Oxen
Country: Sweden
Runtime: 92 min
Based on a true story during a famine in nineteenth century Sweden, this deeply moral story is played by the royalty of Scandinavian film and theater (Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson). Helge (Stellan Skarsgard) and his wife Elfrida (Ewa Froling) live on the farmland of their master Svenning (Lennart Hjulstrom). They have no food for the winter. Helge decides to kill one of his employer's two oxen to save his wife and infant daughter from starvation. Should Helge be caught, he'll suffer severe punishment. With the help of appalled wife, Helge carves up the meat and hides it.
"Ox" shows the excruciating consequences Helge, his wife and their baby daughter will have to undergo.
Director Sven Nykvist, best known as Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer, has no problem conveying the surface grimness of the situation.
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