As It Is In Heaven

Rating: M – Contains Adult Themes.
Duration: 132 mins.
Genre: Festival & Foreign.
Actors: Michael Nyqvist, Frida Hallgren, Lennart Jähkel, Ingela Olsson, Niklas Falk, Helen Sjöholm, Ylva Lööf, Per Morberg.
Director: Kay Pollak.
Release Date: 26th April, 2007.

A successful international conductor finds his career arriving abruptly at a fork in the proverbial road. He is on a life long search for perfection, the kind that can never be attained and his passion for this often overwhelms him.

At the end of yet another concert, where he has strived for perfection by giving it his all, Daniel collapses with a heart attack.

Fortunately for us, and this wonderful story, the heart attack isn’t fatal.

On the ride home form the hospital; Daniel Daréus confides in his manager that he can’t seem to find this perfection that he has set for his life’s goal. His manager brushes him off by saying the audience loves him, and then unintentionally sobers Daniel with the knowledge that his life is booked out for at least the next eight years.

Such is his dismay at the prospect of being unfulfilled in his current situation that he seeks solace in the anonymity of his small childhood town, a town that in reality holds no pleasant memories for him.

On his arrival he discovers two things, the first being; the child-like joy of being free – a feeling that he wasn’t allowed to feel as a child prodigy – and the realisation that anonymity would never be his.

Demands are bestowed on him by the small local populus, and in time he relents and agrees to help out with the small church choir.

What we perceive to be a rag-bag of a small village choir, Daniel sees as an opportunity. An opportunity at a new life, teaching people outside of his – and their – comfort zone.

However, by pushing the boundaries Daniel soon discovers all is not as it seems in this tranquil Swedish village.

Jealously rears it’s ugly head and causes all manner of problems, not least of which is with the local pastor who mistakes life for sin, and has no room in his heart or his church for grace to bloom.

There are many layers to this movie, but the overriding theme is that of grace. A grace that can transcend a village’s secrets, a grace that can bring healing to a community too afraid to speak up, a grace that can breathe new life into people who have all but forgotten what it is to love one another.

Through methods that are far from conventional, accepting all who come, Daniel not only shines as a somewhat socially inept beacon of hope, but also finds the inner transformation that will ultimately set himself free as well.

Though unintentionally, the movie, through its musical achievements by way of normal people, manages to achieve a passion that defies convention and causes the viewer to contemplate more than just the physical side of life.

A remarkably inspiring movie that will move you to tears and stay with you long after the credits have disappeared.

Food for thought:
Should love only show itself in a predictable form?

Rent or buy?
A delightful morsel such as this should be savoured many times.