A great documentary can make you fall in love with a real person you had never encountered before viewing a film. Such is the case, for me, with Lars Hammar, the protagonist of the Oscar-contending documentary The Last Journey.
Dear Lars spent a career teaching French to kids in Sweden. Reaching a certain age, he stepped away from the classroom to a future he imagined would sparkle with adventure and travel. Alas, in retirement he felt the increasing gravitational pull of his comfy recliner, and instead of journeying abroad, he sank deeper into the cushions – and then deeper into depression.
“He seems to have lost his spark,” his wife Tiina notes with concern in the film directed by Filip Hammar – the couple’s son — and Fredrik Wikingsson.
Directors Fredrik Wikingsson (left) and Filip Hammar in ‘The Last Journey’
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The filmmakers gained fame in Sweden for their work as television hosts, their humor showcased in mostly lighthearted forays outside the studio. Seeing his dad begin to wither away, Filip decided the thing that might lift Lars’s spirits would be a road trip to the south of France, where the Hammar family had summered for many a year. Wikingsson joined the speculative mission.
“It was not even a film when it started out,” Hammar noted at a recent IDA Q&A in Los Angeles. “It was me wanting to go on a trip with my dad and then me and Fredrik started talking about this for some reason, as friends.”
L-R Lars Hammar, Fredrik Wikingsson, and Lars Hammar drive to France in ‘The Last Journey’
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“I’ve known Filip’s dad for as long as I’ve known Filip — since the mid ‘90s, and I’ve loved him since I got to know him,” Wikingsson added. “I saw the gradual decline, if you want to call it that, of [Lars] just sitting at home. Filip told me, ‘I want to do something for my dad, desperately,’ and we spitballed, ‘What could that be?’ Then when he started talking about, ‘Maybe I should get an old Renault 4 from the ‘70s [the kind of vehicle the Hammar family had driven on their summer excursions to the Riviera] and then we started getting [mental] images of that little car going through Europe, it seems a little cinematic. That would be interesting to maybe tell that story and see if other people can be touched by it.”
Lars was not a particularly eager participant at the start of the journey and within hours of leaving home he had taken a spill, breaking some bones.
“I’m in pain and uncertain how this will go,” Lars confides in a video diary. Once ambulatory again, the trip resumed and as the trio of Lars, Filip, and Fredrik crossed into France, Lars’s spirits showed occasional signs of revivifying. A Francophile par excellence, somehow the ways of the French never failed to delight him – probably because of the contrast to comparatively buttoned-down Swedish culture.
“Every Frenchman is a tiny president!” he says admiringly at one point in the film.
Father and son: Filip Hammar (left) with his dad Lars in ‘The Last Journey’
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As the kilometers go by and the companions near the picturesque seaside village of Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Lars’s intrinsic quiet nobility emerges, the way he holds himself to such exacting ethical standards. En route to Beaulieu, they stop at a church where Lars wants to see a priest to get something off his chest – an action he took decades earlier for which he has long felt guilt and shame.
“When we went to that church for the confession scene — I don’t speak French, and the photographers don’t speak French — we just left them there to film it. We had no idea what they said,” Wikingsson recalls. “Two months later, the editor called me. ‘Do you realize what he’s saying in the confession?’ ‘No, no, no. What does he say?’ ‘Well, he apologizes for being rude to a cab driver in the ‘60s.’ ‘Are you joking?’ It was like such a jackpot in its small way.”
The road trip brought back memories from childhood for Filip — moments he had seen his father show kindness to his students or people in the community.
“I remember these people — this [immigrant] woman who came from Africa with her son and I remember that she came [to our house] for Christmas,” he said. “Then I realized, ‘Oh, that meant a lot for her [to be invited to Christmas dinner]… I’m happy that I could do [the film] for my dad. Of course, not everyone can [do that], but I think just reminding your parents about how great they’ve been is a good thing to do.”
Director Filip Hammar at a screening of ‘The Last Journey’ in Los Angeles
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Hammar continued, “My dad is just a regular guy. There are so many heroes out there like him, and we wanted to make the film epic… as if you’re celebrating [a heroic figure]. When I started talking to people about this film here in the U.S., making a documentary about my dad, everyone was like, ‘What did he do? Who was he? Was he the prime minister of Sweden or something?’ And then I said, ‘No, he’s a teacher.’ But he is a very good human being.”
The Last Journey has been selected as Sweden’s official entry for Best International Feature at the Oscars, and has qualified for Oscar consideration as Best Documentary Feature. It has also become a huge box office hit back home.
“This started out as a small film. Now, it’s the biggest documentary of all time in Scandinavia,” Hammar shared. “That’s, of course, weird.”
Clearly, many people are falling in love with Lars Hammar. “It’s like when you see him… he could be anyone,” Filip said. “He represents a lot of good people that are out there.”