Wilde Erdbeeren

In Ingmar Berman's film masterpiece Smultronstallet (or ‘Wild Strawberries' B&W, 1957), the protagonist, an elderly professor who is facing death, has to come to face to face with a long life that has failed to answer the important questions. He is old now and faced with his own inadequacy and impotence.

Bergman introduces three young people into the drama to introduce life's most important question – that of the existence of God. The old man gives them a ride. One of the young men is thinking about becoming a parson; the other argues that God doesn't exist. The old man offers no opinion to the debate. He is silent, but it is a loud silence. It's a silence that reveals an amazing dimension of loss – the loss of year upon year of not coming to terms with this all-important question.

In one of the final scenes, Bergman masterfully closes in tight on the aged face of Professor Isak Borg (played by Victor Sjostrom). In that shot, we can see the whole universe in his eyes and all of its cares in the bags beneath them. Only Bergman could have directed that scene – only him. It makes Smultronstallet one of the most important films ever made. That one scene, better than any other that I know, captures ‘loss' on celluloid for all future generations to witness. If you see it, you may find yourself having to look away.

The imagery in Smultronstallet is unparalleled, except by Bergman's own Sjunde inseglrt, Det (The Seventh Seal, 1957). Look for the handless watch, the corpse wagon, the sparseness of the first scene, the car windows turning to black – ominous signs are everywhere. Notice the clues that point to Bergman's existential philosophy (the twins write a song for a deaf man – as futile as Sisyphus' labor!) and the redemption themes (Izak pierces his hand as he looks into the window, or the line: `A doctor's first duty is to ask for forgiveness.'). Notice also the outright defiance of the divine presence that he has bred into his son (`I will not be forced to live one day longer than I want to.').

Izak is ready to die, but it seems that, for him, life is more forbidding than death. He is a living corpse, dead already in nearly every way. All of these factors conspire to create a masterwork of pure art, and one that gets richer with each repeated viewing.

The film is also cathartic in the sense that Greek drama was cathartic – a warning to the men of ancient Greece to avoid the tragic flaw that undoes the hero - and may be a fateful knock on the door of your undoing as well. Have we answered the question that Izak has not? If not, Izak is us. Look hard - very hard - at Izak. Do you like what you see? To quote a line from the film: `Is there no mercy?' `Don't ask me.' I hope that all of us will fare better when confronted with the film's important question.

I'd seen "Wild Strawberries" as a college freshman when it was first released, and knew right away I'd be a Bergman fan from then on.

I watched it again just last night, January 2004, at age 63, and needless to say got a whole different perspective on the film. Where the surrealist touches, moody photography, and incredibly smooth direction had made the big hit with me as a near boy, as an aging man I found myself--I hesitate to say painfully, but...well, closely--identifying with old Isak Borg in his strange pilgrimage, both interior and exterior, the day he receives his honorary degree at the cathedral in Lund.

In the last twenty minutes or so of the movie, I found tears running down my face, not from any thrilling sentimental browbeating (I doubt if Mr. Bergman shot five seconds' worth of sentimentality in his whole long career!) but simply from the cumulative emotional impact of this simple, powerful story and its probing revelation of human character, desire, and chagrin.

By the time the film ended, I felt wrung out, disoriented, happy and deeply sad at the same time: it's the experience the Greeks wanted their tragedies to convey to the spectator; they spoke of "katharsis." I experienced it firsthand when I had the great good fortune to see a production (in English) of "Medea." I walked away in tears and scarcely able to think straight for an hour or so.

The same thing happened with "Wild Strawberries." This is one of the handful of films I unhesitatingly rate a "ten."

A side note: I watched the Criterion Collection DVD. Before the film itself, I watched the hour-long interview conducted in 1998 by Jorn Donner included on the disc. It was remarkable to see how the film Bergman shot ca. 1957 contains many elements that were to be present in his later life--like a foreshadowing of his own old age.

(Slight Spoilers) A man's life journey is all seen through a number of dreams and hallucinations on his trip, some 400 miles, to the town of Lund where he's to receive a lifetime achievement award for his 50 or so years of service to his fellow man as a doctor and a professor of medicine at his alma mater the Cathedral of Lund.

Disturbed by a dream he had the night before Isak Borg decides to take a ride by car, not plane, to Lund for a ceremony thats to be in his honor for his work as a man of medicine. Isak's maid for some 40 years Agda is very upset with her boss' and good friends decision and decides to stay at home, she'll eventually show up at the ceremony, feeling that the old man has somehow lost control of his senses. It turns out that the long car trip together with his daughter-in-law Marianne was one of the best decision that he made in his long life, Isak is 78 years old. The trip that Isak takes will bring back past memories that he so desperately tried to hide from himself. That past will in effect make him not only a better person but bring back the feeling of humanity that he lost not only for himself over these long and empty years. Not only for Isak but for those close to him whom he more or less also lost contact with. Isak,in both his dreams and memories, is seen as a man who is unable to show any real feelings for those around and close to him in the fear of either being rejected as well as showing himself to be hurt by their negative responses.

This defect in Isak personality has cost him the love of his life Sara when he was a young man who rejected him for his handsome and openly aggressive older brother Sigfried. We also see that Isak's marriage to his wife, who had long since passed away, Karin was anything but happy with her disgusted with his inability to show her any real feelings and emotions as a husband. Were also shown, in one of Isak's dreams, that she had an affair with another man Ake Fridell, who was anything but passive with her like her husband Isak was, some 40 years ago behind his back. That may have possibly resulted in the birth of his only child his son, who's also a doctor, Evald Marriane's husband.

Seeing his 96 year-old mother on his way to Lund we see in her the same human defect that he has in that all of her ten children, who with the exception of Isak are now deceased, never bothered to visit her in her old age. The only time that they had anything to do with her was when they wanted money from the old lady. This coldness and inability to have any attachment to her children is shown not only in both Isak and his mother but in his son Evald who's so disgusted with life and what it had to offer him, like a beautiful and caring wife like Marianne. Evald threatened to walk out on Marianne when after he found out of her being pregnant, I guess by him, she refused his demand of her getting an abortion.

Isak is helped on his long trip to Lund not only by Marianne but a number of people they meet and in some cases give a ride along the way. This included a young girl and two of her friend going on a trip to Italy ironically named Sara, a virtual twin of the Sara that he loved and lost as a young man. Later Sara together with Anders and Victor who later as a singing group serenade a surprised and grateful, to the point of tears, Isak after he received his award. Meeting among others along the way to far flung Lund a bickering couple Mr. & Mrs. Alman, who almost had Isak and his passengers killed in a head-on car crash. Isak also met a gas station attendant, Henrik, who was so impressed and grateful by what he did for him and his wife in the past , delivered their first child, that he refused to get paid for filling up Isak's gas-tank.

By the time Isak got to Lund and received his lifetime achievement award to the attendance and cheering of the entire town he not only realized all the good that he did as a man of medicine all these years but also all the hurt that he gave to others, if unintentional. With the little time that he has left, Isak was to pass away three years later at the age of 81, Isak is determined to make up for it.

Sweet touching yet simple little film about one man's journey back in time who sees how he missed out on the many wonderful things that life had to offer him by being blind to them. Now given a second chance Isak would try as best as he can to both re-live and at the same time correct his past mistakes.

Wild Strawberries can be praised for so many reasons, but chief among them in my own mind is the way in which the film so perfectly conveys its themes of self-examination and the contemplation of one's own mortality (particularly through its stunning use of flashbacks). Bergman's autobiographical story also benefits from the brilliant casting of Swedish film legend Victor Sjostrom as Isak Borg, whose towering performance is essential to the success of Wild Strawberries. I read that Bergman based the coffin dream sequence on a frequent nightmare that he had -- and it never ceases to amaze me just how effective it remains even after all these years. Wild Strawberries seems like a quiet, thoughtful, introsepective movie -- and it is; it is also one of world cinema's most impressive motion pictures.

The laws of life are hard to follow, they'll often lead to mournful sorrow, because there are no hard set rules, except those conjured by naive fools. So when the hands fall off the clock, the sands of time run out and stop, it's far too late to contemplate, your influence on your own fate. So as your winters fast approach, cold days of melancholic reproach, observe the worlds that could have been, compare them to the ones you've seen. It's seldom late to change your mind, free yourself from pedantic grind, to avoid worst case scenario, having scattered seed, in sterile furrow.

Victor Sjöström is outstanding as the reflective pedant who's missed the boat.