Wild Strawberries - Criterion Collection
by Ingmar Bergman
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DVD details
Actor: Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Bj?rnstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Jullan Kindahl, Victor Sj?str?mDirector: Ingmar Bergman
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Gunnar Fischer
Writer: Ingmar Bergman
Editor: Oscar Rosander
Producer: Allan Ekelund
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: Swedish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 91 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-02-12
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of Wild Strawberries - Criterion Collection
DVD Review: Artistic expressions captured in simple reflection...
Summary: 5 Stars
Drawing comparisons to (and probably serving as the inspiration for) Woody Allen's masterful `Deconstructing Harry', and personally reminding me of the shockingly haunting `Eraserhead', Ingmar Bergman's 1957 classic `Smultronstallet' (translated `Wild Strawberries') is truly an unforgettable film. The definition of a reflection piece, `Smultronstallet' gives us a look into the life nearly complete and all the lessons learned from deep and meaningful pondering of that said life.
Isak Borg has been a doctor for fifty years. He is being honored for this great achievement and so decides to take a road trip with his daughter-in-law to receive his award. Upon setting off, Isak is plagued by memories that expose parts of his life that weighed the heaviest on him and that molded him into the cold and selfish man he is today. This reflection helps Isak to see the meaning of his life and what he needs to do in order to truly feel accomplished.
A lot of people have spent time laying out the emotional progression of this film, and normally I would also, but I don't feel the need to just repeat everyone else.
I will mention that the wonderful thing about `Smultronstallet' is that its focus is on self reflection, and while that comes in the primary form of Dr. Isak Borg it is not exclusively contained in him. Everyone around him is affected by his personal reflection and thus are all given the opportunity to expose themselves and work towards change. We are also given modern day glimpses into Isak's past (with the surfacing of three young hitchhikers as well as a bickering married couple) that give Isak, as well as his daughter-in-law Marianne, reason to examine their own situation. Their initial coldness is worn down as they realize they have more in common with one another than they expected.
The film is propelled by some very strong performances, especially from Victor Sjostrom and Ingrid Thulin. Sjostrom, who was eighty when he did this film, is fully realized as Isak, capturing the man's emotional fragmentation as he picks apart his own existence. Thulin is possibly even more effective as Marianne, for it is within her complete transformation (and stunning confession) that the true signs of change are seen. The rest of the supporting cast is also very effective, especially Bibi Anderson (who covers two very important roles) as well as Bjorn Bjelfevstam and Naima Wifstrand; and Gertrud Fridh has a very strong cameo as Karin, Isak's wife.
The film is almost frighteningly realistic in its unveiling of our own humanity, and it is definitely a film that will leave you with much to ponder about your own life. With some outstanding performances and Bergman's brilliantly restrained touch, `Smultronstallet' is a classic example at superior filmmaking.
DVD Review: Entertaining and even downright touching, but rather lesser among the late '50s Bergman
Summary: 4 Stars
Of the three films of the late '50s with which Ingmar Bergman established his reputation as one of the foremost auteurs of the age, 1957's SMULTRONSTAELLET (Wild Strawberries) may be the weakest. Like DET SJUNDE INSEGLET (The Seventh Seal) and JUNGFRUKAELLAN (The Virgin Spring), it treats issues of religious faith and fear of death, but in a much less coherent way. Yet, SMULTRONSTAELLET may be the most charming and endearing of the trilogy, as we watch a crusty old man examine his past and decide to treat those around him better.
The Scrooge-like figure is Isak Borg (Viktor Sjostrom), a retired professor of medicine now in his 78th year. Invited from his Stockholm home to receive an honourary degree at Lund University, he decides to travel the distance by car. Accompanying him on this outing is his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin), who is experiencing marital troubles with his son Evald (Gunnar Bjornstrand). Along the way, Borg stops at some old stomping grounds, such as the summer house he spent his childhood at, and the area where he first practiced medicine. As Borg drifts into reveries of old memories, we discover how he became so bitter and hostile, but Marianne's incisive comments push him towards rediscovering his humanity.
Of course death is an ever-present spectre when Borg is pushing 80. But the strong religious element comes when Borg and Marianne pick up three hitchhikers, a young lady (Bibi Andersson) with her boyfriend and a family-appointed chaperone. One of these lads wants to be a priest and has strong faith, while the other is hoping to become a doctor and doubts the existence of a god. They quarrel, but somehow this entire matter seems unrelated to the main arc of the film. Similarly baffling is Evald's babblings about how he doesn't want a child because he himself does not want to exist, in which the writing almost seems parody Bergman.
The acting, however, is superb. Sjostrom really brings his character to life with his initial bah-humbug mannerisms and his later senile puzzlement that he cannot win everyone back to him right away. It's amusing to see Bibi Andersson playing a ditzy teenager, a role light years away from her intense turn in Bergman's PERSONA almost a decade later.
The most economic way to see SMULTRONSTAELLET is in the Criterion Collection set of four Bergman films from the 1950s.
DVD Review: Finely Crafted Existential Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
It is certainly fair to say that much of Igmar Bergman's work (The Seventh Seal, Fanny and Alexander) takes an experienced mind to fully appreciate. As elitist as I'm in danger of sounding for writing that, I do believe it, but I will also concede that I am by no means experienced enough in life to appreciate Wild Strawberries fully. It makes me wonder why a film like Wild Strawberries would be shown in film classes to budding and perhaps talented artists, but not unlike me, they are most likely novices at life. Dr. Isak Borg (Victor Sj?str?m) is not a novice. He knows what it is like to lose love and surrender to something less. He knows exactly what it is like to be lulled and deceived by life's trials. For so long he was dead in life and would become alive again during the process of his death. It is a bittersweet and profoundly beautiful realization that Dr. Borg is compelled to find in this truly amazing film.
Wild Strawberries follows the one day journey of 76 year old medical scientist Isak Borg. Isak was born into a family of ten children and he is the only one alive today. He has been a doctor for fifty years, a father for probably more than thirty years, a widower for some time, and socially he has withdrawn quite a bit. He is being rewarded for his professional accomplishments and he travels to his destination to receive his honors. Through interactions with various characters, through triggered memories, and sometimes through horrific dream sequences, this film turns out to be a meditation on Dr. Borg's life. It is ultimately about a man in the twilight of his life gazing into the mirror, perhaps for the final time, to find some level of resolution and comfort.
There are so few filmmakers today making existential road films like this. Alfonso Cuar?n (Y tu mam? tambi?n, Children of Men) comes to mind. It's so rare to find something so deep and succinct. Most films that rely to any degree of making philosophical statements through dream sequences and similar devices are often reduced to being vague, cryptic, and sometimes even pretentious. Wild Strawberries provides both a glimpse into the psychology of Dr. Borg as well as a more macrocosmic spirituality some viewers will empathize with and find endlessly rewarding. It is a film about nerves and dread but at the same time it is a film about authentic self-identity, satisfaction, and peace. There's a lot to learn here. This is a film to enjoy multiple times for sure.
DVD Review: Great
Summary: 4 Stars
Watching Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries for the first time was an interesting experience because of three reasons. One, the film itself is terrific. Two, I watched it the same night as the 2006 Academy Awards, and was struck by how Bergman's film never condescends to its viewer, unlike the major nominated Politically Correct films Hollywood churns out and rewards. Three, having always known of Bergman from the films of American filmmaker Woody Allen, I was struck at just how much Allen steals from Bergman in many of his films- from camera angles and techniques, to outright theft of scenes. Not that I am accusing Allen of wrongdoing, for T.S. Eliot basically admitted that if an artist is to steal, they should steal from the greats, and Bergman crafted a great film, rife for purloining, back in 1957.
The story the film tells is rather simple- it's a road film that journeys into the past and psyche of a retired widower and Professor of Medicine named Isak Borg (Victor Sj?str?m). Sj?str?m was apparently a greatly influential actor and director in the first few decades of Swedish cinema, but by 1957 had spent a decade or more in declining reputation. This film and role sealed his immortality. It is a great performance, and one which a lesser actor could easily have gone over the top with. There is a perfect modulation to not only his performance, but to every aspect of the film, starting with Bergman's stellar screenplay. I would be hard pressed to think of a great film, or even a good one, that lacks a good screenplay. This is one of the ironies of film, versus the other visual arts- it's almost wholly dependent upon an art form, writing, with an entirely different paradigm.
Bergman was wise to have his film clock in at a mere hour and a half. It is a small, personal film, despite its cosmic undertones and themes. In a sense it balances the best of the dramas of Shakespeare and Chekhov, which is where the plays of Ibsen and Strindberg, Bergman's two greatest claimed influences, reside. He also wisely fills the detritus of Borg's life with symbolism that others- in the film or out- can interpret, but to Borg are just there. In a sense, the most important scene in the film, the one which acts as a fractal refraction of the whole film, is that where Borg and his mother pick through the old box of children's things as Marianne looks coldly on, misinterpreting both mother and son for her own reasons. For this reason, Wild Strawberries stands out not only as a great piece of cinema, but its screenplay as a great piece of literature. And given the multivalence of such art as this, to skillfully combine great imagery with great storytelling in a poetic vein, it's no wonder that film has become the dominant art form of the last half century, supplanting the novel and painting, just as they had supplanted poetry and the romance.
Let me end this essay where I began, lamenting the greatness of this film juxtaposed with the supposedly `great' films that Hollywood proffered for Oscars this year. It is like comparing a rich, diverse banquet with a greasy bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Period. One of the complaints that I have always found valid about great art is how it is usually always too expensive for the average person to enjoy- be it paintings in swank galleries, small books of poetry several times the price of novels, outrageously priced theater and opera tickets, or even foreign films on video or DVD. This was one of the major reasons it took me so long to watch this film, because the DVD I purchased, from The Criterion Collection, retails for $39.95, while your average Hollywood blockbuster can retail for a third that, or less. Is it any wonder, then, that the masses choose swill to fill their free time? In the name of raising up the filmic awareness and appreciation for the great films of the past, foreign or domestic, like Wild Strawberries, I urge companies that distribute foreign films to do their best to make good quality DVDs of such classics available more cheaply, for there is a market to be filled with great affordable art, and once a taste of greatness is given, the market will only expand, and justify the demotic impulse to lower prices with an increased quantity of sales making up for loss of high profit margins per unit. Dover Thrift Editions in America, and Wordsworth Editions in the U.K. have proven that great books cheaply distributed is an economically viable strategy, and I believe the same is true for great films. Why should films like Wild Strawberries remain only in the province of film snobs, and not made available to compete for viewership with contemporary schlock like Brokeback Mountain or Crash simply for economic reasons? Greatness in art may exact a price from its creators, but price should not diminish art's reach. Great films like Wild Strawberries deserve to be freed to the masses, to be enjoyed and enlightened. Watch it and you will agree.
DVD Review: Journey at the end of life
Summary: 5 Stars
Touching firm by Ingmar Bergman about an elderly man, at the end of his life, making a final journey that would be his own attempt to reconcile his life. The main character is 78 year old man, a doctor and an intellectual who on his way to receive an honorary doctorate degree from the university meets people and places along the way that help him reflect on his childhood, youth, marriage, career and reconcile all of that in preparation for the inevitable death. Like all Bergman's movies, this one has its own pace, metaphors and beauty. One can only hope that at the end of our lives we can all find the peace that main character in this film does. Absolute classic.
Description of Wild Strawberries - Criterion Collection
The film that catapulted Bergman to the forefront of world cinema is the director's richest, most humane movie. Traveling to receive an honorary degree, Professor Isak Borg (masterfully played by the veteran Swedish director Victor Sj?str?m), is forced to face his past, come to terms with his faults, and accept the inevitability of his approaching death. Through flashbacks and fantasies, dreams and nightmares, Wild Strawberries captures a startling voyage of self-discovery and renewed belief in mankind.An elderly college professor sets out in his car to receive an honorary degree--and takes a trip instead through his own past and subconscious--in this bittersweet but ultimately tender and understanding 1957 film by Swedish master Ingmar Bergman. Casting Swedish star Victor Sj?str?m in the lead, Bergman, then at the height of his powers as an international filmmaker, uses flashbacks and bright, lyrical storytelling to capture the full arc of one man's life: the successes that seem fleeting, the disappointments that linger in the memory, the regrets that never seem to let go. In some ways, it can be seen as a forerunner of Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, except that Bergman's sense of irony is always more profound. --Marshall Fine
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