Little Swedish film packs a big spiritual punch

There’s a little Swedish movie that is breaking box-office records in, of all places, Australia. Though essentially unknown in the U.S., “As It Is in Heaven” – which was nominated for a 2005 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar – is succeeding because of that most dependable of all critical outlets: word of mouth.

The film centers on a big-time classical music conductor (Michael Nykvist) who, after suffering a heart attack, decides to return to the remote northern Swedish village of his youth. This is the same village that his mother took him away from because his elementary-school pals were always beating him up – so even though he himself doesn’t understand why he has returned, the assumption is that he’s somehow interested in resolving past pain.

Though solitary by nature, he becomes involved in the local church choir to the point where he agrees to become the church’s cantor – a position that makes him choir director.

It’s all a learning process, both for him and the singers. He is trying to get them “to listen,” to hear the music inside themselves so that they can join that music with that of the rest of the world. But as they do that, they are confronted by the sad reality of their day-to-day lives – a confrontation that leads to hard feelings, recriminations and yet, in the best cases, some sort of healthy recognition. Even change.

He, meanwhile, learns what it means to love. A lost soul for most of his life, he has experienced life only through music. He even connects with one of the congregation, a fresh presence played by the Swedish star Frida Hallgren.

Not everything in “As It Is in Heaven” works smoothly. Some plot conveniences feel jarring (an impromptu bike ride, for example, leads to the movie’s denouement). But it does do a good job of exploring the turbulent emotions that buffet all of us on occasion.

And the preacher’s wife, played by Ingela Olsson, makes a particularly powerful speech about organized religion. “There is no sin,” she says, merely something dreamed up by church authorities to control congregations. “God don’t forgive,” she says, “because he doesn’t condemn.”

That sentiment, it seems, is playing particularly well Down Under.

Below: Swedish actress Helen Sjoholm performs the powerful tune, “Gabriella’s Song,” that was written for her charcter - a battered wife and mother - in the Oscar-nominated film “As It Is in Heaven.”