A foreign flick. Scandinavian actors. The director was into language authenticity, the Swedes speak Swedish, the Saracens speak Arabic, all with subtitles. Really good sets and costumes. Handsome young Arn and beautiful Cecillia have an affair. The parents, the village elders, the church and the aristocracy combine to sentence Arn to serve on Crusade in the Holy Land and Cecillia to a nasty convent. In the Holy Land, Arn survives the disaster at the Horns of Hattin and makes his way home, just in time. He and Cecillia are reunited, they settle down to homestead a nice farm in the Swedish backwoods. At the last minute, Arn raises up a vast army of humble people to defend Sweden from rapicious neighbors.
Strange flick. It moves pretty slowly, and it telegraphs its punches. You could tell what was gonna happen next, five minutes before it happened. The movie didn't rely much on dialogue, which since it was largely in subtitles, was probably good. Slowly as it moved, it was compelling, I was unable to turn it off, I had to see the ending.
Netflix is good.
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