Wild Strawberries (1957)
FILM CLASSIC REVIEW #5
The Sweet Smell of Sorrow - an analysis of Wild Strawberries
Ingmar Bergman is the quintessential, existential filmmaker. To me, he is the black angel of cinematic death, and please, I mean that in the best way possible. He's most famous for attempting to answer the questions that all of us want answered. What is the meaning of life? What happens when we die? Is there a god? Is there a heaven or a hell? Bergman is always asking these questions in his film, and always, does he find interesting answers and hypothesis formed by these questions. He uses his actors and his framing abilities to help drive home the main idea of these films, and thus, his movies are notoriously not very hard to understand. Most importantly, he has an ability to make us understand the answers, and to help us understand ourselves. Bergman is an introspective filmmaker by definition, and because of that, his films have become so cherished and remembered for being so. In a period slightly before his heyday, no film makes a better example of his unique cinematic mission than Wild Strawberries.
Wild Strawberries focuses on an elderly professor, Dr. Isak Borg, who lives by himself with his common-law wife in Stockholm. After a lifelong journey of achieving greatness in himself and academia, he has been invited to Lund University to receive an honorary degree. He gets in a car with his daughter-in-law, Marianne, and together they travel to Lund. Through the travel, Isak is haunted by his own thoughts and dreams that have accumulated after years of isolation and reflection. At the not-so-ripe age of 78, Isak want's to understand what led him to this strange point of his life, where he went wrong, and what on Earth will happen next? He is remembered of the place of his childhood, where the wild strawberries grew. A time when he romanced his young, beautiful cousin, Sara, before being stolen from him by his older, arrogant brother Sigfrid. Before going on the trip, he has a vivid, terrible nightmare of being old, as a dead body follows him through a city street and a hearse crashed in front of him, revealing a clone of himself in a casket. Through the ways of the trip, and through the hitchhikers he meets along the way, his mind keeps racing and the dreams of his past and future keep following him. The journey becomes so strenuous and visceral to his memory, that by the time he arrives at his destination, his psyche is entirely cleansed, and he is greeted with the memory of a peaceful fishing trip with his family.
What Bergman is doing here is experimenting with time and space, through memory and reflection. His style reminds me of Hiroshima Mon-Amour, considering that there is no clear pattern between what happens in the moment, and what happens in the past. Bergman is giving us a deconstructed narrative that in essence, gives us a clear indication of the kind of crisis that Isak is going through. As a man that has been through everything and nothing, his mind is racing, much like our own, of scenarios that did and didn't happen. This is quite an interesting introspective device that Bergman uses. He is making movies about people, the exact way that we think about each other. Bergman typically uses characters that wrestle with their own identity, and bravely ask questions that might have no answers. Thus, it doesn't take much interpretation of the audience to understand, because all of the questions and answers are presented on screen.
Wild Strawberries is a very entertaining, beautiful piece to that effect. The entire time, I was haunted, confused, and rightfully engaged with Isak and the characters he meets. My favorite scene of the film is the nightmare at the beginning. The surrealism of this section is frightening and so wonderfully imaginative. I loved the giant eyeglasses that appeared over his head, as well as the dead man with no face that appears to him in the middle of the street. Bergman was really experimenting with some wonderful visual concepts, especially for the 1950's. I thought the acting, was also very real and interesting to watch. Bergman was always known to be a director for actors, and in this film especially, he makes his actors play these characters as real people, not merely as stage personas. What we get because of that is a real, frightening portrayal of an older man, and seeing that alone is fascinating.
In conclusion, Wild Strawberries is a dark and interesting classic about the struggle of understanding our fate, and without question, it should regarded as one of the great films of Ingmar Bergman.
The Sweet Smell of Sorrow - an analysis of Wild Strawberries
Ingmar Bergman is the quintessential, existential filmmaker. To me, he is the black angel of cinematic death, and please, I mean that in the best way possible. He's most famous for attempting to answer the questions that all of us want answered. What is the meaning of life? What happens when we die? Is there a god? Is there a heaven or a hell? Bergman is always asking these questions in his film, and always, does he find interesting answers and hypothesis formed by these questions. He uses his actors and his framing abilities to help drive home the main idea of these films, and thus, his movies are notoriously not very hard to understand. Most importantly, he has an ability to make us understand the answers, and to help us understand ourselves. Bergman is an introspective filmmaker by definition, and because of that, his films have become so cherished and remembered for being so. In a period slightly before his heyday, no film makes a better example of his unique cinematic mission than Wild Strawberries.
Wild Strawberries focuses on an elderly professor, Dr. Isak Borg, who lives by himself with his common-law wife in Stockholm. After a lifelong journey of achieving greatness in himself and academia, he has been invited to Lund University to receive an honorary degree. He gets in a car with his daughter-in-law, Marianne, and together they travel to Lund. Through the travel, Isak is haunted by his own thoughts and dreams that have accumulated after years of isolation and reflection. At the not-so-ripe age of 78, Isak want's to understand what led him to this strange point of his life, where he went wrong, and what on Earth will happen next? He is remembered of the place of his childhood, where the wild strawberries grew. A time when he romanced his young, beautiful cousin, Sara, before being stolen from him by his older, arrogant brother Sigfrid. Before going on the trip, he has a vivid, terrible nightmare of being old, as a dead body follows him through a city street and a hearse crashed in front of him, revealing a clone of himself in a casket. Through the ways of the trip, and through the hitchhikers he meets along the way, his mind keeps racing and the dreams of his past and future keep following him. The journey becomes so strenuous and visceral to his memory, that by the time he arrives at his destination, his psyche is entirely cleansed, and he is greeted with the memory of a peaceful fishing trip with his family.
In conclusion, Wild Strawberries is a dark and interesting classic about the struggle of understanding our fate, and without question, it should regarded as one of the great films of Ingmar Bergman.
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