A wonderfully funny-sad slice-of-life depiction of life in a Swedish village during a traumatic year in the life of a young boy, Lasse Hallström’s My Life as a Dog is an unassuming delight. Chock full of memorable eccentrics and filmed with love, My Life as a Dog is one of those movies which offers new pleasures each time one sees it.
My Life as a Dog (Blu-ray)
Directed by Lasse Hallström
Studio: Criterion
Year: 1985
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 1080p AVC codec
Running Time: 101 minutes
Rating: NR
Audio: PCM 1.0 Swedish
Subtitles: English
Region: A
MSRP: $ 39.95
Release Date: September 13, 2011
Review Date: September 8, 2011
The Film
4.5/5
With his mother (Anki Liden) dying of tuberculosis, young Ingemar (Anton Glanzelius) is shipped away to live with his easy-going uncle (Tomas von Bromssen) in the village of Smaland where the major business is glass blowing. Here he meets an engaging town full of eccentric characters, each more unusual than the next: an elderly invalid (Didrik Gustavsson) who has Ingemar read lingerie ads to him, a young boy with green hair (Jan-Philip Hollström), the town cut-up (Magnus Rask) who unicycles across wires and swims in the frozen pond, the local sculptor (Lennart Hjulström) who’s doing a nude study of town sexpot Berit (Ing-Marie Carlsson) and allows Ingemar to attend the nude posing sessions, most importantly, town tomboy Saga (Melinda Kinnaman) who boxes (and beats) all the boys and who binds her expanding breasts down so she can play another season of soccer with the men. As Saga begins to have interest in boys for reasons other than defeating them in games, she turns her attention to Ingemar who at age twelve is still enjoying the freedoms of childhood and isn’t interested in getting serious with anyone.
Lasse Hallström’s magnetic direction (he was Oscar-nominated for his work) conveys the sense of this village in 1958-1959 about as well as any film has ever done. We see things that bring the whole town together to experience or celebrate as one: the first television set, the children’s “launch into outer space” (actually a bucket rig that will carry them across a wire that traverses the town’s main street), the many antics of Fransson that always draw crowds, the climactic radio broadcast of the first fight between Sweden’s Ingemar Johansson and America’s Floyd Patterson. Though little Ingemar seemed almost mentally unbalanced around his seriously ill mother with his mischief causing her more than once to break down in tears, once he gets to Sagland, he seems among the more well-adjusted people there, a wonderfully witty flip on what we might have been expecting. Hallström doesn’t flinch from the total nudity and openly sexual interests among the young in the film either. Clearly the freedom of sexual expression exhibited throughout the movie only reinforces what we’ve always heard about the openness of some European cultures to sexual matters. Though 1987 was a year stuffed with foreign film wonders (Jean de Florette, Au Revoir les Enfants, Dark Eyes, Babette’s Feast), My Life as a Dog managed to capture Best Foreign Film prizes from the New York critics, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the Hollywood Foreign Press.
Anton Glanzelius gives a marvelous, totally natural performance as Ingemar. He neither pushes too hard for cutsey effects nor makes himself so obnoxious as to be unendurable. Melinda Kinnaman’s Saga is also a completely believable tomboy who begins blossoming into young womanhood almost before our eyes. Tomas von Bromssen’s uncle is a lovable overgrown kid, and we delight in his joy of living (building his own playhouse on someone else’s property) despite the responsibilities of adulthood he grudgingly undertakes. Anki Liden gives a harrowing portrait of a mother unable to cope with her unrestrained children, and her tuberculosis seems eerily real. Kudos to the casting director for the selection of Manfred Serner as Ingemar’s older brother Erik. The two look so much like brothers that one can’t help but believe there must have been some cradle switching somewhere in someone’s past.
Video Quality
4/5
The film is offered in its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and is presented in 1080p using the AVC codec. Color density and richness is just fine with pleasing saturation levels that never threaten to bloom. Sharpness is more than acceptable except when the director chooses to soft focus remembrances of a seaside moment or other distant memories. Flesh tones are realistic. Black levels are only fair, however, though shadow detail doesn’t suffer from the less than optimum black levels. The film has been divided into 22 chapters.
Audio Quality
4/5
The PCM (1.1 Mbps) 1.0 audio track is remarkably clean and solid. The dialogue, sound effects, and the sweet, spare score by Björn Isfält all blend together seamlessly in this mix, and engineers have cleaned it so not a speck of hiss, crackle, hum, or flutter mars the listening experience.
Special Features
3/5
All of the bonus features are presented in 1080i.
A video interview with director Lasse Hallström has the celebrated director discussing his approach to making this movie in a 2002 interview that runs 18 ½ minutes.
Shall We Go to My or Your Place or Each Go Home Alone? is Hallström’s 1973 short film in which he dealt with professional actors for the first time. Concerning the stories of three buddies who go out for an evening of clubbing and end up each taking a girl home, the film runs 52 ¾ minutes. Hallström’s introductory comments on the movie run 1 ½ minutes.
The film’s theatrical trailer runs for 2 ¾ minutes.
The enclosed 18-page booklet contains the chapter listing, a cast and crew list, several pages of color stills, critic Michael Atkinson’s essay on the movie, and novelist Kurt Vonnegut’s salute to the film.
The Criterion Blu-rays include a maneuvering tool called “Timeline” which can be pulled up from the menu or by pushing the red button on the remote. It shows you your progress on the disc and the title of the chapter you’re now in. Additionally, two other buttons on the remote can place or remove bookmarks if you decide to stop viewing before reaching the end of the film or want to mark specific places for later reference.
In Conclusion
4/5 (not an average)
My Life as a Dog is a lyrical look at childhood with all of its ultimate pains and pleasures, and this Criterion Blu-ray presents the film in its best-ever home video release. It comes with a firm recommendation from me.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
