BEFORE: So, this is the way that Documentary Month ends - not with a bang, or a whimper, but with sort of a "WTF was I thinking when I scheduled this one?". Because in all honesty, I've never seen a film by Ingmar Bergman. So why would I focus on a film ABOUT his films?
Well, honestly, it started off as a linking thing. I had to have an outro from the "Life Itself", the doc about Roger Ebert, and the cast list on IMDB was very small, but I did note that they interviewed Martin Scorsese for that film. Had I known how much archive footage was in "Life Itself", things might have been different - but Scorsese's one of those people who gets interviewed a lot for docs, people respect what he has to say about film-related things, or maybe he's got a very popular style when it comes to answering questions, I don't know. But my experience last year with the rock music docs showed me that the same people keep getting interviewed, again and again.
At the same time, I had a list of about 50 or 60 documentaries I might be interested in seeing, and I figured I'd let the linking decide which ones were in this year, and which ones were out. I had a solid 28 or 29 docs that all linked together, but I found that no matter how I organized them, they couldn't connect into a perfect chain, there was always a gap. So, I looked for a way to close the gap - one one end I had the Alex Gibney films like "Going Clear" (which has, like a couple of celebs in it) and the Steve Jobs one, which had a bunch of tech people in it, plus Ridley Scott (again, this was before I watched the doc myself, and realized there's archive footage in there of news reporters, plus famous people like Jim Henson, John Lennon and Martin Luther King in Apple's famous "Think Different" commercial".)
So, working with what I had, I found "Trespassing Bergman", which formed a neat connection that closed the gap, since both Scorsese and Ridley Scott were interview subjects in it. I didn't think much more about it until I realized that my connection back to fiction film was a false one, and if things stayed the way they were, I wasn't going to be able to link out of Documentary Month (from the film "Life, Animated", which was scheduled last). OK, time to re-organize. With three weeks left before the upcoming break in the chain, I re-ordered the SAME 20 films left in Documentary Month, and found that it took me exactly where I wanted to go - so "Trespassing Bergman" suddenly became a crucial link, since an actress interviewed here will appear in tomorrow's fiction film, which was ALWAYS on the schedule for that day. So I created a new path to get to exactly the same place, in exactly the same number of days. I can't even calculate if that's as unlikely as it sounds.
Now, I can justify including this, even though I know almost nothing about Bergman. I would LIKE to know more about Bergman - the fact that I haven't seen any of his films is a shameful thing for a film person to come out and admit. I don't have any free slots this year, but maybe next year I can watch some films - maybe this documentary will give me some clues about where to start, and which films to focus on, which ones to avoid. Maybe this can be some kind of primer, and I'll keep my eye on the TCM schedule to see if they're planning to run "The Seventh Seal" or "Wild Strawberries" this fall or winter. Probably, right?
Also, I've got a number of films that ARE on my schedule about the filmmaking process, like that film about Kubrick's assistant, "Filmworker", and then there's "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead", which is about Orson Welles making "The Other Side of the Wind", which I'm hoping to watch next year. So this, theoretically, should thematically fit in somewhere between "Life Itself" and those films. So this is not the end of documentary watching, not even for this year - I'm using two more docs as critical links in August and September. It's just the end of the doc chain for now - but I really feel the need to get back to something fictional.
Ridley Scott carries over from "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine", where he was seen in archive footage directing the famous Apple Macintosh "1984" commercial.
THE PLOT: A group of filmmakers visit Ingmar Bergman's house on the remote island of Faro to discuss his legacy.
AFTER: OK, one more shameful thing I've got to admit, as a film person - I never understood what the connection was between INGMAR Bergman and INGRID Bergman. I just figured that there was one, like they were ex-spouses or brother and sister or something, and I never took the time to look into it. Turns out that they are NOT related - however, the actress, Ingrid Berman, did appear in at least one of director Ingmar Bergman's film, late in his career. Also, the director was married five times, and one of his wives was born Ingrid Karlebo, later she was called Ingrid von Rosen after marrying her first husband. While she was married to Ingmar she used the name Ingrid Bergman, but she wasn't the SAME Ingrid Bergman who was in "Casablanca", "Spellbound" and "Notorious". All clear? There just aren't a lot of Swedish names, I guess, so they've got to keep repeating them.
Now, that's out of the way, I really lucked out here, because this film took the time to explain what the deal was with each famous Bergman film before the interviewees talked about it. I really appreciate that - so if you're a Bergman newbie like me, it's perfectly OK to proceed with watching this doc - it was even FREE for me since we have Amazon Prime. (I've got to remember to keep checking that each time, before I drop a couple bucks on iTunes or YouTube...) That said, I think I can now narrow down the field of Bergman films, and come up with a smaller and safer playlist for next year - I've got to get to "The Seventh Seal", that's an absolute must, and then "Wild Strawberries" has such a stellar reputation, I think maybe I can skip ahead to "Persona" and then "Cries & Whispers" before hitting "Scenes from a Marriage" and end with "Fanny & Alexander". I'll consider "A Little Night Music" and "Autumn Sonata", we'll have to see how it goes. Or maybe I should just say "In for a penny, in for a pound" and watch the whole lot.
The problem here is that films are subjective. There's no clear consensus in "Trespassing Bergman", even among famous directors who are very familiar with all of his films. Was "The Seventh Seal" a masterpiece, or is it so full of serious religious metaphor that it's nearly laughable by today's standards? Woody Allen seems to think it helps greatly if you study philosophy first, especially German existentialism. Umm, no thanks, I had a German grandmother, so I'm full up. And then when Bergman got to make "Fanny & Alexander", some believe that it's his masterpiece, the capper of a long and fulfilling career, while others maintain that he was essentially coasting by 1982. Agh, this is maddening, because films are a mirror, and we often see what we want to see IN them, even if that represents an intent that the filmmaker didn't have.
So, therefore, by extension, we learn more about the filmmakers interviewed ABOUT Bergman here than we do about Bergman himself. Right? Allen and Coppola hold him in high regard, of course, while other filmmakers that were invited to his island hideaway on Faro spend their time going through his library of books or his video collection. Hey, here's a copy of "Die Hard"! And Bergman owned a copy of the soft-core film "Emmanuelle" - no shocker there, I suppose. Others try to decipher the calendar code he kept on a whiteboard, wondering why he crossed out the year 1995 or what all the hearts meant on certain days. (Maybe an outline heart was a day he had sex, and a filled-in heart meant that a woman was involved...)
Some filmmakers couldn't make the trip to Sweden to visit Bergman's house, or perhaps maybe they invited only the most ardent of Bergman fans to do that. When I read the description of this film, I assumed it was going to be some kind of round-table discussion featuring all the directors chatting with each other, like at a Bergman convention or something, but no, it's all one-on-one interviews, that probably had more to do with everybody being busy and not all available at the same time. So John Landis got to be enamored with the gorgeous sunsets one can see from Faro Island, but Scorsese was interviewed in what looked like the world's smallest movie theater. Perhaps his own personal screening room? I couldn't help but notice that they interviewed Wes Anderson in his own apartment in Paris (?) and it looked about how you'd expect Wes Anderson's apartment to look - there was a brown couch that had two symmetrically-placed light fixtures over it, and they framed the couch (mostly) symmetrically - so it looked like a shot from one of his movies. Was that an inside joke?
I think the takeaway here is that no matter who you are, no matter how famous you become, when you die your family and friends are still going to have to decide what to do with your stuff. And you'll probably be judged by whatever it is you collected, whether that's movies or books or human heads. The top level of fame probably occurs when you pass away and your furniture and libraries are preserved as they are, rather than sold off. Looks like Bergman and I were sort of on the same wavelength - he reportedly also watched at least one movie a day, often up to three per day. OK, but how was he at linking films together by actor?
Also starring Tomas Alfredson, Woody Allen (last seen in "The Last Laugh"), Wes Anderson, Harriet Andersson, Pernilla August, Francis Ford Coppola, Wes Craven, Robert De Niro (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Holly Hunter (ditto), Martin Scorsese (ditto), Claire Denis, Laura Dern (last seen in "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"), Daniel Espinosa, Michael Haneke, Alejandro Inarritu, Takeshi Kitano, John Landis (last seen in "Leaving Neverland"), Ang Lee, Mona Malm, Lena Olin (last seen in "Hollywood Homicide"), Alexander Payne, Isabella Rossellini (last seen in "Life Itself"), Thomas Vinterberg, Lars von Trier, Yimou Zhang, with archive footage of Ingmar Bergman, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Bergman (last seen in "Indiscreet"), Bengt Ekerot, Sven Nykvist, Max von Sydow (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens"), Liv Ullmann (last seen in "A Bridge Too Far")
RATING: 4 out of 10 bouts of depression
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