Beasts, Man, the Land and the Ocean – that’s how it used to be! Veteran farmer Teodor Svensson thinks the severing of the natural food chain by modern cavalier farmers obsessed with profit, will have its price to pay. He talks passionately of how people had few expenses when he was young thanks to the cooperation between humans and Nature.

This 1989 documentary by highly acclaimed Stefan Jarl is a Rembrandtesque meditation on exactly this harmony, and can justifiably be viewed as a piece of anthropological research. The camera and microphone are eloquent narrators creating memorable unnamed timelessness by means of sustained shots and high fidelity sound; a sunrise on the nearby shore: a tide of piglets feeding from their mother; the wasted drips of milk after the milk-tanker hose is removed; cakes hand-made by Teodor’s wife, Asta; and finally, the relentless lighthouse beam ensuring frail humans safety when Nature’s “revenge” threatens to destroy them.