Review of Cries and Whispers (1972) by A S — 04 Apr 2006

Of all the directors I love and admire, one consistently makes pictures that affect my being, rattle my cage, and call to service my troubled mind: Ingmar Bergman.

I have seen up to now six Bergman major works: Persona, Fanny and Alexander, Wild Strawberries, Scenes from a marriage, The Seventh Seal, and Cries and Whispers. Each of these pictures was an experience unto itself. One can not really call any of these 'entertainment'. I watched C & W last night, but I could not shake it this morning so I watched it again this afternoon, and rewatched the interview with Bergman and his long time collaborator, Erland Josephson. It was painful, but I sat through it twice in a row. I had to. It was devastating. Even as I sat through the film a second time, I could not bring myself to watch the mutilation scene entirely. And the second time around did not dull the pain I felt watching Agnes screamed 'can't somebody help me?' as she fought against death. It was shocking and heartbreaking. And then my heart sank again as Bergman himself said in the interview that followed, that living to him was irrelevant now that his wife had died. I had fallen under Bergman's spell once more.

What I find in Bergman's films is the same obssession I have with emtional turmoil, life and death, and the psyche's working. With Bergman, the emotional landscape is stark, yet bursting at the seams. There is nothing emotionally oblique about a Bergman picture, of the ones I've seen anyway. It's an exhausting, but enriching experience sitting through each of the films I'd seen of his. After C & W, I felt an immense sadness permeating through my world. Spring looked depressing. People looked like they were slowly dying. Kylie Minogue sounded like she had cancer. I plunged the depth of my non-existent soul and it looked mighty bleak.

But something sneaked up on me. I began to think of the relationships I had with people. I thought of the faces I wanted to see right before I died. I began to feel tremendous dread about other people's dying. Bergman talked about how awfully distressing a thought it was that he would never see Ingrid again. Recently, I was briefly thrown into chaos when a certain cat went missing (he's back though!). I could not fathom the pain I would go through if someone dear to me was taken from me. It was puzzling and scary, so I stopped thinking. The feeling subsided after I vented it here and elsewhere. But like other Bergman films that I've seen, I don't think I'd ever recover. I'd like to say that there's a long and lazy river to Bergman's films, just like there's one to my non-existent soul. But I'm afraid that our river is neither slow nor lazy; its current is a force we wrestle with probably for the rest of our lives.