Troell composes every shot as if it were to be his last, but at the same time he expands our notions of what screen lyricism is, because he’s solemn and yet lyrical, disciplined yet rapturous. He will not be hurried.

It's very slow, subtly acted, and if you can last the course, quite moving

The Emigrants is a stately, pictorially romantic chronicle of the lives of a small group of peasants for whom existence at home becomes so tenuous that emigration seems the only solution.

They've made a connoisseur's "family movie," without special pomp or special pleading, one that sums up the best spirit of our country's past and that could, without a bit of jingoism, help revive our faith in its future.