The Last Journey celebrates the extraordinary in the ordinary

For much of his life, Lars Hammar taught French language and culture to Swedish school kids. He lives in the small town of Koping, with a population just over 17,000 people, and watches football from his recliner chair.

While a unique character in his own way, Lars is just an ordinary person, a special part of his community to be sure. But in a world of eight billion people, not a household name.

After he retired from teaching, Lars fell into a funk. He barely moved from his chair, let alone the house. He was depressed and his son, Filip Hammar, was alarmed.

“I was planning to go on a trip with my dad because I felt like it was time,” the younger Hammar told The Nightly. “I was kind of desperate, I needed to do something to see if I can cheer him up and make his life better, and make our relationship better.”

When he told his friend Fredrik Wikingsson about it, the question that came up was, “Should we bring cameras?”.

The result is The Last Journey, a tender, moving and life-affirming film about the small moments that make up the big picture, and about the acts of kindness we do for others to let them know that we love them.

Hammar and Wikingsson are big names in Sweden. For a quarter of a century, they have been known as “Filip och Fredrik”, two popular TV hosts, writers and filmmakers. So, the question of taking cameras along for the trip hasn’t come out of nowhere.

They decided to do the trip together (Wikingsson has known Lars as long as he’s known Filip), recreating the 1980s Hammar family holidays to the French seaside village of Beaulieu-sur-Mer which Lars had journalled through audio diaries all those decades ago.

“(Filip) played (the tapes) to me and at first I thought, ‘Oh, they’re very mundane and everyday’, but there was almost a poetry to that as well. This very normal Swedish family going on a trip talking about how much dinner costs, how much parking was,” Wikingsson said.

“Plus, I know his dad so well. I know what a wonderful man he is. He’s very kind, but not in the boring way some people are kind.”

Convincing Lars to be involved wasn’t straightforward. As Hammar put it, “If you’re depressed like he is, you’d rather say ‘no’ than ‘yes’, that’s part of depression.

“But he really enjoyed it and I’m forever thankful that he put his life in our hands. He’s also very generous to actually share who (he is) when he’s in his mindset.”

Because the project was so personal, Hammar understood his father wasn’t just a documentary subject he could keep at a distance, but they made the decision that they would film everything they can, and make the choices about what to show and what not to show in the editing suite.

“There’s a scene when he has fallen out of bed and then he peed his pants, and when he talked about that. To film that, and when I came into the room, that was tough.”

To keep the faith of the original journey, Hammar and Wikingsson acquired an orange Renault 4, which was not only the car the Hammars drove to and through France in the 1980s but also had the benefit of looking great on screen.

“I should be in the Guinness World Records as the tallest man to be in the backseat of a Renault 4,” Wikingsson, towering at six-foot-four, exclaimed. “I took one for the team.”

Hammar and Wikingsson also recreated for an unsuspecting Lars, a scene with hired French actors raging at each other over a parking spot.

When it came time to show Lars the finished film, Hammar didn’t have the guts to do it, so it fell to Wikingsson.

“I didn’t dare do it, so it was better Fredrik showed it to them because it was incredibly personal to me and I felt like it was going to be tough,” Hammar said.

Wikingsson drove to the small town where Lars and Tiina, Filip’s mother, live, with his laptop and hooked it into the big TV in their home. “I brought some cinnamon buns and coffee, I really wanted to butter them up for a good experience,” he recalled.

“His eyes were glued to the screen for 90 minutes and then he turned to me and said, ‘This movie has class’.”

Hammar added, “We treated him as if he was a person of historical importance in a way. To us, he is, but mostly documentaries that have this (scope) to them rarely revolve around the teacher from a small town in Sweden. They’re usually about prime ministers or actors or whatever.

“When he says this movie has class, I think it was hard for him to digest, but not in a bad way. It’s like he underestimated what we’re capable of as well.”

The Last Journey has become the highest grossing documentary ever released in Sweden and was the country’s official entry into the Oscars’ international feature category. Its success lies in Lars’ humanity and story, and the just how ordinary it is. There’s a Lars in every town in Sweden and all over the world.

Even after becoming an icon in Sweden, Lars still spends most of his time in his chair, but his world has expanded through the connections he makes with people who write to him and who call him for a chat.

“He’s a very accessible guy,” Hammar said. “He still has a public phone number and people know where he lives. If someone calls him, which happens every day, he could spend two hours talking to someone. If you just google him, you’ll find his number immediately.”

The Last Journey is in cinemas on Thursday, February 27