Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 2003, Sweden/Denmark/Norway/Italy/Finland/ Germany/Austria, 107mins, subtitles
Cast: Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Börje Ahlstedt, Julia Dufvenius
Review by Angus Macdonald
More than two decades ago, Ingmar Bergman announced his cinematic retirement, leaving devoted fans with his sumptuous and staggering masterpiece Fanny and Alexander (1982). Concentrating mainly on directing for television and the theatre, he continued to write for the screen with films such as The Best Intentions (1992, directed by Bille August), Sunday’s Children (1992, directed by his son Daniel Bergman), and Faithless (2000, directed by regular leading actress, Liv Ullmann), all of which proved that he was still the master of familial breakdowns, existential angst, and the kind of Scandinavian brooding which would become the favoured blueprint for art cinema parody (think Monty Python or French and Saunders).
Bergman, now 87 years old, has confirmed that Saraband is definitely his final film. Made for Swedish television in 2003, it became a hit at film festivals (including the Edinburgh Film Festival), and despite Bergman’s initial reservations, has deservedly been given a theatrical release.
Saraband catches up with Marianne (Ullmann) and Johan (Josephson), the volatile anguished couple from Bergman’s earlier Scenes from a Marriage (1973). In the prologue, Marianne talks directly to camera about what has happened during the last 30 years. They divorced, carried on with their lives, buried past grudges, and gradually lost touch. Instinctively deciding to visit Johan at his isolated country house, Marianne discovers that he has lost touch with his daughters (he doesn’t even know that one is now living and married in Australia), and that he passionately despises his own son, Henrik (Ahlstedt). Since losing his wife, Anna, to cancer two years previously, Henrik, a professor of music, has become emotionally over-dependent on his cellist daughter, Karin (Dufvenius), stifling her and refusing to let her move away to study music. “If you leave me I’ll be destitute, or some better word that doesn’t exist.”
Described by Bergman as “a concert for full orchestra – only, here, with four soloists”, Saraband consists of ten chapters – “1. Marianne puts her plan into action”, “2. Almost a week has gone by” – not including Marianne’s direct-to-camera Prologue and Epilogue. Within each chapter, two of Bergman’s soloists battle for control. The clashing duets between Henrik and Karin, or Henrik and Johan, are extremely painful to watch. When Johan tells his son exactly how much he hates him, it holds on a close up of Henrik’s bright red face, tears bristling behind his shocked wide eyes. As for the relationship between Henrik and his daughter, it soon becomes evident that he is trying to replace the pain he feels for the loss of his beloved wife with an unhealthy and indecent obsession with his own daughter. The scene in which they suddenly kiss during an argument is both shocking and uncomfortable. Marianne and Johan’s relationship has reached an almost nostalgic (and at times warm and moving) surrender. When Johan suffers an intense panic attack – “a gigantic, total mental diarrhoea” – Marianne ends up taking him naked and innocent into her bed.
Throughout it all, the one figure that haunts almost every scene is Anna. From Karin’s discovery of a letter written by her mother just before she died, to the film’s constant referral to her photograph (at times her face eerily appears on screen without warning), she seems to be the only person that each of the characters truly loved, and this alone held everybody together. Since her death, the family has no reason to survive.
It’s astonishing the power Bergman can convey in a single close-up or with a single line of dialogue, especially with the group of actors gathered here. With an acute sense of subtlety, restraint, and patience, Saraband can knock the wind out of its audience before they’re aware that that’s precisely it’s intentions. As the swan song of one of the worlds greatest film directors, it may not reach the extraordinary heights of his undisputed classics, The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), or Fanny and Alexander (not many films can), but it certainly towers over less simplistic, less intelligent and less heartfelt fare out there.
