The movie was curious for the first half or so, as I tried to figure out what was actually going on. Not so much what was literally happening on screen, but what the story was. It really wasn't that obvious, and, since I knew virtually nothing about the story beforehand, all I had was the movie itself to tell me.
It starts with Liv Ullman talking to camera about the story to come, providing a framing device that helps to anchor the audience in what should be real, because much of what comes, especially after the halfway point, stylistically exists between the real and dreams.
She and her husband have retreated to a remote cottage in summer where he will use their isolation to paint. There is talk of his commercial success as an artist, but it's obvious that he's stymied creatively, especially when we see the results of his inability to sleep. He shows his wife pictures of dark visions he's had in the darkest hour of night. He describes (we never actually see his art) a woman who removes her face along with her hat and other such horrors that keep him awake.
When the pair is invited to the castle on the island by the odd collection of men and women who reside there, they go and are entertained by chaotic conversation that whiplashes back and forth and neither can keep up with, and a puppet show that features a tiny, inches tall, man singing a bit from The Magic Flute. This isn't the stuff of normal, but the stuff of dreams, even nightmares, and yet there's no real indication that what we're seeing isn't real.
They go home, and the husband admits to what could be a memory, but is filmed curiously unrealistic, of killing a young boy. Is it real? Or is it a product of his imagination? It's hard to tell, feeding into this uncertainty of reality around the character. The visions (reality?) expand and grow all the weirder as he goes back to the castle and watches his host walk from the floor to the wall to the ceiling. He sees that woman take off her hat and then her face. He sees his old lover draped with a cloth on a table.
The visions tear at Johan's fears and insecurities. They don't seem to come from outside malignant force, but entirely from within since they are so concerned with his own issues, especially around his lover he left before meeting his wife.
As reference earlier, I was kind of on the fence about the movie in its first half. It was when the visions really began to take hold that I got pulled into the movie. It really takes what is a functional first half of character building and utilizes it rather perfectly in the psychological horror tradition. The images make sense and incite fear. It works.
I think that it could work better, though, if there was a better balance between the story's focus on husband and wife. I don't feel that the wife's observance of her husband's descent into insanity is merely a mooring line for the audience (because she sees things too), nor do I feel that her smaller descent into questioning reality is as interesting or involving as his.
It starts with Liv Ullman talking to camera about the story to come, providing a framing device that helps to anchor the audience in what should be real, because much of what comes, especially after the halfway point, stylistically exists between the real and dreams.
She and her husband have retreated to a remote cottage in summer where he will use their isolation to paint. There is talk of his commercial success as an artist, but it's obvious that he's stymied creatively, especially when we see the results of his inability to sleep. He shows his wife pictures of dark visions he's had in the darkest hour of night. He describes (we never actually see his art) a woman who removes her face along with her hat and other such horrors that keep him awake.
When the pair is invited to the castle on the island by the odd collection of men and women who reside there, they go and are entertained by chaotic conversation that whiplashes back and forth and neither can keep up with, and a puppet show that features a tiny, inches tall, man singing a bit from The Magic Flute. This isn't the stuff of normal, but the stuff of dreams, even nightmares, and yet there's no real indication that what we're seeing isn't real.
They go home, and the husband admits to what could be a memory, but is filmed curiously unrealistic, of killing a young boy. Is it real? Or is it a product of his imagination? It's hard to tell, feeding into this uncertainty of reality around the character. The visions (reality?) expand and grow all the weirder as he goes back to the castle and watches his host walk from the floor to the wall to the ceiling. He sees that woman take off her hat and then her face. He sees his old lover draped with a cloth on a table.
The visions tear at Johan's fears and insecurities. They don't seem to come from outside malignant force, but entirely from within since they are so concerned with his own issues, especially around his lover he left before meeting his wife.
As reference earlier, I was kind of on the fence about the movie in its first half. It was when the visions really began to take hold that I got pulled into the movie. It really takes what is a functional first half of character building and utilizes it rather perfectly in the psychological horror tradition. The images make sense and incite fear. It works.
I think that it could work better, though, if there was a better balance between the story's focus on husband and wife. I don't feel that the wife's observance of her husband's descent into insanity is merely a mooring line for the audience (because she sees things too), nor do I feel that her smaller descent into questioning reality is as interesting or involving as his.