Cries and Whispers (1972)

Rated R for nudity and, to be completely frank, just absolutely abhorrent self-mutilation.  There's also consistent talk about suicide.  Once again, Bergman at least dips his toes into the casual adultery thing.  However, for the first time in the Bergman set, those advances are rejected.  Still, despite being a movie about mourning and death, there is something very sexual about the movie, occasionally touching on incestuous motifs.  

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

I've been waiting for this one.  I mean, that's always a dangerous attitude to have before watching a movie.  And, sure enough, it bit me in the butt.  Listen, I'm the guy who didn't get into Persona and Cries and Whispers probably has a lot in common with Persona.   But while I see Persona as mostly inaccessible, Cries and Whispers is mostly a simple story that I can kind of get behind.  It's just when it gets a little bit more bizarre that I start to get critical of it.

The funny thing about me is that I usually like when things get a little weird.  Why does it bother me so much when Bergman gets to be an odd duck?  I don't know.  One of my favorite films is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  I know.  I'm very basic sometimes.  Michel Gondry lives in the oddity of film.  It's part of his visual art.  When I watch stuff like Eternal Sunshine, the mise en scene and choices that Gondry makes often enhances his core message.  When it comes to Bergman, it's almost like we get something Brechtian.  (I'm almost trying to sound smart at this point.  I don't think it is working.)  Brecht wanted to shake his audience out of complacency.  It wasn't meant to be entertainment.  It was meant to make you think.  Watching something like Cries and Whispers feels incredibly Brechtian.  The first forty-five minutes of the film are a radical way of looking at how people die and grieve ahead of death.  It borderline has no story, shy of a hint that Maria had affairs and is self-involved.  But it looks at how this sister's final moments affect the world around her.  It's haunting and beautiful at the same time.  (I use the word "beautiful" nervously because every moment of Agnes's suffering is haunting.  I just can't deny that Bergman's use of color in conjunction with death has a pleasing nature to it.) 

But the second half of the film almost dares you to maintain contact with the core of the film.  I do think that this is a movie about grief.  The second half of the film has beats that remind you that this is how grief is processed.  But the second half of the film is intentionally surreal.  Characters do things that aren't really set up for in the film.  I want to talk about Karin and the self-mutilation of her genitals.  The first half of the film is upsetting in a universal way.  When we know that someone is on their death bed, we are going to have upsetting moments that are natural.  Karin's labored breathing, coupled with her screams and almost labor pains are something that most people will deal with, in some form or another, before they leave this earth.  It is a universal thought.  I'll even go as far as to say that Karin's desire not to be touched is also a universal idea.  I, with the exception of those very close to me, shy away from touch.  But Karin using the excuse of a broken shard of glass to mutilate herself isn't really set up in any way.  Then spreading the blood over her lips?  This is something that a lesser director couldn't get away with.  That's not a compliment to Bergman.  If anything, I don't know who could get away with that moment, especially so unearned.

Part of what frustrates me about that moment, besides the fact that it is absolutely horrific and seemingly dropped in there for shock value, is the fact that --as slow as this movie is --almost no character work was done before this moment.  We barely know anything about Karin at this point.  We know that she's a bit closed off, bordering on frigid.  Okay, that's something.  But that is such an extreme measure for a character not to be touched that it feels wildly out of character for the film at all.  And remember how I said that Gondry uses the weird moments to focus on the themes of the story?  This moment is so distracting for me that I don't care about the role of mortality up to this point.  Yeah, we could use the genital mutilation as a reminder of birth and the role of life.  I mean, Bergman does attach a sexual component to both family and mortality in the film.  It's not too much to say that there is a sexual component to that moment.  But, ultimately, it feels divorced from the rest of the film.  In that moment, Agnes is so far from our minds that it is ahrd to imagine what that moment really adds to the narrative as a whole.  And I have to be alone here.  I know that Cries and Whispers was up for Best Picture, so I'm the only one who saw that moment and said, "Nope.  Not part of it."  Maybe I'm squeamish and I'm just kvetching because I don't like it.  But it feels so tonally weird after that moment.

The odd thing is that I find the Karin coldness to be one of the more compelling parts of the story.  Maria is overly sexual.  My interpretation of Maria, which may and probably is way off, seems to be a character whose actions may be read as familial.  But I also really believet that Bergman imbues her with an incestual element throughout.  The role of motherhood (which I have to confess I got from the Internet and is not my only thought on the matter) is something that plays out through the story, even if the matriarch of the family dies way before the events of the film.