The Last Journey is a moving, funny documentary that broke attendance records in Sweden and was the country’s entry for this year’s Oscars.
The Last Journey is a moving, funny documentary that broke attendance records in Sweden and was the country’s entry for this year’s Oscars.
By Stephanie Bunbury
February 18, 2025 — 11.00pm
Filip Hammar’s father Lars retired when he was 66. He taught French to high-school students for 40 years – not just the nuts and bolts of language, but all about French food and culture, including getting the class to sing his favourite songs by Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens. At the end of each graduating year, he would famously do a celebratory tap dance for his departing students. He did it again the day he left the school, looking forward to more Gallic fun. “The French call it ‘le troisieme age’ – ‘the third age’,” he said in his farewell speech, filmed by one of his students for posterity. “I hope it starts the second I walk out the door.”
But it didn’t. Instead, Lars Hammar sank into his easy chair and started developing a smorgasbord of ailments. “He had these dreams of, ‘I’m going to go to France, I’m going to drink wine!’ which proves you need a more solid plan,” says Filip Hammar. Without a purpose to each day, he became increasingly depressed. “Right after that retirement, he started picking the songs for his funeral,” says his son. “It started out as a joke and then it became reality. He still does it.” By the time Lars was 80, he was a frail old man whose first response to any suggestion was “no”.
So Filip Hammar decided, in consultation with his lively mother Tiina, to stage an intervention. He would take his father on a road trip from Stockholm to the south of France, book the same apartment in Beaulieu-sur-Mer where they used to have family holidays and try to recapture the times his dad loved best. “My grand plan was to substantially change him,” says Hammar. “I wanted him to become the person he once was. Now it sounds such a naive idea, but you don’t want to accept your parents are getting older.”
Filip Hammar is famous in Sweden as one of half of Filip and Fredrik, television presenters who make travel programs and interview their odder countrymen while swapping jokes: think the Leyland Brothers, but with a wacky Scandi edge. Hammar met Fredrik Wikingsson when they were both newspaper journalists; they have been best friends and creative partners for 20 years. Wikingsson knows Lars well. They decided that he should come along on the trip to France. They also decided they should film it.
The result is The Last Journey, a moving, funny documentary that has broken attendance records in Sweden, run continuously in cinemas for the best part of a year and was the country’s entry for this year’s Oscars. “We’ve mainly done stuff about other people, so we were hesitant at first,” says Wikingsson. “Was this like a vanity thing? What would people’s reaction be? ‘Good for them, they made a trip, why the f— do we care?’ So we were very nervous about that.” As it turned out, the whole of Sweden seemed to think it was about them too.
The filmmakers planned a few plot points. Hammar bought an orange Renault 4 like the one his father drove in the ’80s. Lars Hammar always found French road rage entertaining, so Wikingsson hired actors to stage a fight over parking they could watch from a cafe, much to the old man’s glee.
Somehow, they commandeered a beach cinema to show him a series of tributes from his former students, a wonderful moment. But they also had to roll with the punches: Lars falling over in his hotel room and having to go to hospital, for example, or the crunch that came when he was about to recreate his “famous ratatouille” and found that he no longer had the strength to cut up an eggplant.
Of course, Lars was thoroughly dubious about the whole idea at the outset. As the two younger men bundled him into the front seat of the Renault, he looked very ready to get out again. In the end, however, he actually enjoyed the process. “He was a teacher for 40 years, and he really liked being in front of his students,” says Wikingsson, “so I think the ‘being on camera’ thing was surprisingly natural for him. It was like an extra pair of ears. Because Filip is not the greatest of listeners, but the camera was always there, listening.”
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As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that this trip is less about the change in Lars than it is about his son’s learning to accept it, even enjoy this slower chapter in his father’s life. “That dawned on me, before it dawned on Filip,” says Wikingsson. “That even though it’s like a hero portrayal of his dad in a way, of this great teacher influencing many people, it’s really about the change in him [Filip]. I think realising that – not clinging to the first plan, which was an upbeat story about somebody becoming his old self again – is what makes the movie true.”
The two friends also had to face the fact that they had smothered anxieties of their own. “We didn’t know when we started where this project would hit us,” says Hammar. “We started to talk about things we never talk about. I think we are in that way pretty stereotypical. We’re friends, but we’re men. We’d rather talk about sports and music than feelings.” They were both hitting 50. “When you see your dad getting old, you start to think about your own death,” he says. And what comes before death? Was he also destined to spend 15 years in a recliner?
Plenty of men do, apparently. When the film first screened in Berlin, two psychiatrists in the audience came up to talk to them afterwards. “They said that it’s really under-researched, but that it seems the majority of old men are depressed,” says Hammar. “They can’t handle this [ageing] process but since men are the way they are, they don’t talk about it.” Nor do they want to be medicated.
“Sometimes people say that men at the age of 65 close the door, while women open the door,” Hammar says. “I think that’s very true. And it’s sad for these women because sometimes they get dragged down. I love my dad to death, but I see how hard my mum’s life has become. Because they are a couple; they are the same age, but she’s become his carer. What I wish with this film is that maybe people will start to address this a little bit.”
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The film’s popularity has been one ray of sunshine for the Hammars, especially Lars. “It’s crazy for him, he’s become one of the most beloved people in Sweden suddenly,” his son says. “If you go to a restaurant with him, people line up outside the restaurant just to give him a hug. And he’s also a narcissist, so I think he kind of loves that.” In between, however, he still sits around in his own gloom.
“But it’s interesting,” Hammer continues. “When you hang out with depressed people, at times they forget they’re depressed, you know. Those moments during the trip were so valuable to me. Like when we staged the traffic accident, the smile on his face makes it worth everything. And when I talk to him now, he’s often depressed, but when he talks to me about this trip, he’s happy. To me, that’s enough.”
The Last Journey opens February 27.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
Stephanie Bunbury is a film and culture writer for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
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