Cries and Whispers

Year 13, Day 14 - 1/14/21 - Movie #3,716

BEFORE: And just like that, I'm 2/3 done with the Bergman films - 6 down after this one, and just three to go.  I can make it, now that I've pulled another double, just three more films, spread over three nights.  Two of them are on the longish side, so no more double-features.  Just need to endure a little bit more angst, and this will all be over.  Kind of like where we are in the pandemic now, the vaccine is being administered around the country as we speak, to people over the age of 65 in NYC, so we're protecting the people with the weakest immunities, plus the first responders like health-care workers and people who work in the prison system and nursing homes. Hopefully, now it's just a matter of a few more months and we can re-open restaurants and movie theaters and think about live concerts and sporting events again.  But right now, Americans are dying at the rate of about 4,000 a day, so it remains to be seen how crowded those concerts and sporting events will be.  Yeah, it's still depressing.  

All I can do, really, is stay indoors most days and wait for a chance at vaccination - it's still going to be a while for me.  I can't even volunteer anywhere, that also puts me at some risk.  Another month, maybe, until we see some decline in the stats.  Two months?  Actually, nobody really seems sure - but when you've been under lockdown for 10 months, what's another two?  

Liv Ullmann carries over again from "Hour of the Wolf".  I pulled off another double-feature today, because both "Hour of the Wolf" and "Cries and Whispers" were under 90 minutes in length, and I'm gearing up for a couple Bergman films that are each about 3 hours long.  Again, I feel I must either be crazy for attempting this, or I'm about to go crazy as a result. 

THE PLOT: When a woman dying of cancer in early twentieth-century Sweden is visited by her two sisters, long-repressed feelings between the siblings rise to the surface.  

AFTER: I thought I was getting a handle on what Swedish people are all about - they're simple people, they live on islands and put out their fishing nets each day, they drink milk out of large wooden bowls and enjoy eating fresh berries.  Also, they're cold and emotionally distant, even where their lovers and immediate family members are concerned.  Am I in the ballpark?  This is when I really miss talking to my old boss, because she has a Swedish ex-husband and she could probably confirm a few of the stereotypes I've learned from watching 6 Bergman films now.  Also, artists and filmmakers are tortured souls, but I knew that already, that seems to be fairly universal and not limited to Sweden.  

I started this mini-chain with "The Seventh Seal", not Bergman's first film, but the first one people tend to think of, and that came out in 1957.  Now I'm up to a film released in 1972, and Bergman seems to have suddenly discovered color film.  Gee, it had only been around since the 1930's, so what was the hold-up?  Did he really shoot films in black and white for thirty years longer than he had to?  Maybe he preferred black and white, like Orson Welles did, and he stuck with it much longer than he should have.  Anyway, finally he joined the modern era of filmmaking, just in time to depict a Swedish family where the men all wear black suits and the women all wear white dresses.  Classy - but he's still thinking in terms of black and white, clearly.

That being said, there's a lot of RED in this movie.  The family mansion has red walls and red carpeting everywhere.  At least red is powerful, red is the color of blood, the color of anger, but also the color of passion.  Red's the go-to here for everything that's not either black or white, or cries out to be seen through a red filter.  

I think this one's very timely and pandemic-themed, too - because it's about two sisters who have returned to the family home to be with Agnes, the third sister, in the advanced stages of uterine cancer.  They are there because she's close to dying, only their Swedish natures are probably telling them to run away, or at least keep their emotions in check.  This is also a great opportunity to reflect back on incidents from their lives - Maria recalls her affair with ex-lover David, who happens to be Agnes' doctor (of course) and Karin remembers the time that she mutilated herself with a piece of broken glass so she wouldn't have to have sex with her husband.  Good times? 

My conclusion is that Swedish people are pretty messed up.  Oh, they seem fine and beautiful and they make those tasty little meatballs, but inside they're full of repressed emotions and dark thoughts about the nature of human existence. If you've ever tried to assemble a piece of Ikea furniture, and realized that the instructions are incomplete or there are pieces or hardware missing, then maybe you can see where I'm coming from. Karin suddenly realizes that her life (or her relationship) is a "web of lies", and I'm not sure how one can come to this realization all of a sudden, wouldn't it be more gradual, like the lies would come into her life one at a time?  Why does she suddenly reach her breaking point on THAT night, after THAT dinner?  

Note that neither sister feels very close to Agnes, not even while she's sick and dying.  The maid, Anna, is the only one who will hold her, cradle her while she's at her weakest.  Were Anna and Agnes romantically involved?  It's unclear. No one in this family seems capable of having any kind of loving relationship, anyway - again, Swedish people are broken inside.  And the rich people are even more broken than the poor ones.  Which class was Bergman in at this point?  He couldn't have been a struggling young filmmaker at this point, so perhaps somewhere along the way he himself transitioned from a messed-up poor person to a messed-up rich one?  Discuss. 

In the last 15 minutes of the film, something very shocking, impossibly so, happens.  I won't say exactly, but it calls reality into question, and suddenly we don't know if what we're watching is real or an extended (shared?) dream sequence.  This technique has been there in Bergman's films all along - like, is the knight REALLY playing a game of chess with Death?  Are the hitchhikers in "Wild Strawberries" real, or a figment of Isak's imagination?  And was Veronica really there at the party for Johan on the so-called "Isolated" island?  So many things to consider, and in the end there are no easy answers, each viewer has to parse out for themself what is acceptable as part of reality and what is perhaps imaginary.  

In the end, Agnes gets her funeral, the maid is allowed to stay on until the end of the month, but she is allowed to keep Agnes' diary, which contains some memories of the happier days, like sitting on a swing with her two sisters while the servant pushes them back and forth.  OK, a happy memory for Agnes but maybe not for the maid.  But this is what we all have to do these days, think back on the happier moments in our lives, when we were free to leave the house and DO things, even if those things were very mundane, at least we were socializing with the people we cared about.  The cold, distant, emotionless people that we cared about.  (I've simply GOT to find some happier, more positive films to watch!)

Also starring  Harriet Andersson (last seen in "Through a Glass Darkly"), Erland Josephson (also carrying over from "Hour of the Wolf"), Ingrid Thulin (ditto), Kari Sylwan, Anders Ek (last seen in "The Seventh Seal"), Inga Gill (ditto), Henning Moritzen, Georg Arlin, with a cameo from Lena Bergman (last seen in "Wild Strawberries") and the voice of Ingmar Bergman.

RATING: 4 out of 10 reasons that Karin hates Maria