Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Written by Ingmar Bergman
2003 | 111 minutes | Swedish
Criterion Blu-Ray
Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Börje Ahlstedt, Julia Dufvenius, Gunnel Fred
What it’s about: Marianne (Ullmann) is a successful, semi-retired lawyer in her ’60s when she gets an instinctual urge to seek out Johan (Josephson), her ex-husband, twenty-or-so years older, whom she hasn’t spoken to for three decades. Johan, a womanizing former professor, inherited a fortune and retired to a remote family cottage with a lake house and now lives out his days in cantankerous contemplation of his life. His estranged son Henrik (Ahlstedt)–from a relationship prior to Marianne and nearly her age–has moved into the cottage’s lake house, but the two bear a deep animosity and rarely speak. Heinrik, also an academic as well as an organist and cellist, is tutoring his nineteen-year-old daughter Karin (Dufvenius) in cello, with plans to get her into a prestigious conservatory, as they each separately mourn her mother Anna’s death two years prior. The film–whose title refers to a slow and formal dance–is divided into ten scenes, each a conversation between two of these four characters, as well as a prologue and epilogue in which Marianne addresses the audience.
Reflections: Bergman is one of those titans of cinema that’s difficult to talk about because he’s been talked about so much. My experience with him has been that his films are often fairly minimal, but explosively intense narratively and often oriented around a powerful dramatic image. This was his final film and I’ve never seen it before, and it strikes me as a very composed way to go out. This is “just” ten conversations between two people, mostly in ordinary rooms. The one scene that takes place in a church (with Bach being played on the organ) feels grandiose in scale by comparison. And there’s no visual intensity here–nothing like the specter of death in The Seventh Seal or the spider vision in Through a Glass Darkly or the opulent theater environment in Fanny & Alexander. There are a few shots that break out, but mostly this is just faces. Bodies. Talking. And it is captivating.
It’s the work of an older person, one who has accepted a certain irresolvable quality of the human spirit. Marianne can’t explain to Johan why she came until after she sees a side of him she doesn’t know, and then she won’t. Henrik is jovial and good-natured until his mind turns to his father or the loss of his daughter and he becomes a different person. What plot there is centers around Karin’s future as a cellist and Henrik’s complex relationships with a hostile father contemptuous of him and a daughter whom he never got to know, but who frightens him with her talent and the echo of her mother. All four performers (there is one fifth, non-speaking role in the last scene) are firing at the levels a Bergman film requires, but despite the focus on the performances and the long monologues, it never feels stagey–the camera-eye is purposeful, even just lingering on one of their faces. And with Liv Ullmann in particualr, whose character is the outside perspective on the triangle of the other three, there is a feeling of saying goodbye to a friend.
This doesn’t have the artistic daring of a legendary director’s classic work–it feels like a small film. But that also makes it feel focused and intimate, and while there is very little spectacle to it, it’s never less than interesting. And while it is unsparing–he was not an artist known for his warmth–there is a gentleness to it, a regret but also a peacemaking. The character’s aren’t exactly happy, but they find what they need–even in the most extreme catharsis–and there is some satisfaction in following the experience of that as an artistic emotional journey. This is a movie that could wash over you if you’re not in the right moment in life, but if and when it hits, it will hit hard.
