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Shame (Special Edition)

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One doesn't think of Ingmar Bergman as a director of action or thriller (genre) movies. But he directs the war sequences in "Shame" with stunning confidence. It seems he could have made many more big (even epic) movies if he had been so inclined. This film features Bergman veterans Von Sydow and Ullmann as ordinary people who are turned into refugees by a ferocious war in which they get caught. They lose everything, are harassed, beaten and exploited. Eventually the neurotic Von Sydow proves he will do anything to survive. Simone Weil once wrote "the great mystery of life is not suffering, but affliction." That is: suffering brings out the best in some people, others it turns into beasts. This movie asks that most painful question: what would you do in the same situation? The film presents a harrowing landscape of hell on earth that ends in a climax that will inevitably remind you of "Titanic", although Bergman did it first. It's more immediately accessible than many of Bergman's other movies because the anguish here takes external form, not just emotionally interior terror. A neglected masterpiece that should be seen at least as often as his other great works.

I don't care what people think of me after I make this statement. I don't care if people think I'm over dramatizing or if I sound pretentious. But, Ingmar Bergman, to me, is a cinematic genius! People offen ask me, why do you like Bergman? Aren't you a little too young to watch his films (I'm 18)? When asked these questions my answer is always the same. I watch Bergman's films because I simply love the way he shows the human condition. Unlike Hollywood filmmakers, I think his films are far more personal. He shows society at face values, our good sides and bad. As for me being too young. Well, do you have to be a certain age to have a love for the finer things?

Bergman's films almost if not always conjure important issues. His films make you think. And, they, to me anyway, always have characters that we can relate to. His films leave an emotional impact on his audience. Watching films like "Wild Strawberries", or "The Seventh Seal", "Through A Glass, Darkly", "Persona", and "Cries and Whispers" they are all able to connect with the viewer. We feel for these characters. I've offen joked around and have said that the two characters in "Strawberries" and "Seal" are me! And "Shame" is just as powerful as any other Bergman film. The images we see on screen, grip us. They are intense, but, not like the way cop movies are. They are intense in a realistic point of view. "Shame" directed and written by Bergman stars Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman as Jan and Eva Rosenberg, former violinist, who have not played in some time. I assume this is due to the civil war that is happening. They live on a farm, far away from society. And, according to Jan (Sydow) that is a good thing. He follows the rule of, the less you know the better. He and Eva (Ullman) are having their own personal problems in they relationship. She wants to have a baby, and he thinks they should wait. They have no money, and it clearly is not safe where they are living. They can hear bombs being dropped and the sound of guns being fired. If all of this wasn't enough they are later accused of being in trust I suppose you can say with the enemy. Once you hit this point of the film it is the second "act". They are now put to the test to find out exactly what kind of people they are. Are they just or not? After a suprise ending we see that they have a lot of secrets they now must keep to each other, so they must live in "Shame" due to their actions. The cinematography by Sven Nykvist is wonderful. I feel his work really adds to the film. I found this film very hard to find. I actually had to leave Chicago to buy it lol. I don't know if anyone else had the same problem or not, but if you do, it's really worth the search. Great movie for those who haven't seen a Bergman film yet ("Shame" on you! lol). Powerful, wonderful acting, great directing and photography. A Bergman masterpiece!

The details of this film pass with the gritty realism almost of a documentary. Indeed of several documentaries: first about the intricacies of an ordinary marriage, then about the abrupt interruption of war, finally a descent into brutality, some might say insanity. In all three regards, the movie presents a powerful, because intimate, representation of the human condition. Who cannot picture their own relationship with their spouse at the beginning? Who can watch the middle section without thinking of Bosnia, or of Kosovo? Fortunately, most of us have been spared the film's denouement (if denouement is the appropriate term here).

It is from a structuralist perspective, however, that the film proves to be a truly remarkable work. It is clearly allegorical, and like all allegories it invites interpretation. It suggests many things, all conflictual: the struggle of art against political and social brutishness (the broken violin, the ruined hands, the smashing of a piano, etc.) It suggests the defeat of simplicity (with an overtone of 'simple piety') in the face of human complexity, and ultimately free will. Jan and Eva are not simple people, yet they attempt the simple life as an escape from war. The war - the human condition in extremis - catches up with them and takes them over through death, prostitution, revenge. The film's most poignant moment occurs as the aspiring mother, Eva, comes across a slaughtered infant, mourns the death of innocence, as it were.

There are many other allegorical levels at which this film plays, all of them valid interpretations.

Yet it is as an allegory of love that the film held greatest power for me. It's hardly an uplifting view of love, but then Bergman never shies from the harsher portrayals of humanity. The film is structured as a mirror turning upon itself. At the begining, Jan is weak, Eva acts. Jan has a dream, which reflects his inner turmoil and fear, Eva listens less than attentively as she tries to get them to meet an appointment with a ferry boat. When Jan does attempt to act (by fixing the radio, fixing the car, shooting a chicken) he fails miserably. She, on the other hand, strides out into a river to procure a fish from her neighbor, she cooks, she provides.

By the end of the film, it is Jan who is acting, Eva who follows. Jan takes revenge, Jan kills for boots, Jan bribes his way onto a boat, Jan steers. The greater Jan's power to act, the weaker and more dependent Eva becomes.

I am reminded of Sartre's reflections on human relationships (etres pour autrui) where intimacy is portrayed largely as a struggle between two beings for dominance.

What is most powerful about Bergman's allegory here is the context in which this struggle takes place. Eva's hegemony is one driven by the urge to nurture, provide and give. Her great desire is to have a child, to give and nourish life, an urge which she admits is instinctual. In Bergman's perverted mirror, Jan is transformed into action by the destructive forces of war. He takes life. At the end, wantonly. Eva's hegemony ends in the symbol of the dead child. Jan's in the unforgettable image of the dead floating soldiers.

Love, in Bergman's allegory then, becomes symbolically a struggle between life affirming forces and death. If the latter overcomes the former, neither prevails.

I can hardly imagine a more bleak film, yet it is absolutely riveting to watch and there is something transcendent in the experience of seeing it. As always, the performances are pitch perfect and the black & white medium ideal. Scenes of horror and emotional brutality are then punctuated by moments of incredible beauty, humanity and redemption, but utlimately we watch two individuals and society as a whole disintegrate. Bergman is reacting to many things here--including his and his nation's own mixed feelings of neutrality and complicity during WWII. Yes, it's an anti-war fim, but it's much more. Along with the earlier "Persona," "Hour of the Wolf" and the later "Passion of Anna," Bergman examines the awesome task of maintaining the integrity of our selves.

Along with "Persona" (1966), "Shame" ranks as one of Bergman's greatest achievements and remains as relevant and frightening as it was in 1968. While "Persona" dealt with the interior fragmentation of individual identity, "Shame" extends the dissolution to civilization as a whole. It stars Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann as concert violinists who wish only to live undisturbed while a civil war rages around them. Inevitably, the war absorbs their lives and forces out many hidden and unappealing features in their characters. Bergman does an extraordinary job portraying a society collapsing into terror and oppression - an all the more impressive achievement when you realize that most of his films are intense character examinations featuring a few actors and are not staged on such a wide a scope as this.

The performances are all first-rate, as you would expect, and it presents - along with "Persona" - a probling presentation of key contemporary problems and, like the former film, permits the possibility that their are no fixed answers. The fate of Sydow and Ullmann's characters are left uncertain and the outcome of the war, as well as the combatants, are never specified - the viewer is never given easy point to orient himself; everything is unknowable, elusive, destructive. There is no salvation for these careers, no "Schindler's List" (a film that would make any interesting companion to this one) to save them from these horrors.

"Shame" is one of the best films ever made about ordinary people reacting to the horror of war. Bergman has synthesized many of his thematic concerns - about alienation, the collapse of any fixed certainty in a godless world - into a startingly lucid presentation of a civilization falling apart at the seams. He has here created two back-to-back films which practically sum up the twentieth-century experience for Western man. "Shame" is a flawless masterpiece.

Among the Bergman films I have seen, this is an unusually realistic and absorbing film. In fact, I recommend this film to people who probably would not appreciate or enjoy his other films.

But for the same reasons I recommend the film to mainstream filmgoers, I fear that the film might not reward repeat viewing in the same way as Bergman's more difficult films (like Persona, The Silence, perhaps Cries & Whispers). Of course, not everyone buys DVDs for the same reasons I do.

Anyway, I'm writing this review mainly to warn viewers of this DVD not to expect much from the audio commentary by Marc Gervais. He speaks mostly of other films, of the actors, of the varying degrees of greyness, and of his own mundane middle-class lifestyle. On the latter point, consider the fact that Gervais completely ignores the great "shame" monologue when he naively talks about how waiting in a crowded doctor's office is probably the closest thing any film viewer has experienced to the concentration camp-like environment which the protagonists must endure.

Worst of all, Gervais gets the war all wrong. He doesn't realize that the final bombardment defeats the invaders ...at least for a while, at least on that part of the island. He doesn't realize that the government doesn't change hands -- it just gets incredibly repressive, just like governments do in wartime. He actually believes that Jacobi acts as a traitor following the invasion of the island.

In making these mistakes, Gervais obviously misses so many clues that contradict Gervais' interpretation. For example, there is the silence following the big bombardment -- indicating that the invaders have been put down. Then there is the reaction of the camp officials to Ullman's participation in the filmed interview. Plus, the camp officials speak of the invaders liquidating nearly all the citizens (note that the events & scenes onscreen indicate that the citizens might have been killed in the crossfire more than anything else). Finally, there are many smaller clues that Gervais should have recognized later. Like when Jacobi speaks of having just visited his son in the military while his son was on leave -- something that would be impossible if Jacobi were acting as traitor or even living in rebel-controlled territory.

Generally, Gervais seems oblivious to the different ideological discourse on each side. Yet somehow Gervais lived through the 1960s and the Cold War without learning how to recognize the discourse and behavior of reactionary regimes or even the most stereotypical discourse of the orthodox, dogmatic left.

As a result of his misinterpretation, Gervais misses the fact that a once-friendly & benign government becomes arbitrarily cruel and repressive to it's own people. He also misses the fact that the govt bombs its own territory -- nearly destroying our couple's house -- to finally "pacify" part of the island. Finally, he misses the way in which the danger comes from one side, then from the other side, then from the other again, then of course from within.

I discuss this at length only because this is a matter of completely misreading the film, of the plot itself, of essentially conflating two different characters at various points.

True, both sides are shown to be equally guilty in this film. And Bergman dresses them in identical uniforms. But still, I expect better from a scholar's commentary ...and from any DVD release from such a significant -- and notoriously challenging -- director as Ingmar Bergman.

<Steph C.>

PS: If you like 'Shame', don't miss 'Come and See'. The recent 'Bloody Sunday' also serves a similar purpose -- to document and demonstrate the power of war to reshape individuals in the most horrifying ways.

At the apex of the Viet-Nam protest, the Quaker College I attended conducted an anti-war symposium that included a screening of Ingmar Bergman's The Shame. Even as a child I was an avid (and oddly discerning) film buff, but at this juncture the world of foreign cinema, not readily available in my hometown, awaited my discovery. Well, after viewing this, my first Bergman film, never would I view cinema as a medium for artistic expression in the same way. So began my lifelong study of Ingmar Bergman's gargantuan contribution, not only to the history of world cinema, but art itself. Shame, in my opinion, ranks among Bergman's greatest achievements, outdone PERHAPS only by Cries and Whispers and Persona.

Now, as quickly as possible here: Shame is, on a superficial plane, one of Bergman's more accessible films. Detractors, never failing to complain about the fictional or peripheral aspect of the war Bergman depicts, are missing his intent, which, as always, is to underline the human element. Far greater minds than mine have examined Bergman's use of war as a universal thematic catalyst that reflects the degradation war visits upon our species--the very species that conceived and continues to deploy it. Simply put, one expecting to see the good guys waste the bad guys will be sorely disappointed.

Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman are brilliant, period. The film also boasts a superb supporting performance from the great Gunner Björnstrand. Sven Nykvist's photography has always rendered superlatives inadequate, but here especially. His contribution to the Bergman cannon, beginning with The Virgin Spring, is immeasurable. Finally, anyone not moved by the film's devastating conclusion must stand accused of lacking a heart--of insensitivity to a theme as timelessly poignant today as always.

"And business goes on
as usual...."

This is a dark film with much insight into the state of human condition. Putting aside the context of a factional civil conflict, we are at war with one another and likely with our very selves. However much we try to escape the threats to our identity, as well as our physical and emotional well-being presented by the inherent instability of modernity, running away to hide out does not help. Salvation does not come (colonel Jacobi is not a charitable savior). Finally, becoming our own saviors (or active survivors) leaves us adrift at sea with little if any hope of reaching the desired destination, which may or may not be as hospitable as we may hope.

How can I add to the comments above. They are all valid. Watching SHAME for me was as close to a real experience of war as possible. No other war film has had this effect on be except for Jansco's THE RED & THE WHITE.

The yellow subtitles are distracting. Turn off your colour and you will find the white subtitles just as easy to read.

I should no longer be surprised when critics miss the most obvious things in works of art, because they are human beings, and the vast majority of human beings are lazy by nature. That said, the simplistic notion that Ingmar Bergman's great 1968 film Shame (or Skammen) is merely an anti-war film does a great deal of damage to the reputation of this very complex, and highly nuanced, film. Compared to its more filmically showoffy predecessors, Persona and Hour Of The Wolf, Shame is seemingly a more classic film, in terms of narrative. But, the key word is seemingly, for while it lacks the bravura pop psychologizing of Persona and the gaudy horror film homages of Hour Of The Wolf, it is one of the best films ever made about war- and not as an anti-war film, nor a pro-war film. As such, it has to rank with Wild Strawberries as one of his greatest films, as well as one of his best screenplays, if not the best.
Although ostensibly a more psychologically exterior film than the films that preceded it, it truly says far more realistic things about the human psyche and the will to survive. In it, Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman play Jan and Eva Rosenberg (perhaps a nod at the infamous American spies, whom many European intellectuals felt were innocent), two musicians who used to play for the local philharmonic orchestra before a war broke out, and they retreated to live on a small plot of land on an island, content to working in a greenhouse. The country they live in is unnamed, as is the island they live on, although the film was made on Bergman's small island of Farö, just off the northern end of the Swedish Island of Göttland. It seems that their nation has been at war for some years with an invading country, or perhaps engaged in a civil war with rebels from another province. This is all left deliberately hazy, as this war is meant to symbolize all wars. This is reinforced as the film starts with assorted war quotes on the screen, as the credits roll. These include quotes from Hitler to Vietnam Era American military figures. After early scenes that depict the prosaic nature of their rural life, and then the coming of war, where even old men are conscripted, an aerial attack ravages the Rosenbergs' land, as enemy jets fly overhead, dropping bombs and what seems to be chemical weapons of an Agent Orange like nature. One plane is hit, and a parachutist jumps out and ends up hanging in a tree. Jan, who starts off the film as a sniveling coward, refuses to go and help, so Eva goes alone. Jan joins her and they find the pilot has been shot. It seems he is, indeed, part of the invading, or possibly rebel, force. A bunch of government soldiers soon stop at their home and ask questions about the dead pilot, then advise the couple to leave their home, as the Invaders are near.... there are the misinterpretations of the film on a micro level, such as that of Bergman scholar Marc Gervais, who provides the film commentary on the DVD of the film. Like many other critics, he claims that Jacobi is a Quisling, who has collaborated with the Invaders. But, this is clearly and demonstrably wrong, for Jacobi is with the original Fascist government. As proof, first off, the Invaders are repelled after they invade the Rosenbergs' land and shoot their agitprop interview. We know this because the government that later questions them of the faked interview, and words put into Eva's mouth, see the film as supposed proof of their treason, and Jacobi is clearly working with them, the Fascist Big Brother statists. Secondly, Jacobi is in charge of deciding which of the townsfolk are sent to concentration camps, for collaborating with the Invaders, and the Rosenbergs, again, are among those spared. Thirdly, in his seduction of Eva, Jacobi tells her his son is on leave from the military, and clearly, if he was an Invader, he would not be speaking so happily of his son serving the state. Also, rebel forces are not official armies, and do not grant official leave. Lastly, Filip is clearly with the rebels, or Invaders, of the Organization, and why would he have killed a colleague?
That Gervais and other critics so blatantly and wantonly misinterpret and flat out miss such a key and manifest point of this film brings into question their ability to discern any and all aspects of all of Bergman's films. This is a wonderful and great film, and very high in the Berman canon, but it is disappointing to read how so few critics and viewers have really understand its complex message, instead opting out for the cheap, lazy, and easy claim of its being merely anti-war, and a rather simple film in comparison to its two showier predecessors. And that, in the long run, is the real shame of Shame.