50
Ponderous and heavy with its own importance, Simon And The Oaks is the kind of film that's made for awards - it nabbed 13 nominations in Sweden's equivalent of the Oscars last year.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
The film never finds the right mix of the epic and the intimate - the personal as seen through the 20th century's Euro-geopolitical turmoil - that it aims for.
75
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
The film is at its best when it lingers on intimacy and the characters' incompetency to manage it.
50
Worst of all is the hitching of all this extravagant suffering to an inspirational ending filled with sweet regret, healing hope and some picturesque nestling in the titular oaks with the next generation.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
Alternates languidly between wistful nostalgia and a more clear-eyed assessment of its protagonist's choices.
88
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
It is unabashedly sentimental and epic, and rather bold in the way it takes place during and after the Holocaust but is not defined by it.
50
Though it retains the narrative complexity of the Swedish bestseller on which it's based, WWII saga Simon and the Oaks never creates an emotional or intellectual throughline of its own.
50
The classical music is soothing, the cinematography handsome and the acting strong, but the Swedish coming-of-age saga Simon and the Oaks is burdened with a sappy, soap-opera-ish script.