The sheer scope of the project—with its attendant historical detail, large cast of characters, and traversal of world geography—suggests that Troell was not content to work in the shadow of his country’s reigning cinematic master, Ingmar Bergman. He did tap two of Bergman’s favorite actors, Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, to star as Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson, a married couple in rural Småland whose dreams of upward mobility—specifically owning their own land—is limited by Sweden’s staunch traditions and rigid class boundaries. For Karl Oskar, whose young family is constantly growing, the difficulty of surviving as a farmer is compounded by the rocky land he must work, which breaks both plows and the men who came before him (he takes over the management of the farm when the work very nearly kills his father).

Effectively mired forever in a life of working for someone else and barely making ends meet, Karl Oskar is drawn to North America as a means of starting over under his own terms, a dream that is followed by several others who live near them. These include Karl Oskar’s idealistic younger brother Robert (Eddie Axberg) and his best friend Arvid (Pierre Lindstedt), who is as simple as Robert is fueled by dreams of the plentitude across the ocean; Danjel (Allan Edwall), Kristina’s brother who leads a Christian sect that is at odds with the powerful Lutheran church, and his wife (Ulla Smidje); and Ulrika (Monica Zetterlund), a reformed prostitute who has joined Danjel’s sect. Thus, the emigration to North American is driven by different desires: the dreams of freedom and wealth for Robert and Arvid, the hope of self-sufficiency and control over their own destiny for Karl Oskar and Kristina, and religious freedom for Danjel and his followers.

The Emigrants is roughly divided into three parts, each of which flows into the next, creating a sense of narrative rhythm that keeps the film moving steadily forward. The first hour or so of the film—which is, not incidentally, the most trying portion—is devoted primarily to introducing and developing the main characters while also depicting in closely observed, naturalistic detail the difficulties of life in rural Sweden in the mid-1800s. The majority of the narrative is focused on Karl Oskar and Kristina, who balance each other well (while he is temperamental and at times dangerously self-determined, she is devout in the best sense of the word and incredibly patient). The blood and sweat that are shed on the farm are out of balance with the relatively meager reward of barely surviving, especially during the harsh winters that make the rocky, unforgiving landscape seem even more merciless.

The second part of the film details the months-long voyage across the ocean, which entails its own hardships involving acute seasickness, a plague of lice, and the general boredom inherent in being in a confined space in the middle of the ocean for so long. There are flare-ups among the travelers, whose close quarters are bound to cause friction at some point (the most memorable moment of interpersonal hostility comes from the most unlikely of characters when the otherwise even-keeled Kristina lights into Ulrika, blaming her for the lice infestation, a rare moment in which she completely loses her patience and her temper).

The voyage is harrowing, and it even proves lethal for some poor souls who are not hearty enough to survive it. However, once they arrive in North America, the promise of the new land they will call home provides the light at the end of the tunnel, although they still must make the arduous journey across much of the country to their final home in the Minnesota territory, where fertile land is plentiful and cheap. The sequence in which Karl Oskar trudges through forests and marshlands until he alights upon the perfect spot to establish his new home is a thoroughly satisfying moment in which all the difficulties he and the others have endured seems to have paid off. Sitting beneath a tree into which he has carved his name, his moment of rest is profoundly earned.

Troell, who cowrote the script with producer Bengt Forslund and acted as his own cinematographer and editor, establishes the tone and rhythm of The Emigrants early on and maintains it with remarkable consistency. He clearly wants us to become fully engrossed not just in the drama of the characters, but the worlds they inhabit, which is why he pays such close attention to seemingly unimportant details and holds shots for long periods of time (for some viewers, this will be maddening, while for others it will be hypnotic). Not surprisingly, when Warner Bros. distributed The Emigrants theatrically in the U.S. in 1972, they demanded that nearly an hour be cut out of it (even in this truncated form it was still nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar that year and then for four more Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, the following year).

The roughness of wood, the cold damp of the snow, the weight of rocks, the pains of pregnancy, the jangly imbalance of hand-crafted plows and carts—all are essential physical and sensory components of the film’s dramatic effectiveness, and Troell weaves them quiet masterfully into the fabric of his characters’ lives (writing in the journal Film & History back in 1972, historian Michael Ebner called it “a standard for future historically-minded motion pictures”). Troell’s cinematography is constantly striking, and he conveys the hardships and the hopes of life with his color palette, painting the Swedish countryside in drab, faded tones that are sharply contrasted with the verdant greens and intense blue skies of North America. This is no simplistic tale of freedom and wealth won by moving from one land to another, and the note of hope on which The Emigrants ends is but a set-up for the trials and tribulations awaiting the characters in The New Land, further proof that Troell was not making two separate films, but rather, in the spirit of Moberg’s novels, a singular epic work.

Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

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