Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Arn: The Knight Templar - The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

And now. . .the rest of the story.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 11, 2012

People under the age of 30 or so probably have little memory of what life was like in the pre-internet age, but there were things called books and places called libraries where you had to go to do research. The internet has provided such an amazing amount of information, literally at everyone’s fingertips, that it’s sometimes kind of surprising when basic data about this or that subject can’t be instantly gleaned. Therefore I was kind of at a loss about a year and a half ago when I received the feature film version of Arn: The Knight Templar to review, since there was (rather surprisingly) precious little information about the project available online, even at such generally reliable sources as IMDb. Several of our extremely knowledgeable international readers were able to fill in some of the blanks that I had run up against and clarified that Arn actually originated as a Swedish miniseries which was later recut into two theatrical releases. Those two films were in turn reedited yet again and combined to make what would become Arn: The Knight Templar on Blu-ray. Now Entertainment One is releasing the original six part miniseries. There are both pluses and minuses to each of the home video releases of the Arn franchise. As I mentioned in my review of the film amalgamation, the film version seemed to lurch uneasily between various timeframes and also seemed to leave some salient plot points on the cutting room floor. Conversely, while the Arn miniseries fills in a lot of missing information, it is also inordinately detailed and lengthy, requiring a certain amount of patience to arrive at the same destination that the film version gets to in a brisker fashion.

As bizarre as this may sound, Arn: The Knight Templar is in its own way very much like Doctor Zhivago, albeit transported to the 12th century and dealing with the roiling political atmosphere of what would become Sweden rather than the conflict that was erupting in Bolshevik Russia in the early years of the 20th century. As discussed in the review of the feature film version, Arn tells the story of the star-crossed love affair between Arn (Joakim Nätterqvist) and Cecilia (Sofia Helin). The bulk of the story recounts their lives apart after a brief assignation that produces a son. Unfortunately due to the machinations of Cecilia’s duplicitous little sister, Arn ends up getting banished to the Holy Land as a Knight Templar while Cecilia is forced to enter a convent where she’s put under the thumb of the despicable Mother Rikissa (Ingmar Bergman regular Bibi Andersson). As with Yuri and Lara in Doctor Zhivago, a brief tryst turns into a lifelong obsession which includes a child, with a bittersweet ending that will leave many viewers feeling more than a bit weepy.

This miniseries version expectedly spends a lot more time on various aspects of the story than the feature film version did. While the feature film version touches on all of these elements, the miniseries gives the characters and their development room to breathe. Therefore, the rather cursory overview of Arn’s childhood, which also colors his adult relationship with the man who would strive to become Sweden’s king, is fleshed out rather considerably. Also, the somewhat puzzling motif of the cawing black bird is given more context in this miniseries version, though truth be told the symbol emerges as somewhat more hackneyed with the additional explanation. One thing that is also emphasized in this longer version is the agony of Arn and Cecilia being parted for so long. The feature film version was bad enough, keeping the lovers apart for almost all of its running time, but here it seems almost interminable. The flip side is that their reunion (which doesn’t come until halfway through the fifth of six episodes) is at least a little more fleshed out before a sad coda rears its tragic head.

Arn: The Knight Templar is being touted as a companion piece to Game of Thrones in the press sheet accompanying this new miniseries version release, but as was discussed in the review of the feature film, it’s really reminiscent of Kingdom of Heaven and Braveheart (as well as tonally and thematically to Doctor Zhivago, as mentioned above). This is an incredibly sumptuous production, really brilliantly recreating a sort of feudal proto-Sweden, a land where Church and King held sway and the internecine warfare between various clans and tribes left the land in a seemingly unending epoch of tumult and turmoil. The miniseries benefits from spending more time developing these strands, as well as having the luxury to exploit the impressive production design more thoroughly. On the other hand, the miniseries also falls prey to the formulas of the genre, with several pseudo- cliffhangers both where commercials would have been placed and (especially) at the end of episodes. All of this said, what may be the most salient issue is how some viewers may grow weary of seeing Arn and Cecilia having to weather so much incredible misfortune for so long in this version, then only to see a cruel fate snatch happily ever after out of their hands after a very brief interlude of reunion.

Arn: The Knight Templar - The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Arn: The Knight Templar – The Complete Series is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Entertainment One with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. According to IMDb, which now has at least a little info on the project, Arn was filmed in Super 35 with a 2K Digital Intermediate, and the overall look of the miniseries is sharp, albeit tweaked in post in several (even most) sequences, which materially affects sharpness. A lot of the childhood sequences are skewed toward the blue end of the spectrum, while the initial romance scenes between Arn and Cecilia are fairly bursting with a golden ambience. Other sequences are slightly desaturated or emphasize gray scale, giving the miniseries a kind of slightly monochromatic appearance. Generally, though, fine object detail is quite good, even exceptional at times, and the gorgeous location photography which literally spans the globe often offers some staggering depth of field.

Arn: The Knight Templar - The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

If anything, Arn: The Knight Templar – The Complete Series features even more impressive audio than the feature film version did, and the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is awash in really fulsome LFE and fantastic immersion. Right off the bat, as thundering horse hooves pound across the desert floor, the listener is surrounded in excellent directionality and panning effects as well as floorboard rattling lower frequencies. The miniseries, like the feature film, is a multilingual affair, with the bulk of the film being spoken in Swedish and English, but a variety of other languages being thrown into the mix on occasion. As with the feature film, standard English subtitles are available for the non-English segments, while English SDH subtitles are available for the entire miniseries. Dialogue is very clean and crisp, and there is a glut of excellent sound effects throughout the miniseries. The score is also quite effective, and also uses some low end sounds which add some subliminal dramatic emphasis quite a bit of the time. Fidelity and dynamic range are both top notch throughout the miniseries.

Arn: The Knight Templar - The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The same three supplements that accompanied the feature film version on Blu-ray are also included on this miniseries release:

• Trailer (SD; 2:19)


• Behind the Scenes Featurette 1 (SD; 21:30). This is a fairly interesting piece that may have aired on Swedish television to promote Arn, but in the franchise's guise as two feature films rather than the miniseries. The featurette follows the filming from its beginning in 2007 and features copious behind the scenes footage as well as interviews with the principal cast and crew. It's interesting to hear how much English is being spoken by the crew during filming.


• Behind the Scenes Featurette 2 (SD; 21:23). This featurette concentrates on the second feature film. While both the films and the miniseries dart back and forth in time, at least somewhat, this second feature seems to have consisted mostly of Arn's adventures as a Knight Templar rather than some of the backstory. This once again features behind the scenes footage, final cut footage and some interviews.

Arn: The Knight Templar - The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I personally wish that this miniseries version had been released first, as it at least gives a sort of baseline of the story and characters that would have made the feature film version a bit more comprehensible. That said, there are pluses and minuses to both of these outings. The feature film version manages to get a lot of the most important information crammed into the exposition, though now having seen the miniseries, it's obvious that quite a bit of detail understandably got left by wayside. The miniseries is obviously much more involved, and while that gives greater dramatic heft to the characters, it also makes the agony of Arn and Cecilia's long separation almost unbearable. All things considered, I come down ever so slightly on the side of the miniseries, if only because its more leisurely pace actually better depicts the horrifyingly long separation of the two lovers. This is a gorgeous production with a top flight cast that also includes such notables as Simon Callow and Stellan Skarsgård augmenting the two leads. With great video and exception audio, this release comes Recommended.