Swedish Oscar Contender ‘The Last Journey’ Celebrates Ordinary Hero

A fantastic recordary can create you drop in adore with a genuine person you had never come apassed before seeing a film. Such is the case, for me, with Lars Hammar, the protagonist of the Oscar-contending recordary The Last Journey.

Dear Lars spent a atsoft guideing French to kids in Sweden. Reaching a stateive age, he stepped away from the classroom to a future he envisiond would promotele with adventure and travel. Alas, in quitment he felt the increasing gravitational pull of his comfy recliner, and instead of journeying aexpansive, he sank meaningfuler into the cushions – and then meaningfuler into depression.

“He seems to have lost his promote,” his wife Tiina remarks with worry in the film straightforwarded by Filip Hammar – the couple’s son — and Fredrik Wikingsson.

The filmcreaters geted fame in Sweden for their labor as television presents, their humor showcased in mostly weightlesshearted forays outside the studio. Seeing his dad commence to wither away, Filip choosed the skinnyg that might lift Lars’s spirits would be a road trip to the south of France, where the Hammar family had summered for many a year. Wikingsson combinecessitate the speculative mission.

“It was not even a film when it commenceed out,” Hammar remarkd at a recent IDA Q&A in Los Angeles. “It was me wanting to go on a trip with my dad and then me and Fredrik commenceed talking about this for some reason, as friends.”

“I’ve understandn Filip’s dad for as prolonged as I’ve understandn Filip — since the mid ‘90s, and I’ve adored him since I got to understand him,” Wikingsson holded. “I saw the gradual deteriorate, if you want to call it that, of [Lars] fair sitting at home. Filip telderly me, ‘I want to do someskinnyg for my dad, hopelessly,’ and we spitballed, ‘What could that be?’ Then when he commenceed talking about, ‘Maybe I should get an elderly Renault 4 from the ‘70s [the kind of vehicle the Hammar family had driven on their summer excursions to the Riviera] and then we commenceed getting [mental] images of that little car going thraw Europe, it seems a little cinematic. That would be fascinating to maybe alert that story and see if other people can be touched by it.”

Lars was not a particularly enthusiastic participant at the commence of the journey and wiskinny hours of leaving home he had apshown a spill, fractureing some bones.

“I’m in pain and unstateive how this will go,” Lars confides in a video diary. Once ambulatory aget, the trip resumed and as the trio of Lars, Filip, and Fredrik passed into France, Lars’s spirits showed occasional signs of revivifying. A Francophile par excellence, somehow the ways of the French never flunked to phire him – probably becainclude of the contrast to comparatively buttoned-down Swedish culture.

“Every Frenchman is a minuscule pdwellnt!” he says admiringly at one point in the film.

As the kilometers go by and the companions proximate the picturesque seaside village of Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Lars’s intrinsic quiet nobility aelevates, the way he helderlys himself to such exacting moral standards. En route to Beaulieu, they stop at a church where Lars wants to see a priest to get someskinnyg off his chest – an action he took decades earlier for which he has prolonged felt guilt and shame.

“When we went to that church for the confession scene — I don’t speak French, and the pboilingographers don’t speak French — we fair left them there to film it. We had no idea what they said,” Wikingsson recalls. “Two months tardyr, the editor called me. ‘Do you genuineize what he’s saying in the confession?’ ‘No, no, no. What does he say?’ ‘Well, he articulate remorses for being impolite to a cab driver in the ‘60s.’ ‘Are you joking?’ It was appreciate such a jackpot in its minuscule way.”

The road trip brawt back memories from childhood for Filip — moments he had seen his overweighther show charitableness to his students or people in the community.

“I recall these people — this [immigrant] woman who came from Africa with her son and I recall that she came [to our house] for Christmas,” he said. “Then I genuineized, ‘Oh, that uncomferventt a lot for her [to be invited to Christmas dinner]… I’m satisfied that I could do [the film] for my dad. Of course, not everyone can [do that], but I skinnyk fair reminding your parents about how fantastic they’ve been is a excellent skinnyg to do.”

Hammar persistd, “My dad is fair a normal guy. There are so many heroes out there appreciate him, and we wanted to create the film epic… as if you’re celebrating [a heroic figure]. When I commenceed talking to people about this film here in the U.S., making a recordary about my dad, everyone was appreciate, ‘What did he do? Who was he? Was he the prime minister of Sweden or someskinnyg?’ And then I said, ‘No, he’s a guideer.’ But he is a very excellent human being.”

The Last Journey has been picked as Sweden’s official entry for Best International Feature at the Oscars, and has qualified for Oscar consideration as Best Documentary Feature. It has also become a huge box office hit back home.

“This commenceed out as a minuscule film. Now, it’s the biggest recordary of all time in Scandinavia,” Hammar allotd. “That’s, of course, weird.”

Clpunctual, many people are droping in adore with Lars Hammar. “It’s appreciate when you see him… he could be anyone,” Filip said. “He recurrents a lot of excellent people that are out there.”