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*This post reveals significant plot details from Saraband and Tokyo Story*
Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni both died on the same day (July 30th, 2007), thusly guaranteeing that Antonioni�s death wouldn�t get nearly as much coverage as it would have otherwise. I think this is because, for so many people, Ingmar Bergman is the first auteur; Bergman�s films are the first films that the adolescent film buff recognizes as art; they are generally among the first foreign films that the young American sees (The Seventh Seal, specifically, along with Kurosawa�s Rashomon and Truffaut�s The 400 Blows. I�m not sure why this is exactly, but it�s definitely these films and not, say, Antonioni�s Red Desert). So Bergman�s death was a big deal. I can distinctly remember reading about it. The summer of 2007 was, for me, the summer after high school and before college. So much to look forward to, it seemed! So many opportunities! So much potential!
A few weeks ago, I blogged extensively about Bergman�s 1973 miniseries Scenes From a Marriage, which depicts the disintegrating marriage of Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johann (Erland Josephson). After Scenes from a Marriage, Bergman continued making movies and miniseries up through 1982�s masterpiece, Fanny and Alexander. And then it looked like he was done with film. He�d been making movies since 1946, and he�d made a lot of them, often one a year, if not more. He was also actively involved in the theater for much of his life, and he continued direct theatrical productions after Fanny and Alexander (he has a famous quote where he says, �The theater is my wife, but film is my mistress.�)
By the early �00�s, it would certainly have appeared that Bergman was well-settled into retirement, ensconced in his cozy home on F�r� island. A post-9/11 Bergman didn�t seem likely. But then 2003 rolled around and he decided (and this is just a guess), �Hey, you know what, why not take one more stab at movie-making before I die?� And he decided for good measure that this was to be a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage. Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson were both still alive and in full possession of their faculties, so why not? (Bergman was lucky; Lars von Trier was never able to make a third and final season of The Kingdom because several of the key actors died after the second season). Yes, it is rare that we get to see a sequel after so much time has passed, and a good one, at that. This is none of your Indiana Jones and the Crystal Cash-in bullshit, nor is it the Annie Hall sequel that Woody Allen has allegedly considered (actually, I�d almost certainly watch that, but it still wouldn�t be a good idea).
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| Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson in Scenes from a Marriage (1973) |
So, Bergman wants to show us Marianne and Johann thirty years after Scenes from a Marriage. God is it sad. The movie starts with Marianne deciding to visit Johann, whom she hasn�t had contact with in many years, and while she may have her shit together, Johann is just as bad as ever. In Johann we see all the anger, bitterness, and self-loathing that he manifested back in the �70�s, except now he�s an old man and we know that there�s no time left for him to fix himself. He�s going to be stuck with this until he dies.
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| Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann in Saraband (2003) |
After we reunite Marianne and Johann (and there�s still some tenderness between them, so this isn�t unmitigated bleakness), we find that Johann�s son Henrik (issue of a coupling the nature and timing of which I didn�t catch; he�s certainly not Marianne�s son) and Henrik�s nineteen-year-old daughter Karin live in a cottage nearby, where Henrik provides the girl with cello lessons. Henrik�s wife and the girl�s mother, a beauty named Anna, whose picture we see on numerous occasions, died two year previously of cancer, and Henrik couldn�t bear it, and the presence of his daughter is the only thing he has to live for.
Ugh, this is turning into a rehash, I was not planning on a rehash. I have key points I want to make, and they have to do with how fucking disappointing life can be. Think of the iconic scene at the end of Tokyo Story, where the tone-deaf neighbor woman says to the recently bereaved Chishu Ryu, �Life sure is disappointing, isn�t it?"
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| Chishu Ryu (L) being poorly consoled in Tokyo Story (1953) |
And what we see in Sarabandis not only that Johann has irredeemably fucked up his life (he declares as much near the beginning of the film, where he says that the whole thing was a miserable waste) but that�s he�s passed this �fucked-upedness� onto his son. And father and son hate each other, because they see themselves in each other and it�s awful.
Henrik wants Karin to attend a nearby musical conservatory, but Karin wants to get out of Sweden and study at a more reputable, internationally-inclined music school in Germany (Karin has great potential, she mustn�t squander it). Karin knows her departure will crush Henrik, but if she stays, he�llcrush her. To come back to Ozu, they�re like the opposite of the typical Chishu Ryu-Setsuko Hara dynamic. In Ozu�s movies, Chishu Ryu and his daughter (or daughter-in-law) Setsuko Hara are always happy to stay with each other, and it�s only outside societal pressure that forces them to separate, by insisting that Hara�s character marry. By contrast, if we look at Karin and Henrik, we can see that Karin needs to get the hell out of there as soon as possible, because this isn�t good for her. As for her father, well, he shouldn�t put her in this position, it�s emotionally manipulative. There is in fact a scene where the two of them are leaning in close and having an intense conversation and what starts as affectionate caressing of the hair and face becomes a brief, but distinctly sexual, kiss between them. I saw this and thought, �Wow, Bergman went there,� but I�m not sure if I thought this was a good thing or not. On the one hand, most Freudianisms tends to be reductive; on the other hand, if there isa sexual component at play between the characters, then I guess it�s good for Bergman not to pussyfoot around the issue.
I want to mention one more scene before I conclude this review/synopsis/whatever the hell it�s turned out to be. It�s near the end of the movie. Marianne has been living with Johann for weeks, sleeping in his guestroom. The day before, Karin left Henrik to go study in Germany. In despair, Henrik attempted suicide and was taken to the hospital in critical condition. His fate is left ambiguous. That night, Johann paces around his room, quietly sobbing and making tiny convulsive gestures. At first I thought he was having a stroke. Then he goes into Marianne�s room and tells her (slight paraphrase): �I am filled with anxiety.� She says, �Yes, what happened with Henrik is very sad.� And he says, �No, it�s not sadness, it�s anxiety, a hellish anxiety. I feel like the anxiety is enormous. My body is too small for it. It wants to burst through every orifice, my eyes, my ass.� They decide that Johann will sleep with Marianne that night. He explains that his anxieties have left his nightshirt soaked with perspiration, and so he�ll have to take if off. And he does so, and we see him naked. And we realize that Marianne hasn�t seen him naked in years, decades even, and here he is, with his paunch and his vaguely comical old man�s penis. I can think of few scenes filmed more compassionately than this one. Certainly, I can think of few better cinematic depictions of a penis. You can either go the Judd Apatow-route, which amounts to �Lol dongs,� or you can go the uber-serious route (Schindlers�s List) or the erotic route (In the Realm of the Senses). It�s hard for filmmakers, it would seem, to convey the emotional nakedness of nudity. Kudos, Bergman.
Well, then Marianne gets undressed too, although her body is mostly in shadow, but still, they get to look at each other for the first time in so long, and then they climb into bed together, and their tenderness would seem to compensate�in some small way, at least�for all the bitterness that went before. The sad penis can elicit great compassion. There are no penises on display in Ozu, but the melancholy evoked by Josephson�s penis corresponds very closely to the wistful sadness with which Ozu breaks up his multigenerational families.
So Saraband was Bergman�s last film, and fittingly, it was about old people trying to make peace with their lives while simultaneously seeking to ease the path for future generations. Will Karin end up happy? Probably not. Johann evidently poisoned Henrik in some capacity, and it�s not unlikely that Henrik hasn�t poisoned Karin. Sigh, families. Bergman has left us in Ozu country.
