Sarabande

Ingmar Bergman goes on trying to find the meaning of life and the world and what means sentiment after all. Do we love when we think we hate? What's going on in the deepness of human soul? What justifies our actions? Which truth commands human relations mainly family and marital ones? This quest is pursued by formal means and themes different of those used in some of his previous movies such as The Seventh Seal or Persona but the same interrogation is always there. A sexagenarian lady decides to pay a visit to her ex-husband whom she had not seen for more than 30 years. She will be then the spectator of a series of events involving his ex-husband, his son of a previous marriage and the latter's young daughter in a tempest of violent feelings and psychological outbursts against which her serenity and wisdom make an interesting counterpoint. There is also another character whose presence is overwhelming despite the fact that she is already dead when the movie begins: Anna the former wife of the ex-husband's son. She still lives in the heart and of the two men and the young girl with her words and deeds. The love-hate relationship between father and son and father and daughter is very intense. The scene where the character played by Erland Josephson yields one night to anguish and anxiety and seeks refuge in her ex-wife's bed ( without any sex being involved) is extremely moving. We are indeed in the presence of a masterpiece.

Originally shot for television in high definition video, Ingmar Bergman's latest film, Saraband, is about the reunion of a husband and wife after thirty years of divorce and separation. Divided into ten segments plus a prologue and epilogue, the title is derived from a minuet-like dance for two people commonly performed at court during the 17th and 18th centuries. Like the dance, there are never more than two people on screen at any one time and the film is almost all conversation with bits of classical music. The film is vintage Bergman with revealing close-ups, emotionally intense dialogue, an old-fashioned style of film-making, and a surfeit of bitterness about the human condition.

Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson, the original screen couple from Bergman's 1973 film Scenes of a Marriage, reunite in his summer home for their first face to face contact since their breakup. Johan has become very wealthy as a result of an inheritance. Marianne is a lawyer and they have two daughters from their failed marriage: Sara who is married to a prominent lawyer and lives in Australia and Martha who is in a mental institution and does not recognize her mother. Johan is surprised by his ex-wife's visit but they still hold hands and try to remember the good things about the past, though Johan's interest seems to be minimal. Living nearby are Henrik (Borje Ahlstedt), Johan's son from a second marriage and his daughter Karin (Julia Dufvenius), a promising young cellist. Henrik and Karin have an uncomfortably strong attachment and mutual need as a result of the recent death of Anna, Henrik's wife who was deeply loved.

Henrik is training his daughter in the cello to prepare her for an audition at the local conservatory but has to turn to Johan for financial support who uses the occasion to humiliate him. Karin is contemplating going to Europe to work for an orchestra but is afraid of the consequences for Henrik if she leaves. Relationships between the family are strained, seemingly beyond repair and their world is filled with childish resentments and regrets. Karin resents her father for suffocating her emotionally. Marianne still resents Johan for his unfaithfulness. Henrik resents his father for -- not being a father. Johan resents Henrik for not being the son he wanted. No one can see beyond their ego to feel the needs and wants of others. The emotional pain is real but I found the end result to be facile and unconvincing.

Saraband has received high praise as a "lacerating examination of life's conundrums that is exhilarating in its fearlessness and its command", and an "affective, touching, and ultimately highly affirming picture of familial turmoil and the curative, as well as destructive, powers of love." But what I ask is this - What new insights do we gain about the human condition from witnessing a family go at each other with unbridled ruthlessness? In offering his audience the latest generation of "emotional illiterates", Bergman lets us see the clawing and fighting but hides the life-affirming reality that people are capable of transcending their limitations.

In Saraband, there is no self- reflection, responsibility, or hint that people can change with the passage of time. His characters only seem to have been able to refine their capacity for collecting grievances. When Henrik is suffering, no one talks about him, goes to visit him, or seems in the least concerned. Is this the way Bergman after all these years sees human relationships? Is this the legacy he wants to leave us? Despite its considerable strengths, Sourband (sic) is a bitter and despairing film that left a bad taste in my mouth.

For many years "The Seventh Seal" has not only been my favorite Bergman film, but my all-time list topper. Although others have since moved into that place, Bergman's genius as a probing and revelatory filmmaker continue to astound and reward me.

"Saraband" for me is about as good as he gets...and that's high praise. Here the human soul in anguish is laid bare in all its honest need...a thwarted one...for love and understanding. A once married couple, Marianne and Johann (brilliantly portrayed by Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson) do their saraband even after 30 years apart. And like that dance, in its repetitive themes, their relationship as well as that of Johann's son and granddaughter form a kind of tragic rondo, sadly and inexorably replicated. Henrik, the 61 year old son (portrayed with amazing profoundity by Borje Ahlstedt) cannot extricate himself from the slings and arrows aimed at him continually by his father. The one character, now dead, who serves as a graceful inspiration to them all is Henrik's wife and his daughter, Karin's mother...Anna. We see her beautiful face in a photographic portrait, but her loving presence in their memory is so strong it becomes a kind of living influence. Karin, played by the stunning Julia Dufvenius, is also the victim of the family dynamic and forms the important fourth in this saraband of life and fate.

"Saraband" is a moving and challenging, successful return by Bergman to the quality of films of an earlier period, like "Hour of the Wolf" or of course "Scenes from a Marriage," with characters held in confessional close-ups, trapped by ego and anxiety.

With an intolerable burden of the generations, a young woman must make a choice that may be tragic. There are no useful models, not even the briefly glimpsed folk-art carving of the Last Supper with John, the beloved disciple, blissful on the lap of Jesus, not law, Kierkegaard, whiskey, or Bach either.

It is regrettable if after all these years this is Bergman's "Tempest" (though then appropriately involving Erland Josephson--all the actors are necessarily extremely good). Shakespeare did go on to work on "The Two Noble Kinsman."

SVT could have given Bergman film instead of digital recording. RAI uses film for its splendid productions, or it used to. Seen in a theatre, the visual quality was imperfect. How could people think this work would not deserve general theatrical release?

(please note - this review refers to the theatrical release, not the TV version) Veteran master Ingmar Bergman releases what he claims is his final movie. In a world dominated by blockbusters, even with a sprinkling of aspiring auteurs and masterful experimenters such as von Trier, Bergman fulfils his iconic role as setting a gold standard in cinema. For many art-house lovers, Bergman portrays what film can and should do when it is at the height of its power as an art form.

Having said that it seems a strange twist of fate to be viewing Saraband, as I did, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival where it is up for the Standard Life 'audience award', along with mainstream crowd-pleasers. As I cast my vote I felt it was almost a desecration for such a movie to be entered in a popularity poll, however discerning the audience. There are a number of serious works at the Festival and they should be judged by an independent panel of experts - there is a discussion afoot to create a new award along these lines - otherwise it is like comparing Beethoven with the Beatles.

Saraband, in true Bergman tradition, wrestles with human relationships, using a slow pace, pointed dialogue, and heavy use of symbolism to explore the psychological states of the characters. Bergman encourages young directors not to direct any film that does not have a "message," but to wait until one comes along that does, yet admits himself that he is not always sure of the message of some of his films.

We are never in any doubt that this film has much point to it, even if the point is not exactly clear. It opens with the slow soulful 'saraband', of Bach's 5th unaccompanied cello suite. 'Sarabande' is one of the movements from the suite, a slow and, compared to the others, a relatively easy piece to play. Marianne (Liv Ullman), is both narrator (at the beginning and end of the film) and principal protagonist. As she walks through the rooms of a house the doors close behind her. A cuckoo clock strikes. She is in the later part of her life. She fleetingly touches the keys of a piano, as if to say she still, even in solitude, has her inner music. Her presence is explained as she goes to the veranda and we find she is visiting an ex-husband, someone who was unfaithful to her many years ago. The colours are crisp and sharp. Of all the members of her family, Marianne is perhaps the clearest of mind and most well-balanced, but it is the extended interaction (with very little action) between the main players that give us insights into the beauty of being elderly, at least for someone like Marianne who handles it well. Yet even she is filled with sadness for others.

Later chapters of the film focus on her step-grand-daughter. Karin is a cellist, living with a rather overprotective (if that's not too mild a word) father, also a musician. She has to face a difficult choice, involving her personal loyalties, her loyalty to herself and ability as a gifted young cellist, and the need to extricate herself from a situation that is bad for her but will be bad for her father if she does.

The symbolism of the title and music neatly metaphors the decisions before her. A saraband is also a two-person dance. The suggestion, made at one point, of playing it by two people alternating is essentially a frivolous one, which serious musicians would probably reject. That the Suite for Unaccompanied Cello should not be played as a duet, even with the younger person playing the 'easier part' as Karin's father suggests, is an unobtrusive symbol reminding us, in the film's later loaded context, that there are some lines that an older and younger person should never cross together.

Saraband shows how old age can tempt us to wisdom or its opposite.