World of Glory (1991)
"Härlig är jorden" (original title)

A plain, ordinary man tells us about his work as a real-estate broker, his dead father, his ordinary home and so on in a naturalistic voice, lacking any emotions, looking straight into the ... See full summary »

Director:

Roy Andersson

Writer:

Roy Andersson

Stars:

Klas-Gösta Olsson, Lennart Björklund, Christer Christensen

1 win.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Klas-Gösta Olsson
Lennart Björklund
Christer Christensen
Bernard Eiger
Rolf Engström
Gun Fors
Udo Kühnapas
Hans Söderblom
Anne Tubin

Storyline

A plain, ordinary man tells us about his work as a real-estate broker, his dead father, his ordinary home and so on in a naturalistic voice, lacking any emotions, looking straight into the camera.

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Plot Keywords:

talking to camera | everyman | dystopian | brother | husband wife relationship | 

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Genres:

Short | Comedy

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Details

Country:

Sweden

Release Date:

30 June 2012 (Taiwan)

Also Known As:

World of Glory

Company Credits

Production Co:

Göteborg Film Festival, SVT Drama, Studio 24

Technical Specs

Runtime:

14 min

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Connections

Followed by Sven (1997)

User Reviews

Infuriatingly difficult to grab hold of but hard to get out of your mind

Without fuss, without emotions, a thin pale man shows us his life, introduces us to his sick mother, his dead father, his wife, his son and his brother. He shows us his home and we see him calmly go about his life until we see the impact that the secrets he holds start to wear on him.

I would love to write reams about this film and claim that it had moved and touched me, or that I was able to understand so much about what the film was trying to say but, if I did that, I would be lying. I found this film very hard to get into and was left thinking about it after it had finished. I continued to think about it and the bleak impression it had of a ordinary life that was scarred by one terrible action – in this case, I think, the fact that the man had allowed genocide to occur in front of him without saying a word, and only going back to his ordinary rather dreary life afterwards. What exactly he had seen/been involved in is hard to read into in much detail and it caused me the problem, but I accepted that this was his secret, that it was awful and that he tried to live with it but, in the end, could not.

The film is delivered in a series of static shots that are as grey and washed out as anything I have ever seen – you will not leave this film smiling that's for sure. The sheer drudgery of day to day life is laid out here and it is an unpleasant thing to see. The point of the whole short takes some thought and I'm sure that it will be different for each viewer that sees it but I took it as a sort of judgment on those (countries and people) who try to just live with horrid things in their lives as if nothing had happened – they will not move on and it will eat at them as it does here.

Like I said, I wish I had the answers and I wish I could pontificate at length about the film but I find it hard to do. But one thing is sure – the film is in my head now and it is hard to shake the images left there and the sense of doom that came with the man's ordinary life and his inability to ever get passed the deeds that he had either participated in or allowed to occur without so much as a tear shed.