Wild Strawberries (1957)

Not rated.  I can't actually think of all that many offensive things in this movie.  Most of the controversial stuff is more thematic than it is on-screen or explicit. Like many Bergman movies, people are intentionally cruel to one another.  There are discussions about adultery and abortion in the movie, but nothing visually confirming anything untoward. We are also witnesses to a possible rape.  Again, a lot is left up to interpretation.  Not rated.

DIRECTOR: Ingmar Bergman

Again, the real world is a place that stops people from being truly happy.  That's both thematically part of this movie and how I watched it.  I'll take the first bit of responsibility.  Wild Strawberries, despite being distraction free, is an incredibly serene film.  There were moments where I mentally started to drift away from the long car ride that was this film.  I'm not being glib.  The movie is about an incredibly long car ride. The second is...everyone decided to call me or text me during this movie.  I didn't respond to any of the texts because I was trying to focus on the movie.  But I got three phone calls in the middle of an hour-and-a-half movie.  I don't know how the universe knows that this was Tim Time, but somehow it wanted to ruin Wild Strawberries for me.  If I don't have the best read on this movie, just now that the real world kept trying to sneak its way into the screening of a Bergman classic.

Finally, we had a Bergman movie in the box set that only danced around the idea of a romantic situation between two mismatched family members.  There was nothing explicit.  It wasn't the plot of the movie.  If anything, I have to meet them halfway to get to that read of the movie.  Bravo, Mr. Bergman!  I was starting to worry.  But I'm starting to get the vibe that Bergman is a positive nihilist.  Bergman movies tend to be a bit bleak.  People really feel comfortable saying the rudest things to each other and those cruelties seem to roll like water off a duck's back until someone says something completely innocent.  If you say something childish, that's when people get really mad. Someone almost broke someone else's arm over the concept of the existence of God. You know, that shouldn't have been the line.  The same two dudes who fought over the existence of God were constantly being prodded by the third person in a love triangle who kept teasing their infatuation.   In those scenes, totally cool dudes.  Okay, they looked a little grumpy.  But the explosion came out over a theological debate.  Now, that's not something that's completely off-limits in storytelling.  Heck, I'll say its even the standard.  But the protagonist of this movie has some really mean things said to him and he just takes it.  I think he might have even thanked the person who said it to him.  I would say that was a cool moment in a movie, but that's pretty standard for Bergman.

I'm going to talk about mortality (if my baby stops coming over here to get picked up.  Yes, I'm a bad father.) and some of the other motifs of the film, but I do want to look at the concept of positive nihilism.  Note: I've seen my fair share of Bergman movies before I started the giant Criterion box set that I'm unpacking in Criterion order. It's not like I'm coming at this only four movies in.  While not being an absolute truth, Bergman movies tend to exist in a world where people are just sadly moving through life as they power forward to the grave.  People tend to be cruel to each other (I've said this!) and we tend to glom onto the one person who is sadly just shouldering the burden of this world without making it a worse place. Since we're talking about Wild Strawberries in particular, I want to use Isak as such a character.  Marianne tends to have a certain level of disrespect towards Isak for a good chunk of the film.  Ultimately, it isn't really Isak who changes in this movie.  Isak is the static character while Marianne is a bit more dynamic.  Now, we discover later in the film, Marianne is going through stuff that mostly colors the way that she views Isak.  She's more angry at her husband Evald than she is at Isak, the man who raised Evald.  But she unloads that he has this history of cruelty and that everyone thinks that Isak is a good man when she knows the truth.  That kind of stuff colors the viewer's characterization of Isak.  As the film progressed, the more positive things said about Isak, the more I questioned the validity of those statements. But from what I understand, Isak is a saint and he's just being this martyr character throughout.

I don't know if a Bergman movie can not avoid a conversation about God.  This movie seems to really pull out the stops, considering that Isak doesn't really have any strong opinions about the notions of an all-powerful deity.  I already talked about the fist fight that broke out over the existence of God. But the bigger shout to the audience was the portrayal of the Catholic character.  This man's only concrete background besides being married was that he was Catholic.  And boy-oh-boy, was he a jerk.  He's this guy who belittles his wife at every opportunity.  She, in turn, responds by hitting him. He's not in the story very long.  But it is an active beat in the story.  Part of me wants to think about juxtaposing the Catholic to Isak, who seems so fundamentally removed from the notion of religion that makes him seem like the good man.  The irony of the scene, the man who preaches the faith, is a monster while the man who silently stews with his own troubled thought might be the better man.

I said I'd talk about mortality, so I'm going to talk about mortality. I relate to Isak. Isak is being celebrated for being a doctor, but there's a bit of coding behind that.  While he is a medical doctor who has done great things, especially for a community that he left behind in a different lifetime, he's often referred to as "Professor."  He's a learned man who has spent much of his life improving himself to the point where others have noticed who he is.  He led a loveless life because the woman who was meant to be his first wife cheated on him with a family member who was a bit of a rogue.  Yet, Isak is plagued by both dreams and memories that all imply that, somehow, Isak failed.  In his dreams, he has hauting visions of time running out and odd distorted faces.  Again, we're adding a lot of ourselves to these interpretations, but the concept of guilt and redemption somehow keep spiraling through these images.  The memories are bittersweet at best.  He keeps seeing the love of his life leave him, despite the fact that it is a beautiful day with his family.  We see a lifetime of sadness and yet he can only seem to grow more introspective as opposed to enjoying a day that is celebrating him.  

I'm really glad that  Bergman didn't end on the fishing shot, by the way.  Isak straight up verbalizes that he's dying and the movie eventually concludes with him forgiving himself, mostly because Marianne apologizes for her treatment of this good man.  That outer affirmation has now colored his inner affirmation.  We also find out whose opinions in life actually matter and, in this case, it's his son's wife.  But the movie kept on mentioning death and I needed to see that the home of the eponymous wild strawberries wasn't going to be Isak's afterlife.  It would have been a bit on the nose and I didn't want to have him spend time in a world without love.

Can I tell you that I love having Sara and the bohemians in this movie?  Golly, even though they were a lot and I would probably loathe them in real life, Sara's constant validation of someone that she should --by all intents and purposes --disregard.  Isak is a liminal figure in her life, but he oddly becomes inspiring to her.  It's not like Isak and Sara are kindred spirits.  He's quiet and bears the brunt of society and Sara lives life in surround sound.  Yet, she's the one who sees this award --an award that Isak himself views with humility --with the grandeur beyond its scope.  She doesn't see it as simply something that someone gets.  She imbues it with value celebrating the culmination of a life well lived.  It's honestly very touching and I hope someone does that for me if I receive an award at 90 or whatever.  

It's a very touching movie.  I threw out the word "bittersweet" and I think Bergman might be the king of that.  It's incredibly depressing while being sweet at the same time.  I get why this is regarded as Bergman's greats.  But that doesn't stop it from being just a little bit too sad at times.