Seven stars. This isn't essential Bergman by any means. But it's well worth
watching for Bergman fans. The tiny cast (four speaking parts, with Bergman
himself as a silent priest) and the staging show Bergman's connection to the
theatre. But the way it's shot is pure art-house. Nothing but near shots and
extreme close-ups. And all that intricate framing! Things like the shots of
both Thulin and Bjornstrand (two Bergman regulars, going back to the early 50s,
in absolutely knock-out performances) with Erik Hell's arms around them, coming
down from above. Or the framing of the actors against the carefully chosen
backgrounds in the backstage scene. Any one who comes into this thinking it's
going to be a standard narrative film will be utterly lost by scene 2. It's a
cinematic fable. Complete with a "moral" at the end. Bergman made this in
1969 (for TV! Think about that, given the costuming in the last scene), in the
middle of a period when he was making genre pictures, and clearly wasn't sure
of what he was up to. After the monumental (if flawed) Persona, he stumbled
for about six years before he roared back with Cries and Whispers. This film
fits squarely in with The Hour of the Wolf (gothic horror), Shame (Bergman does
a war film) and The Passion of Anna (an experimental film about disintegrating
relationships), as movies that strike me as experiments for Bergman to work out
what he wants to do. So let's strip things down to the barest minimum -- four
actors, no sets to speak of, no story in any obvious sense. Instead we get
this Kafka-like situation, in which a group of artists are being questioned by
an official about something in their show. No one ever talks about it
directly. In fact, no one ever talks about ANYTHING directly. Even
Abrahamson's confession just beats around the bush. And then we get that last
scene. . . . 24 May 2024.
