Mark Reviews Movies: BECOMING ASTRID

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 6, 2018

People keep telling her, "You can do this." The statement is said enough times that it becomes a motif of Becoming Astrid, a biographical account of the teenage and young adult years of Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren. Lindgren is best known for creating the character Pippi Longstocking, the strong, intelligent, and independent girl with freckles and red hair in pigtails, who isn't afraid to speak her mind to adults and doesn't shirk an adventure.

Unlike so many movie biographies about writers or other creators, Kim Fupz Aakeson and director Pernille Fischer Christensen's screenplay isn't about how this particular author was inspired to write a specific story or invent a specific character. One could watch this without any knowledge of Lindgren's work and still discover a worthwhile story.

The necessary context is entirely within the film. The young Astrid (Alba August) grows up to become a beloved writer of children's fiction, and in the author's old age, kids send her pictures, notes, and even an audio tape of a classroom singing to her and telling her their own stories. The central question here isn't how Pippi Longstocking came to be. It is how Astrid became the type of woman who would create works that inspired children to such an extent.

It's more about the evolution of an attitude, a mindset, and a philosophy on life than a single book or character. That approach is much more rewarding than simply looking and waiting for the telltale signs of the fiction that a later-to-be-famous character will create. The biographies that explain how a writer created something often feel like Easter egg hunts or watching someone put together a puzzle. This film isn't concerned with how Lindgren was inspired to invent her most famous character. It cares about why she would go on to do so.

Even without this context, the young Astrid's story is a compelling one. It begins in the 1920s, and at the age of 16, Astrid lives on her family's farm with her mother Hanna (Maria Bonnevie), father Samuel (Magnus Krepper), and three siblings. Already a talented writer at her age, Astrid is offered a job at the local, twice-weekly newspaper in the nearby city of Vimmerby. It's run by Reinhold Bloomberg (Henrik Rafaelsen), the father of one of Astrid's friends, a widower, and a husband in a marriage that's in the process of divorce.

The mutual admiration between the girl and the much older man turns sexual and, in Astrid's mind for certain, romantic. Soon after, the teenager discovers that she is pregnant. Reinhold insists that he wants to marry her, despite the obvious issues. His wife would be the same age as his daughter. Astrid's parents disapprove of the relationship, and most importantly, from a legal standpoint, he is still married. A court in Sweden could put him in jail for adultery. Once the divorce is settled, he tells her over and over again, the two will be free to marry and have a life together with their child.

The divorce is not easily settled, though, and Astrid spends years in exile, going between Stockholm, where she trains to be and later works as a secretary, and Denmark, where she gives birth to a son and visits the boy while he lives with a foster mother named Marie (Trine Dyrholm). Much of Astrid's life has been and continues to be defined by the promises and judgments of other people. She has to leave Vimmerby, out of fear of what the traditionally minded and religious people of the area might say about her. Her mother encourages this, because of her own and her family's reputation as upstanding, devout Christians.

There are Reinhold's promises, of course, making her believe that a happy life with a husband and son is only days or maybe weeks away. Meanwhile, Astrid's son is quickly growing up—walking, talking, and calling Marie his mom. Astrid takes a couple of jobs, but her sole income isn't enough afford the needs of a child.

It's a wrenching story of circumstances and other people denying Astrid what she wants—a life she didn't know could be until it happened. It would be easy enough for Aakeson and Christensen to focus on the pain and misery of this situation, but instead, the screenplay details how Astrid takes each obstacle and each misfortune as an opportunity to become stronger, to figure out what's important to her, and to learn how to live her life of her own will. August's performance captures that sense of pain and the spirit that's slowly able to overcome it, all while giving a sense of Astrid becoming more physically and emotionally mature.

The film resonates, not because it's about adversity, but because it's about how Astrid discovers a sense of strength. There are painful moments that become truly touching, if only because of how certain people in Astrid's life serve as monuments of encouragement against the empty promises and naked judgments of others. Her father says, "You can do this," as Astrid is about to leave for Stockholm. Marie says it as Astrid is about to leave her son for the first—and definitely not the last—time. Eventually, after accepting that push enough times, she starts to believe it.

That's the lesson we take from this biography of Lindgren's youth quickly becoming adulthood. In Becoming Astrid, we're not watching a writer figure out what she wants to write. We're watching her determine what truths about life she eventually would pass on to, as it turns out, generations of children. They're hard-learned ones, as depicted here, but necessary, too.

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