"Should I move this lamp?" "Ok." "This camera... it's all dusty." "It seems like it..." "Can you do me a favour Christina?" "Force me to go through with my ideas." "That's what I've done now." "That's great." "I've brought you here." "It's good that you have." "Say something." "Yes." "It's alright, but it's not..." "It has reception around here." "So it's best if you talk over here." "So what do you think about me working through this shit?" "I think it's good." "Yeah, but how does it feel?" "It feels like this is your way of dealing with the pain." "To be in the middle of it all." "Yes." "Making a film out of it." "But what about you?" "I feel that I need to support you in this" "So it's your role as a child to support your parents?" "Not my parents, supporting you." "Honestly, It's mostly for your sake that I'm making this film." "Can we begin?" "Camera ready." "Sound ready." "Ready for action." "Silence!" "It's my dad, Bo, behind the camera." "He wanted to make a film about my grandfather, Arvid." "He brought a monkey to Arvid." "Greta, my grandmother, wanted him to like her instead." "Arvid was delighted." "Ha ha, it's in the lamp!" "Just don't grab it too hard." "It'll come to you, if you just take it easy." "You've always wanted a monkey." "Right?" "This is crazy I tell you, crazy..." "It's a girl, her name is Prosit." "Ah early nineteenth birthday present from the Swedish Film Institute." "What?" "Ah early nineteeth birthday present from the Swedish Film Institute." "You can't just come here with a monkey." "Well, we already have." "I'll throw it out." "You can't throw out the monkey!" "The Swedish Film Institute's monkey!" "Why couldn't he finish the film about Arvid?" "He made so many other great films before." "It's not like he didn't try." "I mean we started to film Arvid as early as 1979." "I was 16 back then." "Now I'm 45." "Everyone was there, both in front of and behind the camera." "These are my sons, Morris and Joel." "We're continuing the film about Arvid" "Because it has to be finished." "Or what do you say?" "Yeah." "Get him!" "Let go of my sponge, that's cheating." "Dad, you've got something green in your teeth." "Dad, do like this, there's still some left." "It's up here." "If I'm your mirror, it's here." "Well, we are in Arvid's old studio." "Arvid painted in here." "His easel stood over there." "Over there was a table where I'd eat fruit when I was little." "They took care of me so much, Arvid and Greta, my entire childhood." "Since I was so little that I can't even remember." "I think they saw it as a second chance." "What do you mean by "second chance"?" "Bo said he was left on his own quite a lot." "Greta was working  and so was Arvid." "Maybe that's just the way things were, before there were..." "There weren't any kindergartens?" "In 1930?" "No." "When did kindergartens come around?" "I don't know." "Not then anyway." "There's Arvid in a suit." "And cigarette." "I think this one's fantastic." "What a babe, right?" "Yeah, she must have been." "My grandmother and her family come from rocky Småland." "The rocky landscape made her a down to earth and determined woman." "It counteracted my grandfather and his restless energy" "Arvid grew up under simple conditions in Lund." "He was so small when he was born that no one thought he would survive." "Greta came from a poor family in Småland." "She had a brother and four sisters." "She started working when she was 14 years old." "Greta started working as a nanny in Lund, so she leaves Småland." "Arvid and Greta meet for the first time at an allotment in Lund." "Greta takes Arvid to Småland to meet her family." "They think he's too full of himself." "Greta's in love." "They marry and Bo is born." "They move to Skanör street in Malmö." "Greta supports them, as a seamstress at the coat factory." "She sows Bo a coat." "Bo gets beat at school, because the coat's looks too nice." "Arvid works at a number of places." "He sells suits via catalogue for a while" "While both Arvid and Greta work, Bo has to fend for himself." "I never thought there was a rotten human being." "And we'll get so many drinks." "How many buildings do you have left?" "From the fourth and the street down." "Thanks, that's all I wanted to know." "Bo dreams of becoming a writer." "We're two months behind with the rent." "It'll be three soon." "You're talking about that job out east?" "The margarine factory." "Factory smoke in the morning porridge." "It would be better than this at least." "Those days we had a chance of making the rent." "Remember when you got those boxes of cream doughnuts?" "IFK, MFF were playing." "Cream doughnuts at the local derby..." "Could I help that it would rain?" "It hadn't been better in shine." "Have you heard of anyone nibbling cream doughnuts at a soccer game?" ""The IFK-Doughnut" it said on the box." "And then IFK lost." "If you'd had enough sense to call it the MFF-doughnut at least." "Do you remember?" "We ate  IFK-Doughnuts for breakfast, lunch and dinner  for an entire week." "And we gave the ones left to Ahnell's dog  who died in colic." "Yeah, laugh all you want dad." "We'll never get away from here as long as we're behind with the rent." "And who's apartment looks the worst?" "Ours." "Hell, dad." "We're stuck." "Do you understand?" "Stuck." "With their savings, Arvid and Bo travel to Paris." "Paris, the city that inspired both Bo and Arvid." "That they returned to over and over again." "Bo brought a camera." "He shoots his first pictures here." "Arvid brought a sketchbook." "Bo took care of it all." "We traveled all around town." "He showed me everything there was to see." "We had a map." "So we knew where to begin." "We looked at it and pointed out which places we wanted to visit." "Went and took a stroll there, and looked for what it had to offer." "And the next day, next place." "Paris has a certain smell." "Something rustic and jovial." "I thrive there!" "Mum!" "Wait Anders, what is it?" "Dad, they want to publish my novel!" "Mum!" "What the hell's gotten into you?" "Dad, I'm a writer." "You know that I've written a book, right?" "I got a mail from Stockholm, they want me to come there." "They want to discuss my book!" "Can't you see dad?" "!" "It's fantastic!" "Don't you see?" "!" "Why didn't you wake me up before?" "Father's been playing dead, the son has been famous for 15 minutes." "Dad!" "Mum!" "I'm a writer!" "Dad, I'm a writer!" "Bo gets a writer grant, which includes going to Capri to write." "He can't stand being on his own." "He telegraphs his mum, dad and his girlfriend." "They come immediately." "While Bo's writing his new novel, Arvid starts sketching paintings  that will become the foundation of his artistry." "I delve deeper and deeper into their minds." "Is this for real or is it all a fantasy?" "Is everything just a fantasy?" "What then, is my reality?" "Why did you like him?" "Beside for him being my father?" "Yes." "There was energy in him, he was a lot of fun." "It was fun, you know." "He had good intentions, but they came out wrong." "Maybe he didn't know how." "It was like seeing glittering pieces of something you wanted so much." "Sometimes..." "Sometimes it was so much fun." "You're my dad." "Yes." "And I've inherited some of your qualities.." "The same blood flows in my veins." "And then you inherit certain qualities." "Which one do you think I appreciate the most?" "Well..." "Well, I guess..." "Your imagination." "Yes, I think so." "Bo and Arvid go to Paris again." "Arvid makes paintings of all the buildings he sees." "And Bo films all of Arvid's paintings." "Do you know which inherited quality I think you appreciate?" "The pride." "You are proud." "That's important for an artist." "You can't make it without pride." "Sure." "I paint my things and I don't care what the other paint." "It's the same for me." "Yes." "I do my thing and I don't give a rat's ass what the other's do." "This book has a certain history." "It has?" "Yes, doesn't it?" "We bought it once, you and I." "That book..." "Ahhh, in Paris." "Yes, do you remember?" "It's Brugel's attempt to paint school yard play in the 16th-century." "Those, I do those as well as he does." "Which ones?" "The houses?" "Your bricks are as good as Bruegel?" "You're better at bricks than Bruegel?" "At bricks?" "Yes, at painting bricks." "Well  you can clearly see the stones." "Every damn one." "Does he pass!" "?" "It passes." "very good." "Yes!" "He's got a lot of people in his paintings." "You never do." "Right?" "Arvid?" "Arvid!" "It's supposed to be desolate." "I want to show the city, not a bunch of people and cars." "Absolutely no people in my paintings." "They just get in the way." " Are you okay?" "No, not really." "How's that?" "I don't have the energy." "I'm just going to drink some water." "Will you make it out of the hole?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "I'm just going to drink some water." "How are you doing?" "It's not good." "What is it then?" "I can't stand it." "The sun's setting." "You thought it'd be better with another angle." "I want you to feel that you're a part of this." "So everybody's helping out moving 120 kilos somewhere else." "I think that's showing that I care." "You came with an artistic idea." "I listen to you and I see it through." "You care about my feedback to the film." "Not me as a person." "Yes, you're here as a person who expresses something artistic," "Which I care about, and see through." "I'm just so tired of bottling myself up  and adapting for the film to turn out okay." "Then quit." "Just quit." "What are you holding back Morris?" "Don't hold back then." "What are you holding back?" "Out with it!" "You're in the same place as last week, which you said was so much fun." "You suggested another camera angle and I saw it through." "Is it just misery all the time?" "Hey, why did you stop painting?" "You haven't painted for years." "You know, it's  my head." "I have  problems with my balance." "My head doesn't come with me." "Hell, if your body goes to the easel your head follows!" "No, no, if you're going to paint you have to concentrate." "Boom!" "Everything just vanishes, outwards." "Now you're vanishing outwards?" "I'd sit here and paint and not care about what's happening around me." "We'll just play the one side then." "Alright." "Do you like it?" "The music?" "Mmm." "Do you like it?" "No, not really." "Do you?" "Yes." "You do?" "I think it sounds better now." "You think so?" "Than in the beginning." "Do you think so too?" "Yes, I think it's better." "A little bit, at least." "You know, once..." "Robby was the kind of guy who..." "Did a thing you know." "How do you mean?" "He couldn't like..." "Finish things." "Do you know what I mean?" "Do you have an example?" "Finish..." "If the bed broke, it could stay so for three months without him fixing it." "He was like..." " I know what you mean." "Yes, it's hard to..." "But I understand what you mean." "Bo meets Vanja, who's a balet dancer." "She's from a cultural family, which Bo becomes a part of." "They marry." "Look at this one." "Is this Renoir?" "No, no." "You say "Renoir" in French." "It's all in the pronunciation." "Renoir!" "Together, they build Bo a cottage for writing in." "He'll have peace and quiet to write, while still being close to his family." "Love is a forest we wander into  from another direction for every new person we love." "We come into the forest from another direction  and we see the same forest as before  from another direction and the trees in another light." "You dream of seeing more trees every time." "This time you can see more trees than before." "You enter the same forest, but from another path  and you wander into it, by a new lover's hand." "It's like entering the forest from another direction." "What forest?" "Love." "Bo makes film about an unfaithful director." "You enter the forest from another direction every  new person you love." "You see the old trees in a new light." "And you see new trees." "You see more and more trees." "You dream of finally seeing the entire forest." "248, fourth!" "Earlier, we spoke about what we wanted with these scenes." "That this is what's good." "Do you remember?" "That this is healthy and everything else is unhealthy." "That's what makes it difficult." "You're fulfilling yourselves." "You think you can fulfill yourselves without hurting others" "It turns out you can't." "But that's something I don't show until later." "You don't even think about that right now." "Right now, you think this is what's healthy." "This is possible and reasonable." "He lives so consciously?" "Yes, he works with the stimulus he gets from stimulating." "He uses it like mortar, like gasoline." "The new eyes he receives from giving someone else new eyes." "He lives to put himself in a creative state of mind." "Through long detours?" "Through any way possible." "All to put himself in a creative state of mind." "In a trance." "In this soaring state of being." "It was like magic when you played the recording back and forth." "How you could repeat someone's voice." "Over and over again" "The film, as I saw it, was so emotionally close to him." "And so close to his personal life." "He used  things and lines from his own life and wrote them into the script." "It was important for him that everyone  let him do everything he wanted." "What he thought was fun." "If you disrupted that, then you were really boring, or in the way." "You didn't get to play." "The feeling of never being good enough." "To have nothing to offer that would make him stay." "There was no emotional closeness." "The good thing about people is that you can use them  to comfort yourself." "They're filled." "Those holes you fell into when you were working alone." "They're filled when you work with other people." "I'm happy for that." "I'm born 1965." "That's me with the glasses." "According to my mother Vanja, I was a make up child." "Bo makes a full length picture a year, it's all in a tremendous tempo." "He makes the film Elvira Madigan, a story about impossible love." "Imagine if we had a butterfly in the picture." "Stop breathing!" "Bugspray, do we need that?" "Ready for action!" "I can't." "You must." "I can't." "You must." "You have to Sixten." "There's no other way." "I can't." "Elvira Madigan was edited in New York." "Far away from us." "And when he came home he wrote Ådalen 31." "Here it comes." "Yes, here it comes." "Where did begin?" "There." "I was four years old and in front of the camera." "I played the family's youngest son, Martin." "My film parents took care of me, as if I were their own child." "Here she comes with the fish" "You can eat it right away, while it's still hot." "Is it good?" "Come Martin." "We're tearing the sweater apart!" "What does it matter?" "It was a wonderful summer." "My grandmother, Greta, was with me when we shot the film." "I got pancakes and meatballs." "Look!" "Let's take it!" "My film dad went fishing with me." "It was real to me." "Is this enough?" "Yes!" "I had a big family." "I had a happy family, that played with me." " Are we going?" "Yes." "Going fishing!" "In may 1969, we go to Cannes to compete with the film." "Me, my dad and my nanny." "And my dad's secret lover." "When we land in Cannes, mum's there to greet us." "I remember how it was." "Mum knew." "I saw Cannes through the window." "Down there." "That's right..." "Do you understand how powerful that memory is?" "As if etched onto copper." "Like stinging a steel needle through a copper plate." "Etching in the picture." "As if you could touch it with your fingers." "That's how powerful it is." "Mum leaves me with dad in Cannes." "Dad's film was a success." "The film won the jury's grand price." "Dad was happy." "To me, it was as if my life had ended." "We lived in the same apartment, but without Bo." "I miss him." "I'm almost never in school." "I long to grow up." "When Bo starts filming Arvid, I'm 16 years old." "I get to tag along again." "Clapping the slate, carrying the camera." "Bo returns to Torne, in Småland, where he spent his summers as a child." "He directs Arvid  in his childhood forest." "Which one's the best painting you've ever painted?" "I don't really know." "Because if I look at them, it doesn't really matter." "Is there nothing you'd do differently?" "No, no, no." "In all of my films there's always something I'd like to improve." "I've never done anything I've been content with." "If you do something it has to make an impact!" "Something that can truly stand on it's own merit!" "Then you're a true director!" "I've tried a couple of times  do you think I've done anything that stands on it's own?" "Yes, there are several, but..." "No need for flattery." "Be honest." "I liked Elvira Madigan." "In particular that scene." "Where he sat." "The count." "Tommy." "He sat up there..." "... and the dancer." "Pia!" "She sat down there." "By a little..." "What's the word?" "Stream." "Stream!" "Now I know which scene!" "He makes a boat of bark and puts a note on its..." "The spar." "Yes, the spar..." "... and he sends it her way." "Down the stream!" "And it read "forgive me"." "Did you like that?" "That was good." "I'm glad you remember that one, now I'm flattered." "Bo suddenly stopped filming Arvid." "He never gave an explanation." "I'm 26 years old when my son Morris is born." "I'm a father and I have figure out what it means to be a family." "How is a father supposed to act?" "The only thing I know is how I don't want to be" "Maybe I've focused too much on my family life." "That it's always been more important than my job." "I feel that I've missed out on something there on my account." "That I haven't had as much of a career as I'd like to have." "Maybe I've over compensated." "Because I can't handle the thought  of having a wrecked family.  because of me mercilessly dedicating myself to my art." "Does that reasoning make you sad Morris?" "You seem a bit low." "I'm just trying to figure out what I really think about it all." "This has all been very emotional." "Is there any room for you and your feelings?" "No, I get the space I need." "It just feels like  I need to be a supporting pillar in all of this  and not making big scenes." "In this life?" "No, in this process." "So you stand back." "Mmm." "But this process is life." "Mmm." "We're alive right now." "So you've taken a role  where you hold back." "Where you don't get to be emotional  because you have to be rational." "Is it so turbulent around you?" "Turbulent..." "It feels like it's better this way." "It sounds like it's the same situation as with my parents." "I can't help but think you're describing the same thing." "You're saying that we're taking up so much emotional space  that you can't claim any of your own." ""There's no room for me and my feelings."" "That's what I'm hearing." "It just feels like..." "I can't hear you." "... my problems aren't as important." "It feels like you have it worse." "It's no competition." "Everyone has a right to express their troubles and get response." "And who are you talking about?" "The three of you." "Joel has his angst, mum has her angst and you have yours." "Of course I have feelings  but it feels like you're worse off." "Hell dad, what am I supposed to do?" "Hell, you have to answer me." "You're my father, dad." "You have to help me." "Hey." "Have a drink." "Come into Piccard's clock, there's room for you." "Dad, what am I supposed to do?" "You have to help me." "How old are you dad?" "39 years old." "You can't give up before you're 40, dad." "You're the last one I have." "Can't I feel some respect for you dad?" "Don't you have anything to make me proud of being your son?" "Like when I was little." "Do you remember that?" "You knew more about soccer than other dads." "Do you remember when you explained to me was offside was?" "I'm sinking." "Sinking." "You look like a fish, Anders." "I think they're all the same film if you just look at them closely." "Is there a value in it being the same film?" "I don't know." "But I think it's the same film." "If you look at the seams, you can see that it's the same thread." "The same way of sowing." "And the same coat every single time." "It might be in a different color from time to time  and the pockets might be in different places." "Sometimes I've followed some stupid fashion." "But hell!" "It's the same coat." "I believe so." "How do you live your life?" "We have responsibility on one side and freedom on the other." "How much..." "How far can you fulfill yourself without hurting others?" "How much freedom can you take?" "And to place the camera very close.." "... to things that mean something to me, and maybe to you too." "Which path do we take between responsibility and freedom?" "How much can we  not give a shit about people  to make us soar a little higher?" "I don't want to be stuck in it anymore." "I don't want to be stuck with this feeling  and I don't want to pass it on to you." "What feeling?" "A..." "A feeling of being chased." "A..." "A feeling of never being good enough." "Of fighting so hard to  not just be yourself." "I feel that as long as I'm not finished with  him." "I wonder if you can be finished with me." "I think you're a great painter!" "Have I said that?" "Have you tried painting again?" "Yes, I'm going to try." "Everybody tries." "How do you think I'll remember you?" "Well, I'm not quite sure." "That's your personal opinion." "I can't say..." "But what do you think I'll remember the most?" "Hey!" "What do you think?" "I don't think anything." "That's for the best." "But is there something you want me to remember?"