The Emigrants: Coming to America Full of Hope, Hunger,
Disappointment and Impatience    The Emigrants (1971) Directed
by Jan Troell December 5 at BAM, part of its Max von Sydow
series  Cinephiles entering into this expecting a sweeping 19th-
century epic in which hugs are delicately framed in front of
bombastic cannonfire will be sorely mistaken—but never, ever
disappointed. The history-obsessed Troell is a peerless termite
artist; his film rigorously traces the path of Swedish peasant
Karl Oskar (Max Von Sydow), his wife Kristina (Liv Ullman), and
their extended family. The Nilssons have rotten luck; despite
dogged persistence tending the soil, their animals—and
eventually one of the couple’s children—freeze to death. Karl
Oscar is a man of the land, but no simpleton: rather than the
shoot-for-the-moon naivete that we drape over old-time immigrant
parables today, his choice to take the family to America is
driven less by foolish optimism than outright despair. Barely
scraping by in a community that conflates