The protagonist, Tina, works as a customs officer
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  Speaker 1: at a ferry terminal, possessing an uncanny, almost supernatural ability
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  Speaker 1: to smell human guilt and shame.
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  Speaker 2: She lives in a secluded wooden cabin at the edge
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  Speaker 2: of a deep Swedish forest.
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  Speaker 1: Surrounded by wild foxes and elk that approach her without fear.
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  Speaker 1: When she encounters another being of her own forgotten lineage,
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  Speaker 1: the film leaves the concrete world of human bureaucracy behind
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  Speaker 1: and plunges into the dark, primeval waters of the forest.
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  Speaker 1: The camera lingers on the texture of wet bark, The
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  Speaker 1: sound of bare feet sinking into damp peat moss, the
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  Speaker 1: rustle of ferns, and the strange, haunting beauty of creatures
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  Speaker 1: that belong to the earth, rather than to human society.
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  Speaker 1: It forces us to ask the ultimate mythic question, who
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  Speaker 1: is the real monster? The creature living in harmony with
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  Speaker 1: the ancient forest, or the modern human civilization that paved
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  Speaker 1: over the wild and labeled everything it could not understand
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  Speaker 1: as an abomination. That, my friends, is why Scandinavian dark
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  Speaker 1: folklore continues to captivate the cinematic imagination. In a world
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  Speaker 1: increasingly dominated by artificial interfaces, sterile glass towers, and algorithms
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  Speaker 1: designed to keep us indoors, These films drag us back
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  Speaker 1: out into the cold. They remind us of the smell
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  Speaker 1: of pine resin and damp granite. They remind us that
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  Speaker 1: our ancestors sat around wood fires and dark timber cabins,
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  Speaker 1: listening to the winter gale rattle the shutters, understanding that
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  Speaker 1: humanity is not the center of the universe. When a
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  Speaker 1: northern filmmaker turns a camera toward a snowbound ridge, they
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  Speaker 1: aren't just capturing light on a digital sensor. They are
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  Speaker 1: opening a doorway into the collective unconsciousness. They are showing
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  Speaker 1: us that in the deep, quiet corners of the world,
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  Speaker 1: ancient stories are still sleeping in the frost, waiting for
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  Speaker 1: someone patient enough to listen. Thank you for listening to
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  Speaker 1: Phil Moonstone.