CHRISTMAS ORATORIO

A sweeping yet intimate saga of love lost, found, thwarted and realized, CHRISTMAS ORATORIO makes the romance in “Titanic” seem like a leaky rowboat, as it crosses several oceans, three generations and two worlds to compose the story of the Nordensson family of Sweden. Solveig, effervscent, adoring wife of farmer Aron and mother and son Sidner, perishes in a freak mishap en route to rehearsing Bach's Christmas Oratorio with a church choir. Aron sells the farm, piano, anything that reminds him of Solveig. But death alone cannot erase the presence of such a woman, and although Aron takes a job in a nearby hotel, broadening his circle of friends and horizons, Solveig's phantom haunts him. Then a new invetion, amateur radio, allows Aron a tenuous link to a girl half a planet away. she's a lonely New Zealander who, in his fancy, displaces Solveig – or can she? Preoccupied with sould mates in this life and the next, neither of whom he can touch, Aron doesn't perceive young Sidner well on the way to his own fateful first affair. Seldom has heartbreak and healing been protrayed on as grand a canvas, done with a painter's eye, a musician's ear and a true lover's heart. (In Swedish with English subtitles)