Based on a popular classic of modern Swedish literature, Christmas Oratorio is the story of how the effects of a young woman’s tragic death in the 1930s ripple down through three generations – and across the world from Sweden to Wellington, New Zealand. The author Göran Tunström has lived in New Zealand and the New Zealand sequences were shot here, with Kiwi crew and cast, in late 1995.
The spectacle of New Zealand as seen through foreign eyes is irresistible, of course, and there is at least one observation about our island paradise that seems unlikely to be received politely. But Tunström’s story of father and son searching for the light that has been extinguished in their lives is compelling and poignant with an ironic sense of continuity between the generations. Bach’s ‘Christmas Oratorio’ is the work that Solveig was hurrying off to sing when she was killed, and the film builds towards a performance achieved many years later. In the key role of the young man who makes the long sea journey across the world, the young actor Johan Widerberg (All Things Fair) provides this sprawling, busy film with its own clear light.