catmandm http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190255/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1. The Basket with Peter Coyote and Karen Allen is set during the same time period but in the Pacific Northwest farm community. It was filmed in and around the Spokane and Eastern Washington area. You can see the same prejudices, issues and dreams to make a better life in this country as farmers. I recommend that you also watch this film The Basket too. Well acted and good actors in it too. The other movie is The Bridges of Madison County. Reading the diary after the passing of parent and reacting to the surprises of their lives.I hope you like these recommendations.Thank you.

glesialo Wonderful photography and excellent actors (The main actress superb) but I can not believe that even Yankees are (were) so ridiculously puritan and narrow minded.Would any red-blooded man receive his (Incredibly beautiful and intelligent) wife-to-be without a smile or a kind word? Would he refuse to use their common language (Norwegian) with her? Could they live together in a remote farm without trying to know each other, without kissing or caressing until they are legally married?The silly plot and the slow pace at which the director tells it have made this movie very dull to me.

rangeriderr This film is most absorbing, but you have to be willing to watch a film that unfolds slowly. It is magnificently acted with two young actors -- Elizabeth Reaser and Tim Guinee as the leads. There is relatively little dialogue, and much of it is in German or Norwegian with no subtitles, which conveys to the audience the difficulty that they have communicating with each other.The two leads are heavily dependent upon the expressiveness of their eyes, which they do with great delicacy. The film is well-paced and beautifully photographed. The only difficulty I had was catching on that the action took place in three time periods, not just two. You had 1920 when Inge, a mail order bride comes to rural Minnesota. (The scenery looked authentic, and since some of the credits are for institutions in Montevideo, MN, a town to which I once traveled, I can understand the veracity of the setting.) The second time period, which is not so clear, is when Olaf, Inge's husband has passed away, and the third time period is more or less the present when Inge's grandson is faced with a decision of whether or not to sell the farm. There are some visual clues to separate the second and third time periods, but they are quite subtle.The second is probably around 1960, marked by the glasses frames that Inge, as an old woman is wearing; and the third, by a jacket that her great-granddaughter is wearing. Otherwise, the time differences are not totally clear, particularly at the beginning of the film, where you have flashbacks.The film struck me with its apparent accuracy. Twenty years ago, I knew an elderly Norwegian immigrant who had been the wife of a North Dakota farmer, and she had told me stories of farm life in the 1920s and 1930s. It required about 15 people to operate a steam threshing machine, and she told me about preparing lunch each day during the harvest season for 20 men; and about reading by candlelight at night; using an indoor pump at the sink; and seeking to keep warm during the brutal North Dakota winters. I visited the woman and her daughters and grand-daughter in her modern apartment which was a far cry from life during her youth. It blows me away to think about the change in this one woman's singular life from her youth to her later years -- greater changes than in any prior period in history. (In 1946, there were still more horse drawn tractors than mechanized ones in use in the U.S., and there wasn't much electricity in rural areas until the New Deal.)Although I may have missed some, I perceived no wrong notes in the film which added to the enjoyment of watching it. A most charming film from beginning to end.

TxMike "Sweet Land" has several themes. Set in the years immediately after WW I, this community of Scandinavians reject anything German, even the language. When one of their own brings in his mail-order bride, a German, they are both rejected. Meanwhile his good friend is in debt, about to lose his farm to the auction block, and he needs to figure out how to marry this lady when the proper "papers" are absent.Elizabeth Reaser, an American, plays Inge from Germany. Pretty, smart, but not able to communicate. She meets her intended, Tim Guinee as Olaf, a very hard-working farmer. Initially very shy towards Inge, we see his admiration develop for her gradually.Because of the strict religious attitude of the time, Inga wasn't even able to stay with Olaf, instead sleeping among the 9 children at the next door neighbor's farm. But after a short while she wandered over to Olaf's, and he stayed in the barn to keep things sort of OK.The story is about immigration in the 1920s USA, about dealing with mail-order brides, about attitudes and prejudices. The movie also cuts to a period in the 1990s when Olaf dies, and the modern times when Inge dies, and the grandson has to decide if he will keep the farm, or sell it to a subdivision developer for $2Million+.