Morangos Silvestres

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.

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.

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.

Bergman's films, to state the blindingly obvious, are the complete antithesis of the mindcandy (A Beautiful Mind) presented to cinemagoers in sterile multiplexes. They are almost like cinematic art forms, meditations on life and its meanings but, like many works of art, they can be obscure, challenging and demand patience to understand their underlying subtexts. Even after a 2nd viewing!

'Wild Strawberries' deals with the past, memories & regrets. It's about an inner journey about one man's subjective state of mind as he sees nostalgic memories of childhood & lost love (regret), surreal visions of denial (mortality) and unsettling weird dreams which hint at a self-awareness and truth that he cannot face in reality.

I was touched by Victor Sjostrom's performance as the elderly Prof. Isak Borg reflecting upon his life, and moved by the final emotional scenes where he achieves an inner peace. Is it slightly deceiving, a cop-out that Borg finds peace at the sight of his father and mother, 'the point before betrayal, before the messiness of life' intervenes as another reviewer stated? Well, I think it's commonly accepted that most people, as they grow older, tend to remember more from their past & childhoods. Why? Perhaps because it reminds them of a time of lost innocence.

What I found quite difficult to understand was how Isak is supposed to be this cold-hearted rationalist; Sjostrom's touching depiction makes this troubled old man quite endearing (viz the young travelling companions affection for him). Perhaps, as the opening suggests, this is a man who has shied away from intimate contact, whose coldness drove his unhappy late wife into the arms of another and who has approached life solely on his own (egotistic) terms leading to loneliness.

This is where the allusion to wild strawberries becomes significant as it is the symbol of regeneration: through his inner journey, mixing dream & reality, Borg sees the truth about his life and its emptiness. The film charts his growing intimacy with his daughter-in-law and an eventual inner peace.

The film sounds typically Scandinavian in its gloom but it is also a celebration of youth as well as a study of mortality and one man's mind. It's also not without comedy, particularly the old Prof's relationship with his housekeeper Agfa and the absurd boxing match about 'God'(Bergman parodying himself) between the two young hitchhikers.

What makes the film so intriguing is how characters/situations often reflect one another (Borg & his son, their coldness and attitude to life); these parallels extend to the point where characters even play dual roles: Bibi Andersson as Sara (the lost love & then the young vivacious traveller) and a cruel husband who later appears as the stern examiner in an unsettling dream. It's a highly complex pattern of subtle connections (stream of consciousness)that, as Borg states at the end, forms some sort of logical order. ....................................................................................................................

2021 addition. I recently heard Charles Causley's poem 'Eden Rock' which is about the older poet encountering his parents as he remembers them when young, and they beckon him to cross the drifting stream (the passage between life & death).

'Crossing is not as hard as you might think."

I'm not sure I understand all the meanings in this film, but feel the above poem illuminates the final scene of the film, perhaps with the old Professor coming to terms with his life & mortality.

(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.