Review of Wild Strawberries (2012) by Everett J — 25 May 2008

Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries).

Directed by Ingmar Bergman.

Written by Ingmar Bergman.

Starring Victor Sjöström, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand, Max von Sydow.

An elderly doctor is tortured by cruel reminiscences from his childhood in this brutal investigation into the myriad disagreeable factors that go into making a life.

Dr. Isak Borg (Sjöström) is a well respected doctor who has been practicing for fifty years. He is about to receive recognition for his long tenure and as the film begins is preparing to make the journey to Lund University where he will be honored. He is a retiring man, classy and studied, with a penchant for deeply melancholic moments where he senses that something vital is slipping away. The film uses voice-over narration to convey a painful world dominated by frightening dreams that force Isak to face up to various factors that have colored his existence. He has been cold, indifferent and at times impossible to reach. He takes his daughter-in-law Marianne (Thulin) with him and there is a deep gulf between them that no conversation can adequately fill.

Isak has a series of dreams or hallucinations where he is taken back to his young adulthood. In one vision it is terrifying for him to be forced to experience the sprawling, lighthearted frolicking of his siblings as they go about their business of preparing for the birthday of Uncle Aron (Yngve Nordwall). He himself is absent from the festivities and he is forced to witness the scene with a terrible distance between him and the revelers. In the bloom of life, they celebrate and bring tremendous color to their surroundings with their free gestures and their marked oblivion to the ravishes of age. Yet, the inevitable transition into old age is represented by the nearly deaf Uncle Aron and the taciturn disciplinary Aunt Olga (Sif Ruud). They are relics that bring nothing to bear on the energetic spasmodics of the younger generation. Isak sees this and it gravely effects his mood, which is becoming increasingly forelorn.

The dream symbols in this film speak eloquently to Isak's sense of paralysis and the gnawing sensation that his life has been a series of inadequacies. He sees himself walking on a deserted street, utterly devoid of life and dead silent. He walks past a giant clock without any hands. He sees a funeral procession where the coffin comes crashing out of its cart and a long, bony hand reaches out for Isak and forcefully grabs his wrist. He looks further and the man in the coffin proves to be himself. By viewing his animated corpse, Isak is staring directly into the eyes of his failure to achieve a whole life replete with a more understanding treatment of his loved ones. Yet the clock seems to represent the transient nature of time in that ultimately it possesses no internal value; time is merely a tyrannical concept that keeps mankind unduly bound to the edicts of the flesh.

Isak and Marianne happen upon three young people who they take with them as far as Lund. Sara, who shares a name with the girl whom Isak lost to his brother Sigfrid (Per Sjöstrand), and her two consorts, Anders (Folke Sundquist) and Viktor (Björn Bjelfvenstam) are three active, vivacious youths who are going to Italy. They represent life; the illusion that it will continue forever; a sort of fearlessness; and strong, almost militant beliefs. Sara for her part is essentially oblivious to the order of things and says that when the two boys debates she usually believes the one who spoke last. She's innocent of the heavy thoughts that have plagued Isak his entire life and which are being played out by Sara's friends. The existence of god is bandied about and causes a rift between Viktor and Anders. It's the same tired posturing that plagues so many as they attempt to prove themselves worthy of bearing the truth.

There is a genuine sense of frailty working through this film. Isak is a tottering, not particularly robust man who is close to finishing out his sentence upon this earth. He visits his 96 year old mother and the interaction is decidedly chilly and achingly poignant. Yet another great distance is proven to exist between these two who carry on the same icy relationship from Isak's youth. During a dream he is taken into a room filled with students, some of whom he recognizes as his brothers and sisters. He is forced to demonstrate his skills as a doctor and fails so demonstrably that the instructor brands him incompetent. It's a verdict that he's been waiting for his entire life. It's an actualization of his biggest fear that fifty years devoted to science at the expense of family has been useless.

The performances in this film all shed a distinct light on the difficult dilemma at hand.

Victor Sjöström plays Isak as a symbol of everything that time has created. He's a successful man, admired by colleagues, finally coming to a place of genuine distinction. In short he's the model of the type of successful person who manages to serve the community with great purpose and necessity. Yet, and Sjöström conveys this with effortless charm, he's a man whose emotional life has been sorely neglected and his relationships are all strained by something he cannot articulate. Sjöström quietly goes about the business of giving his character an elegance that is doubly difficult to accept. Isak is at the pinnacle of a life of achievement and he's left with nothing but straw to grasp hold on to. All he has are his fantasies about how life once was without the hope of what it might become. He's resigned himself to a particular fate and is satisfied to live resolutely in the past.

Ingrid Thulin demonstrates a steely calm that is born aloft in her posture and her gestures. Marianne is a solid, statue like woman who in her old way is impenetrable and rigid. She exudes little warmth or sensuality and her eyes manage to remain focused on that which is directly in front of her while they steal glances at the horizon that remains tantalizingly out of reach. She is not plagued by dreams or haunted by apparitions. Hers is a codified world of routine and actualities. She sees things through to the end and is not easily swayed away from pursuing her ends. Thulin plays Marianne with remarkable ease of movement despite her essential gelid posturing. Marianne is not robotic; she merely maneuvers her body within a very specific construct that accentuates Thulin's immaculate bone structure. The camera simply loves Thulin and her performance in this case is enhanced by her intense gaze.

Bibi Andersson plays both the object of Isak's failed obsession and the young ingenue who infiltrates his closed-off precise world with so much boundless energy. She exists as two mean poles through which Isak is guided despite himself. Andersson provides the younger Sara, brimming with so much potential and hope, with a brightness that is belied by the somber exercise present throughout the rest of the film. Sara is bereft of despair or any substantial conflict and her approach to life is unilaterally sunny and warm. She remains for Isak an uncomplicated vision that pries his inherent gentlemanly charm and gentleness.

Max von Sydow has a brief but memorable role as a gas station attendant who avidly remembers Isak as something of a heroic figure in the community. Von Sydow has a jangling energy in this short scene that reminds the viewer of the impact Isak has made on the lives of those he has treated in his long career.

Gunnar Björnstrand as Evald is a staunch, steady mirror of his father. He too suffers the same pangs of self-doubt and resignation to the furious heavings of life. He talks openly of death and adamantly rejects Marianne when he finds out she is pregnant with their child. He simply cannot justify bringing a life into the world when it will only suffer the same torments as he.

Overall, this film offers great insight into the complications that emerge when one attempts to engage with the world with feigned or genuine enthusiasm. It states clearly that life is often nothing more than a series of melancholy memories that remain decisively fragmented and not necessarily representative of events as they actually occurred. Still, these distortions of the past hold clues to secrets that continue to haunt us in genuinely strange ways as we attempt to apply ourselves to the difficult and painful task of living well. Isak is brought back to the very moment when Sigfrid and Sara were beginning to play their erotic games at Isak's expense. He is shown a moment of imminent infidelity between his wife and another man. He witnesses his greatest shame and fear through these episodes that are colored by time. The grinning face of death stares back at him when he is obliged to look into a mirror.