The film begins with the narrator telling the audience that they used to believe that all human beings start out as seeds floating in outer space, waiting to be born. The narrator also states that every person's chance of being born depends on their parents meeting.
The narrator says that their own parents met due to a chain of events that began in an apartment in 1940s Copenhagen, Denmark. The apartment is inhabited by Kaspar Jorgensen, a Danish poet who is unable to write new material. His psychiatrist, Dr. Mork, prescribes that Kaspar spend the summer in Norway. So, Kaspar goes to the library to research on Norwegian holiday destinations but instead reads about Sigrid Undset, the Danish-born Norwegian author of Kristin Lavransdatter. Moved by the plot of the Nobel Prize winner's novel, Kaspar sends Sigrid Undset a letter, asking to meet her for inspiration. Sigrid Undset replies to Kaspar, telling him to visit her in Lillehammer anytime. Overjoyed, Kaspar takes the ferry to Norway.
Upon arriving in Norway, Kaspar goes to a local farm to seek shelter from the rain. The farmer, Lundegaard, is a distant relative of Sigrid Undset's and welcomes Kaspar to his home. While staying on the farm, Kaspar falls in love with Lundegaard's daughter, Ingeborg, and she also falls for him. Kaspar proposes to Ingeborg with a poem, only for her to reveal that she is already engaged to the son of her father's best friend, and that the wedding will take place in August. When Kaspar mentions the protagonist of Kristin Lavransdatter leaving her fiancé Simon to marry Erlend, Ingeborg chooses to obey her father.
On her wedding day, Ingeborg gives Kaspar a lock of her hair, promising not to cut it until they are reunited. Forgetting his visit to Sigrid Undset, a heartbroken Kaspar returns to Denmark, writing sad poems and re-reading Kristin Lavransdatter.
Back in Norway, Ingeborg regrets not marrying Kaspar and her husband demands that she cut her long hair. A cow slips off a barn plank and falls on Ingeborg's husband, killing him. Ingeborg then sends Kaspar a letter, telling him that they can get married. However, the mailman loses Ingeborg's letter which is then eaten by a goat. Ingeborg spends years waiting for Kaspar's reply, employing her neighbours' children to maintain her growing hair for her. One of the children, a girl named Veslemy, becomes Ingeborg's favourite hairdresser. When Sigrid Undset dies, Veslemy convinces Ingeborg to attend the funeral and Dr. Mork prescribes Kaspar to do the same.
At Sigrid Undset's funeral, Kaspar and Ingeborg are reunited and he tells her not to cut her hair because he loves it long. Kaspar and Ingeborg marry and live happily in his apartment for years. Kaspar later becomes a bestselling author when he publishes a poetry collection titled Joy and Happiness. When Kaspar breaks his thumb from tripping in Ingeborg's hair, she calls a now adult Veslemy, requesting for an urgent haircut.
While on board the train to Oslo, Veslemy meets Petter, a fan of Kaspar's, who is also travelling to Denmark to meet the poet for inspiration. In Copenhagen, Ingeborg gets a haircut, Kaspar inspires his fan, and Petter and Veslemy fall in love, becoming the narrator's parents.
Production
Kove first became involved with the National Film Board, an agency of the Government of Canada, after her first year at Concordia University in Montreal. After working there as an assistant for some years, she wrote and pitched a script to the company, which led to her career as a director and animator. She first wrote the script for The Danish Poet some time ago, though she says that she "can't really remember when".[2]
Production was split between Marcy Page, of the National Film Board, and Lise Fearnley, of Mikrofilm AS in Norway, and took roughly three years, although Kove took a year off for maternity leave.[2]
The film was made using hand-drawn traditional animation, with pencil on paper, and then scanned and digitally coloured,[3][4] with about half of the animation by Kove, and the rest divided between animators in Montreal and Norway.[2] Kove's style is simplistic, which she says is less a specific style choice than "quite simply [...] the only one I know how to do."[2] The backgrounds were painted by Montreal artist Anne Ashton.[3]
Narrator Liv Ullmann was selected for the film because Kove liked her voice and "thought that her delivery would be right for the story";[2] she reaffirmed this after the film's release, stating that Ullmann was "just right".[5] She thanked Ullmann in her Academy Award acceptance speech, saying that "it was really amazing of her to participate in this."[6] Back in 1995, Ullman herself directed a film adaptation of Kristin Lavransdatter, the novel featured in The Danish Poet.
Origins
Kove's first ideas for The Danish Poet began when she went through a period of self-assessment; she wanted to write a story about what she described as when "you reach a turning point or a milestone and you look back and you think 'how in the heck did I get here?' [...] And you realize that the answer lies somewhere in a complex web of all kinds of stuff, like genetic make-up, upbringing, coincidences, choices you made along the way, missed opportunities, [and] lucky breaks."[5] She felt that it was a natural choice to centre on a relationship between two people, "because relationships, and especially the romantic ones, play a huge role in shaping our lives, and also, obviously, in creating new ones."[5]
Kove originally wanted to make the film biographical, based on a story her father told her: he had dreamed of being an artist, and made an appointment with an art teacher to ask if he was good enough to make it in the art world. However, he stood at the top of the stairs and decided not to go, eventually deciding to go to architecture school (as his parents wanted) where he met his wife. Kove's inspiration was drawn from the fact that her existence seemed to hinge on that decision, because "if the artist had said, 'Oh, you must paint,' you know, then in all likelihood he would never have met my mother, and, you know, that would have been it for my chances."[7] However, Kove felt the story was too personal, and rewrote it to be fictional.[5]
Themes
The film's main theme shows the effect that coincidence and chance can have on the course of life—like the bad weather, angry dog, hungry goats, slippery planks, and careless postman that change the course of both Kaspar's and Ingeborg's lives[8]—and shows, as the film's website states, that "seemingly unrelated factors might play important roles in the big scheme of things after all."[3] In an interview, Kove said that "what I'm trying to get across is just that I think life is really a kind of a meandering journey... a lot is really up to chance".[7] Kove has also said that she'd like people to be able to interpret the film in different ways:
I'd like them to walk away thinking it's a film that can be interpreted in more than one way. I'm happy when I hear from people who've seen the short that it makes them think about the kind of strangeness where we find inspiration for art and where we find love, and the kind of miraculousness of just being alive and having a life. I'm pleased when people get that out of it.[2]
She also identifies several subplots of artistic inspiration, as Kaspar "finds [inspiration] within himself", and not within another writer, and a "subtext... about nationalism and how much emphasis we in the western world put on stereotypes and on which country we're from".[5]
Liv Johanne Ullmann is a Norwegian actress. Recognised as one of the greatest European actresses of all time, Ullmann is known as the muse and frequent collaborator of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. She acted in many of his films, including Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers (1972), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), The Passion of Anna (1969), and Autumn Sonata (1978).
Sigrid Undset was a Danish-born Norwegian novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and alternative dramas. In total, the NFB has produced over 13,000 productions since its inception, which have won over 5,000 awards. The NFB reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It has bilingual production programs and branches in English and French, including multicultural-related documentaries.
Tiina Nunnally is an American author and translator.
Kristin Lavransdatter is a trilogy of historical novels written by Sigrid Undset. The individual novels are Kransen, first published in 1920, Husfrue, published in 1921, and Korset, published in 1922. Kransen and Husfrue were translated from the original Norwegian as The Bridal Wreath and The Mistress of Husaby, respectively, in the first English translation by Charles Archer and J. S. Scott.
Ingeborg of Norway, was a Norwegian princess and by marriage a Swedish royal duchess with a position in the regency governments in Norway (1319–27) and Sweden (1319–26) during the minority of her son, King Magnus Eriksson. In 1318–1319, she was Sweden's de facto ruler, and from 1319 until 1326, she was Sweden's first de jure female regent. Her role in northern European history is considered of major importance.
Cinema in Norway has a long history, dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, and has an important stance in European cinema, contributing at least 30 feature-length films a year.
Torill Kove is a Norwegian-born Canadian film director and animator. She won the 2007 Academy Award for Animated Short Film for the film The Danish Poet, co-produced by Norway's Mikrofilm AS and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
The history of Iranian animation, which began in its modern form in the mid 20th century in Iran, can also be traced back to the Bronze Age.
Kjetil Trøan(IMDb) was one of the sound designers on the 2007 Academy Award winner "The Danish Poet". Works as a freelance sounddesigner. He and the others on the Danish Poet team was the first Norwegians to win an Oscar in over 50 years.
From http://www.ba-avis.no/eceRedirect?articleId=77456&pubId=1498 Layered and mixed the sound on Oscar - winner By Morten Reiertsen Kjetil Trøan (30) did the sound postproduction for Norways first Oscar - winner in 50 year. Kjetil Trøan has along with Håkon Lammetun and Frode Løes Hvatum in Lydhodene AS layered and mixed the sound on the Norwegian Oscar - winner, "The Danish poet" by Torill Kove. He met both the director and Liv Ullmann during recording and in post. – It was a beyond and above moment for me working on "The Danish Poet", Trøan replied. Read additional about this in the paperissue and in PDFedition. This was publiced in http://www.ba-avis.noArchived 2005-03-07 at the Wayback Machine a norwegian paper, at 27.02.2007 - 22:15Updated28.02.2007 - 12:34 and is translated to english.
Kristin Lavransdatter is a 1995 Norwegian film directed by Liv Ullmann, featuring Elisabeth Matheson, Bjørn Skagestad, Jørgen Langhelle, Lena Endre and Sverre Anker Ousdal, based Sigrid Undset on trilogy of historical novels Kristin Lavransdatter. The film was selected as the Norwegian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 68th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee. It was the highest-grossing Norwegian film of all time with a gross of $3.7 million.
My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts is a 1999 animated short by Torill Kove.
Høvringen is a village in Sel Municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. The village is located in the northern part of the municipality, high up in the mountains along the Gudbrandsdalen valley. The village area sits at an elevation of about 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) above sea level. The village area now serves as the main entrance into the mountainous Rondane National Park, the first national park that was established in Norway.
The Animation Show of Shows is a traveling selection of the year's best animated short films. It is curated and presented by Acme Filmworks founder Ron Diamond. The show began in 1998 with the aim of showing the most original, funny, and intelligent short animated films from all over the world by presenting them to major animation studios, in hope of inspiring their influential animators and directors. Since 2007, a number of the films have been released as DVDs.
Me and My Moulton is a 2014 Canadian-Norwegian animated short film written and directed by Torill Kove. It premiered at the 2014 Annecy International Animated Film Festival on 10 June 2014. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 87th Academy Awards. Me and My Moulton won the Golden Sheaf Award for Best Animation at the 2015 Yorkton Film Festival.
The Last King is a 2016 Norwegian historical drama, directed by Nils Gaup. The story, inspired by true events, centers on the efforts of the Birkebeiner loyalists to protect the infant, Haakon Haakonsson, the heir to the Norwegian throne after the death of his father, King Haakon Sverresson. The film is set during the civil war era in Norway during the 13th-century.
Threads is a Norwegian-Canadian animated short film, directed by Torill Kove and released in 2017. Based on Kove's own experience as an adoptive parent, the film depicts a woman who catches a thread in the sky which carries her to a baby girl. The woman rears and remains connected to the girl through a red thread of love and emotional connection. This lasts until the girl is a young woman old enough to go seek her own thread of connection to a baby of her own.
Kari Rolfsen was a Norwegian sculptor and illustrator.
The Wild Orchid is a novel by the Norwegian author Sigrid Undset, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928.
The 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Danish-born Norwegian novelist Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) "principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages." She is the third female recipient of the literature prize.
1 These two films were given honorable mentions rather than officially winning the award, but are included here as no other winner was named above them.
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