Hamsun

Pulling off heroically scaled epics about Nazi sympathizers is always a little tricky. The better the movie, the more palatable the whole despicable subject may become. Case in point: Swedish director Jan Troell's superbly crafted bio-pic of Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun. Thanks to some gorgeous cinematography, Arvo Part's stirring soundtrack and Max von Sydow's brilliant performance as Hamsun, it may be too engaging for its own good. Opening in 1935, Troell's film focuses on the last 17 years of the writer's life, when Hamsun profoundly tainted his reputation as Norway's greatest living novelist by becoming an outspoken supporter of Adolf Hitl...