Wild Strawberries (The Criterion Collection)
by Ingmar Bergman
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Actor: Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Jullan Kindahl, Victor SjöströmDirector: Ingmar Bergman
Brand: BERGMAN,INGMAR
Cinematographer: Gunnar Fischer
Writer: Ingmar Bergman
Editor: Oscar Rosander
Producer: Allan Ekelund
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Swedish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, DVD, 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 (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: Maybe the Best Film Ever Made
Summary: 5 Stars
In 1975 my literature professor told us we were going to study the greatest movie ever made and it was about an old man driving an old car to receive an award for being a good doctor. Plus, instead of Technicolor, it was in black & white. On top of that, the film was in Swedish and I would have to read the English subtitles. But never fear, with the promise of such an exhilarating, action-packed movie, he planned on showing it twice in a row, and wagered all who attended the first screening would stay for the second. And he nailed it.
We began by reading the stage play, which is the same as the screenplay. Then we had a chance to see the film. I indeed watched both showings and it changed my thinking about what makes a good "film" (this was way too highbrow for my young self to call a movie, but now I think "movie" is the right word, because the action, plot and production are all so powerful, against all odds! This movie is a blockbuster!)
At the time I was a wild boy about campus who's taste for movies was more action/adventure, western and mystery/suspense. The funny thing about Wild Strawberries is there's a little of all those genre's in it (if you understand what a cowboy Bergman was at this point in his career).
This is the story about the late-life introspection of an elderly physician. It really appears on the surface to be about as dull a concept for a film as one could ever want to suffer through. But this is a story about facing reality, and reality is rarely dull. The plot moves seamlessly through many phases, but much of it involves a road trip through the Swedish countryside.
A few years ago I bought a DVD of the 70's cult car-chase flick "Vanishing Point"; I hadn't seen it since the drive-in in my college years. I also own a Criterion Collection copy of Wild Strawberries and I've watched both recently. I realized that Wild Strawberries is a car chase flick as well.
But Bergman's Isak (played by Victor Sjöström) is not running from war weariness but from a life of nihilism cloaked in the old-world respectability of a family doctor. The chase is his lifetime of self-certainty, agnosticism and increasing isolation finally catching up to him. He realizes that he has been a walking dead man for much of his life (something he partially inherited from his mother, and impacted all his close associations throughout his long and successful, but sad life). Getting too far into the details may yield spoilers, although there is enough complexity in this plot to keep literature classes struggling for an A for a long time.
The plot is a series of amazing dialogue scenes, with interruptions for disturbing dream sequences, most from his classic 1937 Packard Eight Touring limousine. The day's accumulation of insights, linking dreams, reverie and conversation gradually lead to a turning point, a crisis precipitated by unyielding reality checks that befuddle the normally unflappable Dr. Borg.
The ground-breaking dream sequences, the first early in the film, are Hitchcock-like and terrifyingly surreal (or was the early Hitch being Bergmanesque?). The dreams set the tone of tension in a film that could have so easily been a drone, but not with Bergman in charge. Of incredible beauty is the reverie scene, where Isak relives some of his childhood while making a stop at his family's deserted summer lake house.
The continuing, front-seat of the Packard dialog scenes between Isak and his daughter-in-law, and later with the Almans (including another disturbing dream sequence) and with the "children" (hitchhiking college-age kids) are all filled with symbols and conversation pointing to Isak's living-dead existence. As the day progresses, they chip away at Borg's long-held control, coldness and distance.
It's interesting that Bergman himself, at this point in his young career, was much like Isak; agnostic, distant, self-absorbed, incapable of intimacy. Yet his conclusion to Wild Strawberries is much more hopeful than Bergman's own life. One wonders if Bergman may have ended his life with a Wild Strawberries conversion, or if he considered it at the end.
The turning point of the movie, easy to miss if you're not paying close attention, is the love-promise from the young hitchhiker Sara (Bibi Andersson). This is the sea-change moment for Isak. The incredible sweetness and innocent passion, freely offered in grace by the beautiful young girl, serves as a regeneration moment, a freely-given justification of Isak, imputing her child-like passion and righteousness into his heart. In a way it was as though his childhood sweetheart (also named Sara, also played by Bibi) came back in her youthful beauty to heal the wound of rejection she inflicted on Isak almost 70 years earlier.
The first Sara's betrayal of young Isak (seen in the summer reverie scene), choosing his brother as the better lover and husband, probably led to Isak's walled-off life. But when this new Sara promises her Platonic, childlike love to the old Isak, he replies with solemn acceptance: "I'll remember that". This seems to break the spell of living death dealt to him by his first love, and exacerbated by so many others in his life.
Unlike Bergman, Isak closes his eyes that night with the hope of a life of meaning, of love in service, not just service as a foil for maintaining personal dignity and image. He sees that loving for loves sake is worth the risk of pain. Unlike Bergman, Isak has a hope of seeing God when his death does arrive, and has demonstrated a new life has begun. This is Isak's Today; his day of repentance, of stopping the tortuous task of hardening his heart against the call of life, yielding in submission to love, mercy and grace.
This film requires many viewings, and I have yet to tire of it. Bergman's troupe of actors were on par with the best of any generation, his cinematography is spartan and overwhelmingly effective; his location shooting in the beautiful Swedish summer is fascinatingly appealing, yielding a foreign, forgotten land yet with a "down-home" feeling that's almost Mayberry-like, if that's not too extreme a comparison.
This movie shows the dichotomy of living for self versus living in loving service to and with others. Isak thought he lived to serve but discovered that service is only of meaning to the server if it is from the heart. Service without love is only partial service to those in need, and is a self-inflicted affront to the server. This is ultimately a hopeful picture that we can all learn from if we watch with an open heart. Otherwise, we see the wasted tragedy of existential living with no greater good than one's own dead image.
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Description of Wild Strawberries (The 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 Sjöström), 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 Sjöström 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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