Feed the Light – 2014 – Lokalvårdaren

If you have high hopes when it comes to a movie, or something else for that matter. You usually end up disappointed. Or even very disappointed. In this case the reality is quite the opposite. I thought Feed the Light would be a good film and when I saw I realized that is was more than that. This is not a good film; this is a great film. I would even consider it a masterpiece. I totally love it! With that said you might have realized that I’m very cheap in my ratings and it’s very rare that I use the top ratings in my reviews. It’s very rare for me to get lyrical and totally blown away.

I have seen some of Henrik Möller short animated film prior to this. Those are something else altogether. Totally unique and done at practically no cost at all. They are very humorous. Perhaps not always in the most obvious way but I’ve always found a lot of satire and dark humor in them. Feed the Light is something else. It has real actors to begin with and it’s not a humorous film. At least not in the same way as the animated shorts. This is really serious and grave. There might be some tragicomic tones in there but it’s not a comedy by any means.

Feed the Light has many layers and I doubt that you will pinpoint them all on the first viewing experience. At least I didn’t. It feels like Henrik Möller has metaphors to the metaphors and a meta story to back that up with. You can interpret the obvious story to mean something else. But I’m not so sure that there is a really obvious story anyway.

Sara gets employed as a cleaner to find her daughter. She soon realizes that something isn’t right in the landscape. But she gets the job and begins the search for her daughter in a place where the laws of physics don’t apply. It has a mystic light that changes everything. The conception of time is different and her boss has a tremendous power over the chain of events happening. She turns to the handyman for answers and she gets at least some kind of explanation.

This is a surreal movie. Art-house or just plain strange. It’s up to you to interpret it after you own wits. For me, I think that the plot is so absurd that I’m attracted to it. Feed the Light is an unusual film and the suspense is genuine. You can never tell which path it will take in advance and that’s something I really like. There are way too many films out there where you can predict the end after a watching a few minutes of the film. Feed the Light is different!

I don’t know anything about most of the actors. But I see their contribution to the film as fantastic. They are all really good! Sometimes unknown actors are better in the perspective that they’re not attached to any role or cast-type. Lina Sundén plays Sara, Martin Jirhamn is the handyman. Jenny Lampa is the boss and Patrik Karlsson plays the VHS-man. Henrik Möller does a small part himself and the one that I actually know – Karin Bertling also plays a small part. All of them are great.

So… I’m cheap and not easily impressed. What rating should this movie get? Well. For me there’s only one possible answer to that question!