As It Is In Heaven (2004)

Michael Nyqvist plays a classical music nerd who gets beaten up repeatedly by bullies – both as a kid and later as an adult – in this Swedish movie which kicks off (and ends) with fields of wheat, something which immediately reminded this reviewer of Woody Allen's 1975 comedy Love & Death. (“Wheat . . . lots of wheat . . . fields of wheat . . . a tremendous amount of wheat . . .”) In fact while As It In Heaven may often sound like an Woody Allen comedy, it isn't . . .

Review by : James O'Ehley

"I know this movie sucks but what can I do? I'm just an actor . . ."

Within the first few shots of As It Is In Heaven you'd be forgiven for believing that you're in for one of those heavy Ingmar Bergman-style angst fests for which Scandinavian cinema is renowned (infamous?) for, but you'd be wrong. Those glory days of art house film-making are over: nowadays Sweden also wants to make shallow Hollywood movies. After all, why leave this sort of thing to the Americans? (Ask Lasse Hallström , Sweden 's biggest export to Hollywood .)

After a few of those ridiculously pretentious “composer as doomed artist” scenes familiar to anyone who knows the name Ken Russell, As It Is In Heaven settles in to being a Swedish Shipping News slash Chocolat slash Dead Poets Society. You know the drill: outsider teaches stuffy small-town residents to get in touch with their fuzzy inner selves, in the process comes in conflict with repressive local authority figures (usually someone from a conservative religious background, in this case, a stuck-up hypocritical pastor), blah, blah, blah . . .

That it comes with only slightly less treacle than your average Hollywood offering shouldn't distract one from the reality that we've seen this sort of thing done countless times – think of As It Is In Heaven as Chocolat but with public domain songs. (I am going to torch the screen of the next movie that features Amazing Grace, I swear!)

Soon you'll be making up your own Mystery Science Theater 3000 comments such as “making it with a blonde bimbo with big breasts nearly half your age really takes it out of a guy” as the movie rushes right back into pretentious “doomed artist” territory towards the end.

Okay, enough of that. Let's just put it like this: if you're a cynic you'll hate As It Is In Heaven and its fuzzy superficial feel-good sentiments. If you really really liked Chocolat (and countless similar movies distributed under the Miramax banner) then you'll really really like As It Is In Heaven and should check it out. Don't heed this cynic old codger . . .