Sinfonia d'autunno

This is a beautiful and devastating film that I admire, love and am connected to. This was the first Liv Ullmann's film I've seen and the first Bergman's color film. It is considered to be Ingrid Bergman's film and she is phenomenal as a talented and world renowned pianist who had never been a good mother to her two daughters. It is much easier to make the whole world happy then your own child. One can be a brilliant artist and read the minds of the other great minds easily but the hearts and souls of one's own blood and flesh would be the unsolved mystery. I think the film was very personal for both Bergmans in their only work together. It is amazing how bravely they explore the themes and events that could've (and did) occurred in their own lives. For me, though, the film belongs to Liv Ullmann, the greatest actress I've seen, the best Ingmar Bergman's actress.

I was riveted to Liv's face; I'd never seen the face like hers. She played a plain daughter to the brilliant mother and she was supposed to look and feel awkward and gawky comparing to her mother but her face was like a magnet, her eyes - like two deep blue lakes. If ever the saying, the eyes are the soul's mirror, is true, it is about Liv's eyes. There are kindness, tenderness, strength, and something even more attractive than beauty itself in them - the goodness of her soul. Dostoyevsky said once that human face has to mean something - I always think of his words when I see performance of my favorite actress ever -Liv Ullmann.

A daughter and her mother reacquaint, it's been some time and there's a picture one will paint, of neglect and disaffection, absence, disdain and rejection, of connection that was nothing more than faint.

The dialogue and discourse are as real as if you were a fly on the wall listening to the words exchanged between Eva and Charlotte as a genuine mother and daughter. The emotions and the tension, as one reveals to the other the torment and torture endured through childhood and beyond as believable as any captured through film. The spectacular performance of Ingrid Bergman only partially eclipsed by the phenomenal talents of Liv Ullmann. The whole encapsulated through one of the greatest interpreters of the human condition that has ever set foot behind a camera. A truly magnificent piece of film making.

Ingrid Bergman as Charlotte, is a concert pianist visiting her daughter Eva, played by Liv Ullmann. They have not seen each other for 7 years. Charlotte's other daughter, Helena, is also living with Eva. Helena has a crippling disease, and at one time was living in some type of institution.

At first, everything is fine, as mother and daughter do their best to make each other as comfortable as possible. When left alone, they wonder about each other's expectations, but continue on.

Charlotte is a very talented, but completely self-absorbed woman. Eva is a frump. A sweet frump, but a frump nonetheless. At first, there are a few catty remarks exchanged, but the turning point is when Eva offers to play the piano for her mother. She works as hard as she can, but the music sounds contrived and unmusical. When she asks her mother to play the piece for her, Charlotte does the one thing that signaled to me that "the war was on". She laid down the music rack on the piano. (When pianists have a piece memorized, they do that to show the audience that they have no need for the printed music.) Charlotte, of course, plays beautifully (she could play no other way). However, the damage is done. Mother is successful, and daughter is a failure. Although the scene is dramatically pivotal, it did produce one of the few really funny lines in the movie. After Charlotte finishes playing, she says, "Well, I HAVE been playing these Chopin pieces for 37 years."

Charlotte's self-absorption is pretty amazing when you realize that her ill daughter was in an institution, then moved to Eva's house, and she had no idea that it happened. There are some other clues in the early part of the story that indicate she probably wished that her daughter Helena would have died long ago. Charlotte can be totally charming to her public, her agents, her fans... but has very little to offer her own children.

Eva is so desperate for love and affection from her mother that she seemingly misses the fact that her husband loves her very much. When Charlotte is awakened by a nightmare, she and Eva begin a late-night talk. And that is when the real nightmare begins.

At times this film is painful to watch, and at times is emotionally draining. Sven Nykvyst's cinematography is stunning. I thought this especially so in the flashback sequences, and in the scene close to the end of the film when Eva is in the cemetery.

Although not as perfect as The Seventh Seal, or Wild Strawberries, Autumn Sonata still has much to say, whether we feel comfortable listening to it or not.

Writer/director Ingmar Bergman examines the strained relationship between a mother and daughter in `Autumn Sonata,' starring Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann. Eva (Ullmann) has not seen her mother, Charlotte (Bergman) in seven years; a successful concert pianist, Charlotte has spent a good portion of her life on the road, but after losing her long-time companion, Leonardo, Eva invites her to come to the parsonage where she and her minister husband, Viktor (Halvar Bjork), live, for an extended visit. Charlotte accepts, but soon after her arrival, old wounds and feelings begin to surface, and the film becomes an intimate character study of the life-long dysfunctional relationship between Charlotte and Eva, during which director Bergman intricately examines the causes and effects of all that has passed between them during their lives. It's an in-depth look at the emotional damage human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another, and how fragile the line between love and hate becomes when subjected to incessant neglect by even one of the parties involved. As the story unfolds and the principals bare their souls-- at last revealing a lifetime's worth of repressed feelings-- it becomes an emotionally devastating experience for the audience, as well, for there is much contained within the dynamics of this situation that most viewers will be able to identify with and relate to within their own lives. Ingmar Bergman is a Master of presenting life as it truly is; reality-- and portraying it on the screen-- is his domain, and throughout his career he has veritably created almost a genre of his own in doing so. With a microscope of his own design, he scrutinizes the basic instincts of the human condition, what makes people tick and how and why they relate to one another as they do. Much of what he presents is startling, and always emotionally involving, because he penetrates so deeply and succinctly into the heart of the matter, as he demonstrates so superlatively with this film. His methods and style are unique, his talent unequivocal; many others have attempted to capture the essence of that which Bergman has perfected, but few have succeeded. Interestingly enough, Liv Ullmann is one who, as a director, has probably come the closest to achieving that classic `sense' of Bergman, with her films `Private Confessions,' and `Faithless,' both of which were written by Bergman. In her role as Eva, Ullmann gives one of the best performances of her career, for which she should have at least been nominated for an Oscar; that she was not is nothing less than a gross injustice. She so skillfully conveys the depth and complexities of her character, and the differing emotional levels to which Eva is subjected, that it creates a lasting impression and makes her someone with whom it is easy for the audience to sympathize. It makes you realize, upon reflection, what a truly gifted actress Ullmann is. And, as good as Ullmann's performance here is, it is equaled-- though not, I would say-- surpassed, by Ingrid Bergman's portrayal (in her final theatrical appearance) of Charlotte; and in a renewal of faith that there is some justice in the world after all, she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for it. In retrospect, it seems somehow inevitable that the two Bergmans came together at last, though it's somewhat lamentable that their career paths did not cross sooner. There is some consolation, however, in the fact that when they did finally join forces the result was such a powerful, memorable film. The supporting cast includes Lena Nyman (Helena), Gunnar Bjornstrand (Paul), Erland Josephson (Josef) and Linn Ullmann (Eva as a child). An intelligent, thought provoking and emotionally wrenching film, highlighted by outstanding performances and beautifully photographed by Sven Nykvist, `Autumn Sonata' is an example of filmmaking at it's best; it's a lasting tribute, not only to the immense talents of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, but to Ingrid Bergman, one of the most beautiful and gifted actresses ever to grace the silver screen. I rate this one 10/10.

What makes a movie perfect is not only the intensity of emotion you feel when seeing it, and it's not only the seamless matching of technique and artistry, it is the truth of feeling conveyed and the unrelenting attention to the details of the crafts of writing, acting, and directing, making certain that those details work together to create meaning - a view of life, and whatever forces are behind life, that are as varied, contradictory, and complete as a living being. It is this that Bergman managed to accomplish with AUTUMN SONATA. The hyperbolic use of the word 'perfect', too often spontaneously tossed out as a result of confused and mawkish sentimentality (just as one Liv Ulmann's interpretation of a Chopin prelude is described as mawkish in the film) has a right to be used in the case of this work. There are no demons or angels in this movie. There are a collection of remarkably real characters whose actions and their motivations are fully explained by themselves, in dialog that is explicit and direct but not delivered as an artificial way of getting across the creator's judgment on his characters. Ingrid Bergman, in what is doubtlessly the finest performance of her career, portrays a mother who has neglected her children all her life and is confronted by this fact by her grown daughter whose adoration as a child has turned into an apparently irreversible hatred. "There is no forgiveness" is a line uttered by Liv Ulmann after summarizing the crimes of her mother's neglect and the results of that neglect. And yet, the character's contradictory feelings are clearly seen in the moments when her need for vengeful expression of her pain has faded away. The daughter who has condemned her mother, quite honestly, wants to keep trying to resolve the conflict, to heal the gaping wounds in her heart and in her sister's heart - a sister who, arguably, has been physically crippled by the cold withdrawl of her mother's feelings and her mother's competitive need to be the leading female character in everyone's life. Ingrid Bergman's character, though seen as a villain in the emotional eyes of her daughter, comes across as complex as Ulmann's. She has an awareness of her crimes of neglect but remains helpless, by choice and by need, to confront them within herself and make amends to resolve them. Her own childhood is the reason. The isolation that she felt, instead of inspiring her to not repeat the mistake with her own children, took the course of isolation, of seeking praise from the outside, of being the central character in the lives of people around her. Her insatiable hunger for love from others, though, remains forever unsatisfied. Her selfishness, even though she is painfully aware of it, is something which she has learned how to hide from herself. Her methods, of physical distance or the perfection of her work as a pianist has, for all her adult life, successfully obfuscated her pain - until an all-night exposing of the naked truths of hurt and distrust that are thrust upon her by her daughter.

Anyone with a mother or father can find identification with the characters in AUTUMN SONATA, as long as they can tolerate the pain of the truth that lies at the center of their all-too-human needs and the hurtful action that those needs have caused.