Movie  2002
 I Am Dina      Back      Home
Dina: Kindness isn't exactly what I'm best known for.
Leo Zhukovsky: Then I'm in luck this evening.
[last words]
Dina: I am Dina. Watching her beloved drifting away. Am I condemned to this forever? I am the mothers' eye, which sees the child, which sees myself. I am Dina, who sees.
Lorch: Your mother is in heaven. She's... She's happy, because now... now she's free... free of all the sorrows and cares of this world. And that just makes her happy.
Dina: Does it?
Lorch: Yes
Dina: So it was a good thing that happened to my mama?
Lorch: Well...
Dina: [Dina points the sky] Up there, there isn't any sadness and no naughty girls. Nobody else knew how to send mama up there but I did. I set mama free.
Dina: I know of no fine words to do with love. They wither like flowers when I try to pick them.
Dina: They all die... And the ones that don't die... I kill.
Dina's Father: Jacob owns the biggest merchandised establishment in the whole county. He is a wealthy man.
Dina: He can wipe his ass with his money.
Jacob: [Dina got scared of her husbands' behaviour and has climbed up a high ladder during her wedding. Wedding guests watch as her husband and her father are trying to get her down] Come down Dina! Please, on my knees! Come down, I beg you!
Dina's Father: Get down here right now! What are you? Crazy? Do you want to ruin your whole wedding?
Dina: You beast!
Jacob: Yes I know, I know...
Dina: You are like a stallion, you!
Jacob: No! It won't happen again!
Dina: Oh, no?
Jacob: Come down now, I promise.
Dina: And you expect me to believe that?
Jacob: I swear to God.
Dina: Well, that demands witnesses.
Jacob: [Jacob calls out to the whole crowd] I, Jacob Groenelv, swear by almighty God, that I will never again carry on like a stallion!
Dina: I'm tired of all your accusations. Niels probably had a reason to hang himself. It was his decision.
Dina's Father: It's strange, Dina, how people always die around you.
Dina: [last words in the international version] Leo. You came back.
Leo Zhukovsky: Try to rest...
Dina: Are you going to stay?
Leo Zhukovsky: I'm always going to be leaving you, Dina, but I will always come back.
Dina: We played a game together. Mama and I. On the cliff. It was a simple game - I spun around and would count my steps moving in a random direction. If I went over the cliff, she would have to come and catch me. But she never did. I couldn't count to more than twenty.
Leo Zhukovsky: You seem to take all this talk of suffering and death very well...
Dina: I'm not easily scared.
Leo Zhukovsky: Not even by death?
Dina: Not even by that.
Dina: Look at me. Look at me. Let all the cares and sorrows of this world fall away from you...
Dina: When she feels bad, she screams. Do you still hear her?
Dina's Father: Oh, yes... I hear her... I hear her every single day.
Dina: Won't you ever stop hating me?
Dina's Father: Dina, please...
Dina: Tell me the truth, Father! Tell me what you feel.
Dina's Father: What I feel? I feel... nothing.
Dina: I don't know anything about you! Who are you?
Leo Zhukovsky: I'm no-one, Dina. I'm no-one. I am my mission.
Dina: I can't marry a man who does not exist.
Leo Zhukovsky: Oh, are we to be married?
Dina: Yes. Leo.
Leo Zhukovsky: I doubt that the prison chaplain can perform any other ceremonies other than the last rites.
Dina: It must not happen.
Leo Zhukovsky: Don't tell me you're beginning to fear death.
Dina: I want to spend my life with you.
Benjamin: You've got to stay here!
Dina: No.
Benjamin: If you go, I won't be here when you get back!
Dina: And where will you be?
Benjamin: I might be dead!
Dina: Then you have had a short life.
Benjamin: I don't care!
Dina: Benjamin, everyone cares about their own life.
Benjamin: Well, I don't! I will come back as a ghost!
Dina: I should hope so. Then I won't have lost you completely.
Dina: Jacob was no longer strong. He was frightened and would not play. He was starting to see who I was.
Niels: It's a lie.
Dina: Oh, yes?
Niels: Oh, yes.
Dina: At any rate, she is pregnant and I hardly think that the child was put there by the Holy Ghost.
Lorch: Dear Dina, by the time you read this letter, I will be dead. Has life been good to you and have you found love? Promise me that you will... That you will embrace life and not death... And find yourself a man who will help you to live in a world in which there are no ghosts. Do not ever be lonely as I have been. For I have only one friend. Death. He lies here beside my bed faithful till the end. And his cold breath makes my eyes water. Dina... pray for me. Lorch.
Jacob: [Dina is drinking and laughing with sailormen. Her husband tries to get her attention] Dina... Dina. Dina!
sailor: Pardon me, I think that your father wishes to have a word with you.
Jacob: Isn't Dina going to dine with us?
Dina's Father: No. She takes her meals in the kitchen.
Dagny: She's... happiest that way.
Dina's Father: He's to be called Jacob of course?
Dina: No, he's not. He's to be called Benjamin.
Dina's Father: Benjamin? Nobody in our family has ever been called "Benjamin".
Dina: You can brawl all you like, it will be as I say.
Description
In Northern Norway during the 1860s, a little girl named Dina accidentally causes her mother's death. Overcome with grief, her father refuses to raise her, leaving her in the care of the household servants. Dina grows up wild and unmanageable, with her only friend being the stable boy, Tomas. She summons her mother's ghost and develops a strange fascination with death as well as a passion for living. Family friend Jacob encourages Dina's father to hire Lorch, a tutor who introduces her to the cello. When Dina is old enough, she marries Jacob and moves to Reinsnes, a port he runs with his mother, Karen, and his stepsons Niels and Anders. Niels doesn't like Dina's wild ways, or the fact that she has taken over accounting duties at Reinsnes. Dina's eccentric tendencies become even stronger, eventually leading Jacob into an accident of his own and bringing Tomas back into her life.