A story about the little things that make puberty both a pain and an awesome journey. The age where parties are sodas, dancing cheek-to-cheek and it's all innocent. The first innocent love and broken hearts.
7.2Keywords: schooladolescence
Plot summary
End of the 50s in Aarhus, Denmark, the story of a group of children from the 7th to the 9th grade. What they experience are not the grand dramas of life, but the events they do experience affect them more powerfully than at any other time in their lives. The film centers around Elin, the prettiest and most mature girl in the class. She plays on these advantages more or less unconsciously. It makes the girls jealous and the boys unsure. Therefore she becomes the scapegoat for their unresolved sexual awareness. For Elin, this being frozen out of the once happy circle becomes a tragedy, also on account of being totally misunderstood by her old-fashioned parents. The other main character is Niels-Ole, the leading boy in the class, who arouses indignation by rejecting girls in his own class in favor of the younger and prettier girl, Majbritt. At the same time, this film is a light-hearted yet serious account of the beautiful difficult years between childhood and youth, based on the director Nils Malmros' own experiences as a schoolboy in Aarhus in the late 1950s.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB 967.33 MB
1196*720
Danish 2.0
NR
Movie Reviews
Reviewed by
A bittersweet coming-of-age story.
Reviewed by
Unknown Danish masterpiece
This film is the most shrewd and insightful film about puberty I have ever seen - and one of the best films I have ever seen period. It follows a group of Aarhus schoolchildren from the age of 13-15 in 1958-60. The film notices all the small details, the internal power struggles and the growing sexuality of young teens. Much like Heavenly Creatures the film shows the "wonders" of growing up as both beautiful and frightful at the same time. Anyone regardless of nationality can recognise the conflicts and small dramas depicted here. After seeing it I felt as if Malmros had had a crystal ball and looked into the youth of everyone on the planet. Despite the fact that it is filmed in a hyper realistic, almost documentary, style, Malmros manages to fill add dramatic effects through music and background effects to effectively heighten the drama. The last ten minutes of the film builds up tension to the (completely unpredictable, but inevitable) climax and the striking power of the movie's ending sticks with you for hours after the film is over. I truly hope some distributor picks this up for a DVD release internationally - it is too big a masterpiece to be hidden away in Denmark (check out the external reviews if you want more proof)
Reviewed by
What a film
Kundskabens træ is one of the greatest teenage-film ever made. The danish director Nils Malmros shown his fantastic quality to directed kids. We follow a school-class from they were 13 to 16. We seen the good girl Elin been set out of the gang, because she don`t want to date Helge. The looser girl Mona called "Klister" take over the Elins place, but some will go on. In the class there also is a funny guy (Villy Bonde, what a name) and Niels Ole (Malmros alter-ego) who is in love with a younger girl. His loved is fantastic filmed and the girl he is in love to, say almost nothing. On that way Malmros make her to a dream. So turn-off the american teenage-fílm and look for Kundskabens træ you never forget it. *********