Wild Strawberries

Despite being on an impossible mission to watch nearly everything ever made that's worth watching, sometimes I can't help but have an idea in my head of how a film should be. I've grown up in Australia, exposed to western media in much the same way as anyone else in Australia has been (which I imagine isn't too dissimilar to those who live in the U.S.A., Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or any other English-language speaking country). I have this ingrained idea of how films should be structured... it's an almost unconscious expectation and it sometimes interferes with me when I watch European films, so when I sit down to watch a well-known film like Wild Strawberries I do my best not to hype it up too much because it makes me close-minded.

So I watched this film whilst fighting against my own expectations. As a result I'm finding it a bit hard to start this review because while I was watching Wild Strawberries I felt rather nonchalant towards it, I kept trying to anticipate the whole point of the film because I was finding it difficult to get a frame of reference so I could connect with it. But then something magical happened.

Even as I was grappling with my overactive need to analyse and understand it, Wild Strawberries provoked a completely unexpected emotional response within me and only by the very end did I appreciate all that had come before it. The sheer weight of what director Ingmar Bergman and actor Victor Sjostrom created together in this film swept me up and affected me profoundly. I didn't think films could grab me like that anymore, but this wonderfully bittersweet yet uplifting piece of cinema encapsulates loneliness, mortality and love so beautifully... well, it's hard to even put it in words. Part of it is in the dialogue, part of it in Sjostrom's performance. It's in the pacing, the editing, the close-ups, symbolism. It's a perfectly flawless film that stands as an example of the things that only a film can say or do. And as intellectually stimulating as it might be, it's biggest achievement is in the way it evokes certain feelings.


Professor Isak Borg (Sjostrom) is an old man who has devoted his life to medical science. He's a creature of habit, isolated and without any close familial ties, seen (by other characters) as selfish, ruthless, aloof, principled and obstinate. We're told that he's "cold as ice" despite his warm age-mellowed veneer... he's a man who keeps himself distant from other people's problems because he has no time for it. But where has all this gotten him? Although it's never really addressed directly, the price of his cold heart has bought him a distinct loneliness in his old age. Wild Strawberries follows a day in the professor's life as he travels across the countryside to recieve an honorary degree for his achievements in medicine - a journey that prompts him to assess and come to terms with his life and how other people see him.

Isak picks up some young hitchhikers on his journey as he revisits his childhood and relives the memories of his idyllic youth. The connection he forges with these young travellers prompts and feeds his introspection, and his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) forces him to face the consequences of his way of life and how it has affected his relationship with his estranged son, Evald (Gunner Bjornstrand). It's strange at first when the nice Marianne tells Isak how little she likes him as Sjostrom's slightly grouchy but charismatic performance endears him to the audience. But this is very much a 'trick' of the film, it's somewhat telling that those who know him the least (such as the audience and the young hitchhikers) are the ones who like him the most.

We learn who Isak truly is through the way that other people (such as Marianne and his son Evald) percieve him, rather than how he sees himself. It's a wonderfully three-dimensional achievement in characterisation, to portray such an apparently unlikeable man with such vivid warmth. It's a perfectly realised exercise in perception, and for a relatively brief film (ninety minutes) it builds a fairly complete picture of a man and his entire life.


Of particular note are the various dream sequences... the opening dream puts Isak in a world with no one else in it, and he discovers that he doesn't like such a concept (there's that loneliness again). It's quite disturbing, especially the bit where a coffin falls in the street in front of him and his own corpse tries to beckon him in. Later dream sequences afford similar insights into the parts of his mind that he fears to articulate in the real world, such as the deep worry that his life's work won't be ratified by his colleagues in the medical profession (rendering his entire life worthless).

Besides this character study there's a lot else to observe in Wild Strawberries... Bergman and his cinematographer demonstrate the crisp wonder of nature, and the film gets to the heart of life in ways that American movies seldom touch by utilising a direct style of dialogue that comes without any fanfare. The way the characters speak and philosophise with each other might not be completely realistic, but as it's delivered in such an undramatic fashion it seems to cut through any Hollywood-like sense of artifice. I also appreciated the way that Isak's flashbacks actually featured him physically looking on, as if he was trying to position his present self within his own memories - it gave me a sense that I was only ever seeing the smallest parts of an entire life.

It's an amazing thing, for a film of such length to say so much about one (albeit fictional) life. The final shot of Isak in his bed, coming to terms with life's disappointments as he revels in and recalls its triumphs, is the sort of thing that would tread a fine line between the twee and the contrived in most films. In Wild Strawberries it's absolutely beautiful.

SIDENOTE: I know this doesn't really fit with everything else I tried to say in the review above but I couldn't help but laugh at the rather sombre character of Evald... what's with these dreary Swedes? They're all mopey and "life is hell" whilst they ride around the countryside in their volkswagons with their beautiful blonde wives, dudes need to cheer up!

DIRECTOR: Ingmar Bergman
WRITER/SOURCE: Ingmar Bergman
KEY ACTORS: Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Max Von Sydow

RELATED TEXTS:
- Amazingly, Wild Strawberries was released only ten months after another classic Ingmar Bergman film, The Seventh Seal.
- Woody Allen took his cues from (and paid tribute to) Wild Strawberries with the film Another Woman.
- See also The Trip to Bountiful, Harry and Tonto, Everybody's Fine and About Schmidt.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated Best Original Screenplay.
BAFTAs - nominated Best Film and Best Foreign Actor (Victor Sjostrom).
Golden Globes - won Best Foreign Film.
Venice Film Festival - won Film Critics Award (Ingmar Bergman)