Wilde Erdbeeren

Although I'm not the biggest Ingmar Bergman fan, I have really enjoyed some of his movies--especially the one that are not so pessimistic. Although the underlying theme of this movie is aging and impending death, the movie is NOT all pessimism. If it had been, it would have lost my interest early on. Instead, I really enjoyed the film--particularly the fine acting by Victor Sjöström as Professor Borg.

The professor is well-respected for his work as a doctor. However, despite his success in his career, he is a failure in his personal relationships. His emotional baggage over the years has prevented him from allowing himself to be close to those he truly loves. This theme mirrors one of the subplots of Through a Glass Darkly, where a father is being destroyed inside by his daughter's mental illness but he CANNOT allow himself to show his anguish--choosing instead to hide in his room with his tears. It is interesting that the same man playing Borg's son (Gunnar Björnstrand) plays the father only a few years later in Through a Glass Darkly.

Fortunately, unlike Through a Glass Darkly, there IS evidence that the professor is willing to change his persona, as he begins to open up more through the course of the movie. This appears to be assisted through extensive soul searching and dreams the professor has concerning his past and his own mortality--along with experiences he has during a long drive down the coast of Sweden. Because of this, even his extremely strained relationship with his son appears to hold some hope of improvement by the film's end. This hope for change lifts this movie above some Bergman films that only wallow in hopelessness.

FYI--The Criterion version of this DVD is nice due to its running commentary as well as the accompanying documentary. Get this version if you have the chance.

Also FYI--After watching many Bergman films and reading about his life, I detect quite a bit of autobiography in this film and his own stuggles with intimacy.

In this symbolic tale of an old man's journey from emotional isolation to a kind of personal renaissance, Ingmar Bergman explores in part his own past, and in doing so rewards us all with a tale of redemption and love.

Victor Sjostrom, then 80 years old, stars as Professor Isak Borg whose self-indulgent cynicism has left him isolated from others. Sjostrom, whose work goes back to the very beginning of the Swedish cinema in the silent film era, both as an actor and as a director, gives a brilliant and compelling performance. All the action of the film takes place in a single day with flashbacks and dream sequences to Borg's past as Borg wakes and goes on a journey to receive a "Jubilee Doctor" degree from the University of Lund. Bergman wrote that the idea for the film came upon him when he asked the question, "What if I could suddenly walk into my childhood?" He then imagined a film "about suddenly opening a door, emerging in reality, then turning a corner and entering another period of one's existence, and all the time the past is going on, alive."

Bibi Andersson plays both the Sara from Borg's childhood, the cousin he was to marry, and the hitchhiker Sara who with her two companions befriends him with warmth and affection. The key scene is when the ancient Borg in dreamscape comes upon the Sara of his childhood out gathering wild strawberries. Borg looks on (unnoticed of course) as his brother, the young Sigfrid, ravishes her with a kiss which she returns passionately; and, as the wild strawberries fall from her bowl onto her apron, staining it red, Borg experiences the pain of infidelity and heartbreak once again. Note that in English we speak of losing one's "cherry"; here the strawberries symbolize emotionally much the same thing for Sara. Later on in the film as the redemption comes, the present day Sara calls out to Borg that it is he that she really loves, always and forever. Borg waves her away from the balcony, yet we are greatly moved by her love, and we know how touched he is.

The two young men accompanying Sara can be seen as reincarnations of the serious and careful Isak Borg and the more carefree and daring Sigfrid. It is as though his life has returned to him as a theater in which the characters resemble those of his past; yet we are not clear in realizing whether the resemblance properly belongs in the old man's mind or is a synchronicity of time returned.

Memorable is Ingrid Thulin who plays Mariana, the wife of Borg's son who accompanies him on the auto trip to Lund. She begins with frank bitterness toward the old man but ends with love for him; and again we are emotionally moved at the transformation. What Bergman does so very well in this film is to make us experience forgiveness and the transformation of the human spirit from the negative emotions of jealousy and a cold indifference that is close to hate, to the redemption that comes with love and a renewal of the human spirit. In quiet agreement with this, but with the edge of realism fully intact, is the scene near the end when Borg asks his long time housekeeper and cook if they might not call one another by their first names. She responses that even at her age, a woman has her reputation to consider. Such a gentle comeuppance meshes well with, and serves as a foil for, all that has gone on before on this magical day in an old man's life.

See this for Bergman who was just then realizing his genius (The Seventh Seal was produced immediately before this film) and for Sjostrom who had the rare opportunity to return to film as an actor in a leading role many decades past him prime, and made the most of it with a flawless performance, his last major performance as he was to die three years later.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

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.

I first saw "Wild Strawberries" many years ago at one of the special screenings in the small theater in Moscow. It was the first Bergman's film I ever saw. This picture is amazing in its emotional impact and in my opinion is one of Bergman's most optimistic, profound, and warm films.

"Wild Strawberries" provides sincere, intelligent, and emotional contemplations of life's disappointment, regrets, and losses. The main character, seventy-eight-year-old Professor Isak Borg is forced to see his life in a true and painful light, but he also would learn that there is hope.

Sparkling cinematography by Gunnar Fisher and superb acting of Bergman's regulars – Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Anderson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Max von Sydow and especially, the great silent film director, Victor Sjostrom as Professor Borg add to many delights of "Wild Strawberries" which also include Bergman's writing/directing with his famous mixing of conscious and unconscious, dreams and reality, the past and the present in the same scene.

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.