Song For Martin, A

When the majority of films that address the subject of love are essentially romantic fantasies involving the young and beautiful, it is wonderful to encounter a film that looks at the realities that lies beyond that beguiling screen image of love

Martin (Sven Wollter) is a composer and conductor in his sixties at the peak of his career. Barbara (Viveka Seldahl), of a similar age, is the first violinist in the orchestra with which he is rehearsing his latest work. They fall in love, divorce their spouses, marry and embark upon what seems like an idyllic marriage, until Martin begins to experience the symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease.

The real-life married couple Wollter and Seldahl deservedly each won the Swedish equivalent of an Academy Award for their performances in what is an unflinchingly honest look at the destructive tragedy that is Alzheimer's and at our ability to maintain our commitments to our loved ones when life takes us in different and undesired directions to that which we had expected.

 

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