(Directed by Ingmar Bergman)
by Kevin Murphy
Last week’s Super Bowl and rocket ship pastiche has subsided to further considerations of Bergman’s classic contemplative film. Here goes:
Celebrated artist Jasper Johns has used a wide range of colors in his career. None of which have seemingly captivated his imagination like the color gray. In a recent New York Times article, Johns said, “Yes. Gray has been important to me.” Similar nods could describe Ingmar Bergman’s films.
One of the two most achieved filmmakers to die on the same day in 2007, Bergman’s films were indeterminate platitudes. He examined consciousness by drifting between death and life, between dreams and reality. If his films were painted on canvass, they might very well have turned out be the color of the overcast skies so often depicted in 1957’s Wild Strawberries.
Jasper Johns cannot be conveniently pigeonholed as an artist of gray paint. Bergman, too, was a mixture of color and philosophy. In the same article, Johns explains that though gray was indeed important, he did not consider it to be separate from the rest of his work. I think Bergman would agree that while subjects and depictions and narrative arrangements play largely in defining a filmmaker’s work, they do not limit that work. If anything, the emphasis on a singular aspect allows films done differently to receive an alternate appreciation.
Wild Strawberries is one of Bergman’s gray films. It is a prime example of the director’s philosophies, and offers a triumphant glimpse into one man’s psyche. Swedish silent film director Victor Sjostrom stars as Isak Borg. His performance is disciplined and precise; intuitive with knowledge and experience, he holds the camera and sets it free as the scene demands. His is forthright in his crabbiness, an aloof old fellow with sentimentality lurking behind his eyes. The fact this was his last film lends the role and his depiction a personal element that peers into the circumstances of a man without too many calendar pages left.
Rising in the early morning from a disturbed dream, Isak prepares for a trip to Lund, Sweden. He will receive an honorary degree in Lund, and along the way investigate his long life’s troubling issues. Borg provides a steady, reflective narrative, and the film seamlessly sequences from dreams of the past to nightmares of the present.
The soundtrack is tremulous, haunting, a bare bones approach that signals ominous events about to unfold. In the film’s opening, three piano keys are tapped. Their slow-building reach suggests darkness, storm, slippery slopes. Violins are summoned. Funereal strings against life’s rocky shore, they are sharp, pointed, and pull you around as if attached to your heart. Later it’s revealed Borg’s lost lover is the one at the piano. As he watches through a dream, Isak sees his brother kiss his lost lover as she sits at the piano and gently taps the keys.
Much attention has been paid to the evocative images that juxtapose death’s imminent encroachment against life’s fading lines. A clock without hands; a corpse’s outstretched arm; empty halls and dark windows. These images deserve to be admired and debated, for they are the artistic sensibilities of a director preoccupied with existential thought.
Bergman posits Isak Borg smack in the center of these thoughts. Existentialism, which is admittedly easier for a young man to subscribe to, is reduced to babble in the face of death. Borg is restless with unanswered problems, bitterness, and sadness. His lifelong principles become scrutinized by death’s proximity and his own disharmony with the past. He longs for reconciliation, but not dearly enough to change his emotional and psychological wardrobe. This timidity, Isak’s hesitation and terror, mark his descent towards death as tragedy.
The film flaunts our knowledge of the inevitable. We know we will die. We know we have done regrettable things. If given a chance to change, what will we do?
Isak, with his mournful eyes, studies his surroundings. His life has been rich with success. He’s received an honorary degree from an esteemed medical institution, he’s wealthy, he has had a family, and he has lived a long time. He starts to appreciate these things. He wants to change, and perhaps honor, what he has lost. He tries but it is late, and he is tired. Things slowly disappear. They move out of sight and into the darkness.
Bergman himself had to face death last year. With reel after reel of films that depict death, you’d think he’d know what to look for. What his films say, though, is merely one man’s interpretation of an event that is bound to get us all. In the end, his films speak as testimony from the grave: Live well. Regret nothing. And never think you’ll know what hit you.
