La Isla De Bergman

At first a rather boring car journey and a rather uninteresting looking island where Chris and Tony, or Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth are to have a working holiday for their screenplays. Faro was the island where Ingmar Bergman worked and filmed and Roth is especially keen on being there. The couple are not quite as loving as they might have been and Krieps starts to tell her story, although he is not so interested, as he has already planned out his own. Of course the story becomes a film within a film and it is something like her life and there are moments about Bergman. Roth even rented the house that had been filmed with the very bed in Scenes For A Marriage, 'The film that made millions of people divorce'. I understand that in reality the director, Mia Hansen-Love had a long affair with the French director Olivier Assayas who was the senior partner in both age and success.

Master Director Ingmar Bergman famously lived for the last decades of his life on the island of Fårö off Sweden and made it the setting for many of his films as well as varied relationships with wives and women. Writer-Director Mia Hansen-Love (EDEN, THINGS TO COME) sets her newest film on the isle and it becomes a character in and of itself.

A filmmaking couple, Chris (Vicky Krieps; so fascinating in PHANTOM THREAD) and Tony (Tim Roth), visit Fårö to work on their new screenplays as well as soak in the Bergman atmosphere, both being devoted to the famed Director. Tony is also being feted by the Swedish film community which grants the pair special access including a stay at one of Bergman's homes. This description may make it seem like this is a movie only for fans of the Swedish Director (he passed in 2007), but Hansen-Love has more on her mind (still, at least a cursory knowledge of Bergman's work is essential). This isn't to say that the film isn't littered with references and allusions to the filmmakers work and life - it is (the couple sleep in the same bedroom that was used for Bergman's SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE: "The film that made millions of people divorce" as is said here); But, Hansen-Love's focus is on the personal dynamics.

While Tony is obviously the senior partner in both age and success, the central character is clearly Chris. A movie within the movie brings to life the screenplay that she is working on. That inner tale concerns a young woman (Mia Wasikowska) who meets up with an old flame (Anders Danielsen Lie) at a wedding....on Fårö. While Wasikowska's character is named 'Amy', she is clearly a stand-in for Chris. It's a tricky and mostly clever device, even if it is awkwardly inserted into the storyline (and far too late). As a backstory within a backstory, Hansen-Love herself famously had a long affair with French Director Olivier Assayas -- who was also the senior partner in both age and success. And, to extend the "in" nature of the production even on step further, Greta Gerwig had been slated to play Chris originally (Gerwig, of course, also being involved in a filmaking couple romance with Noah Baumbach). As noted, it's awkward.

Cinefiles certainly are the target audience here. Bergman presence clearly haunts the island and there is talk of how he may have believed in ghosts. The film has an oddly structured screenplay that meanders a bit before making its design clear, but there are pleasures to be had for those that stick with it. The uninitiated may find it a pleasant tour of the scenic island (usually rendered bleakly in Bergman's films, and often in Black &White).

Beautiful movie in a history-filled location, though not much happens.

Interesting, well crafted and relatable main characters and refreshing storytelling. Lacks meaning and is not very emotionally engaging or exciting; still I do not think it ever gets boring since the story keeps moving albeit, as i said before, nothing hugely significant happens.

Captivating premise for cinephiles who want to know more about Bergman, the legendary Swedish director, and the island he used to live on.

6/10.

Could have been a great film, but it cannot decide which way to go. It feels like standing beore a signpost with a dozen possible directions, but the author director could not really make up her mind which one to pursue.

Since the story revolves around Ingmar Bergman, who used to life and film on this island, we get a lot of references, movie clips, talks, sights, and quips about him, his films and his life. Praise and critique about Bergman is woven into the story of a couple of filmmakers, Chris and Tony, coming to Fårö, to write scripts and learn more on Bergman. Their different work styles, subjects and attitude have quite some Bergmanesque quality, though none of the straits are followed to the end. The Bergman worshipping and bashing does not offer any new insights and sounds like remnants from an abandoned documentary project. The film tends to remain on the lighter side until we get to hear and see Chris' script evolve as she tells it to her partner.

Here begins the strongest plot line, blending fiction with the reality. I only wish the director had focussed more on this development. It would have been an ultimately more compelling film.

I really enjoyed and loved this film, but I can also understand why others won't. I won't go over the synopsis because I assume most readers are already familiar with it/can easily do so. The pacing is very slow and the plot gets more convoluted as we go along, and there are many many references to Bergman, and so again, I can understand why this would be alienating and maybe even annoying to some, but these are some of the reasons why I liked this film so much. The tone and the way that every scene is directed and shot are also very different from other "serious" so-called arthouse films. The universal and perhaps timeless subject matter--love, relationships, artistic creation, loneliness (or solitude, depending), to name some--are indeed serious but are also treated in a casual, airy, even jovial manner (and not in the derogatory sense of these words), which was really refreshing and made me even reconsider my own preferences, cinematic or otherwise, and the way that I view Bergman in particular and artistic inspiration more generally. There's also a sort of dreamlike atmosphere that surrounds the film and the film within a film especially.

The first hour or so is a very careful and brilliantly written setup for the second hour in which doubles and doubling will appear - characters become narrators and also understudies for other characters, and virtually every sentence that they say can be interpreted metafictionally, as they are aware of being actors in a film (or in the film within a film, as well). It's indeed a film that interprets itself and its own mechanisms, especially its writing process, which is not new (Godard, for example), of course, but this is exactly where the director has shown originality and creativity. Hansen-Løve takes Bergman and his films (and his alter ego in the form of the beautiful, serene island of Fårö itself and also possibly her partner, another threatening male director that looms in the background or the foreground), and instead of merely referencing him for the sake of reference alone and sounding "smart", as a "formidable reference" as one character says, she plays with his myth, with his films. After all, the word "allusion" comes from the word "to play," and this is where the film really shines quite brilliantly. Ghosts become zombies in a horror film within the film, words become real, and the "power of fiction," as one character writes in their journal, dazzles. There's also an interesting discussion of human relationships, love, motherhood, what it means to love more than one person at the same time, especially when it comes from a woman. Women here as in Bergman's films are indeed the driving force both of the plot and of the actual film, dealing with the old issue of writer's block in a new perspective, truly. I think this is what originality really is now: you take an artwork or its creator which precedes you (and in film or any other medium, of course, you never operate solely on your own or in a vacuum, but are under an influence of tradition and an entire history that "haunts" you), and try to re-mold it, shape it into something new by using the same tools but in a different, singular way, using your own tone. Notice that the title of the film is "Bergman Island" and not "Bergman's Island". Bergman doesn't own the island nor can he monopolize it, as much as the industry born from his life there is very much alive. Every director, character, visitor, and film spectator shares the island and its impression via this film. I will say, though, that the ending did feel a bit rushed and maybe even underdeveloped, but it's still done masterfully, showing complete control of the medium of film.