Severed Ways
by Tony Stone
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DVD details
Actor: Gaby HoffmanDirector: Tony Stone
Brand: Magnolia Pictures
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Norwegian (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 109 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-07-28
Audience Rating: Unrated
Model: 10142
Studio: Magnolia Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Severed Ways
DVD Review: Interesting But Boring
Summary: 2 Stars
It's a shame the director didn't incorporate a little more dialog into his movie and speed up the pace a little bit. Like many Scandinavian films "Severed Ways" seems to suffer from what I call The Curse Of Ingmar Bergman or the belief that a movie must be slow and languring to somehow be considered "authentic" and Director Tony Stone seems to have taken Bergman's style to heart.
I once saw an interview with Bergman alumna Liv Ullman speaking defensively about a movie she directed (can't remember the name) in which she seemed defensive about the slow pace. She said life doesn't move along at a rapid clip so why should a movie? But she was forgetting the wisdom of Alfred Hitchcock, a far more successful and superior filmmaker to Bergman (and most certainly Ullman) in many ways, who said that movies are (or should be) an imitation of life with all the boring bits cut out. It seems the Scandinavians want to leave all the boring bits in, which is why their movies generally suck.
BTW, Director Stone seems to have a real thing for both Vikings and felling trees, featuring both again in his 2009 short film "Out of Our Minds" ([...]), which looks like a more interesting sophomore effort juxtapositioning modern machinery (cars & trucks) with horse-drawn wagons. And the trees being chopped down are full of blood--a commentary on devastating the rain forests, global warming, etc.? The most attractive aspect about "Out of Our Minds" is that it's a short movie, so even if it turns out to be just as boring as "Severed Ways" you won't have to suffer through it very long.
Back to "Severed Ways" and Bergman...
Most people go to the movies to escape the humdrum of their own lives, not to languish in the humdrum of sombody else's life. "Severed Ways" had so much potential for a good story about the tension between abandoned Norse Vikings and Native Americans/Canadians (referred to as the Abenaki tribe on [...]), but for some reason Director Stone thought it would be more interesting to show the Vikings chopping down trees for 10 minutes. Hint to Mr Stone: this is what's called an "establishing shot" and all you needed to do was show them chopping down trees for 10 SECONDS and the audience would've figured out what was going on.
Be warned that the cinematography is a bit annoying, with many shots either 50 feet away from the actors or right in their faces.
If all the boring parts were cut out this movie would probably be 10-15 minutes long. And get rid of the awful, awful, awful score (which sounds like a rusty old organ piped through a defective synthesizer and certainly doesn't call to mind any ancient Scandinavian or Abenaki tunes, whatever they sound like) and there might be a halfway-decent short movie in here. I give it two stars for its historical value and because the costumes looked real and the director was more than happy to show the Vikings as the dirty, sweaty ruffians they really were, unlike Ullman whose own Medieval Scandinavians frolicked about in clean, crisp costumes that looked like they just arrived from the dry-cleaner.
One more thing: I don't know what Scandinavian language the actors are speaking (presumably Norwegian or Swedish), but it's not the language you hear because their lip movements don't match the words that are supposedly coming out of their mouths. Since most of the actors have English names they presumably spoke English when they shot the film, though their lips don't seem to match the subtitles. It's odd to dub a film not made for kiddies into a Scandinavian language--why not just hire Scandinavian actors in the first place? Or why not include the original English language track? It doesn't really make a difference since all of the characters seem nearly mute, anyway.
Description of Severed Ways
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