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Wild Strawberries: Essential Art House

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After half a century, WILD STRAWBERRIES yet glimmers in these darkling days. A meditation on old age, selfishness, duty, love, and reconciliation, the film traces the last days of a respected but unloving physician (played by the elderly, frail, great Victor Sjostram, who passed away during the making of the film [in the 1920s he had starred in the daunting silent THE OUTLAW AND HIS WIFE, set in Iceland]). The main character undertakes a journey by car with his daughter-in-law to receive an honorary degree from Alma Mater. On the way he adopts three college students and a snarling, embittered married couple. He visits his very very elderly and very cold mother--and always there are visions of the sorrows, regrets, and bitternesses of his past. At the film's luminescent close the doctor at last casts off ancient recriminations to achieve a peaceful repose lulled by a shimmering scene from long ago with Mother and Father in happy tableau. One of cinema's outstanding achievemnts. But I too am an old man.

Wild Strawberries is an excellent display of the broad spectrum of human emotion. At first glance an immediate disdain is inspired by the main character, until the story unfolds revealing the source of his callousness. By the end I felt nothing but a profound sense of empathy and compassion. Bergman has quickly become one of my favorite directors, and in my opinion, this film is among his best.

When I watched this film when I was young, I did not like it. I thought it was too stark, too melancholy, too dark. When you are young the world is more of a technicolor place and perhaps we are all unwilling to let the dark clouds into it. I resaw this film when I was in my 50s and my reaction was much different. There is a melancholy yet bittersweet quality to this film, almost a dreamlike glide through the corridors of memory and time. For it is an old person who will die sooner, rather than later, who is looking back on his whole life and his memories as well as winding up his life as it exists in the present. Everyone who has made it to an older age will recognize the territory of the film at once as very, very familiar. It is a Swedish professor who we watch on this journey. His relationships in life have been turbulent but not out of the ordinary. It is a beautiful film, one of Bergman's very best and he didn't make any duds.

i love this film. my first intro to Bergman
and foreign films. this Janus Essential presentation
looks terrific; clear, crisp, etc. but the subtitles
are done in a strange, blurry, blue and green
typefont that makes it miserable to read.
what's with that? it's the same kind of subtitles
that are used on so many DVDs. time for a change.

Bergman makes films with the depth and subtlety that a writer uses in writing great novels.This film is a lodestone in it's ability to set the template for all future films.There is a nightmare sequence that is truly astonishing,clocks without hands,people without faces,a coffin revealing himself that has fallen off a carriage.The power of the leading actor(Sjostrom) who himself was one of Sweden's great directors, to convey changes of emotion from sadness to joy.The road trip he takes, is both external by car to Lund to collect an honorary doctorate for his lifetime acheivements.Its also internal,through dreams and memories into the wild strawberry-patch of the unconscious.With his daughter-in-law Marianne(Tulin) he explores the highways and the by-ways,picking up hitch-hikers enroute,having a minor accident with a squabbling married couple.His dedication to his science has cut him off from the spontaneous springs of innocence,love and happiness.The symbolism is not heavy-handed,it meshes beautifully in with the past,the present and the future of his life.Bibi Andersson plays both his early love Sara,who he loses through his coldness, and one of the young hitch-hikers on their way to Italy.The black and white filmography is a superbly executed achieve- ment.The dialogue has Dickensian power,the narrative is like a beautiful jewel, that glimmers,the dream sequences are expressive and surrealistic.All the characters are working, from his cold dowager mother to Von Sydow as a garage mechanic.

Seventy-eight year old Isak Borg journeys on his way to receive an honorary degree for his professional work. He travels in his own car accompanied by his daughter-in-law. Also he is joined by a young trio composed by two men and a woman. Throughout the film, Isak struggles with fears of loneliness and the possibility that his life has been a waste. He suffers a dream with surrealistic characteristics, where his own death in life is illustrated thru the use of handless clocks, empty streets, ruins, and faceless bodies. Through the journey we also discover his strenuous relationships with his son, daughter-in-law, and with his wife. He has dreams and reminiscences of the past that communicate to us the things that really have meaning in life. Basically, it is the tale of a person who has succeeded as a professional, but has failed as father and husband, and he discovers at the end that the price to pay for this negligence is loneliness. Isak, however, does not want to remain alone and makes attempts to amend for this hollow past.

The film shows surrealistic images to dramatize Isak's existential crisis. It also contrasts an idyllic (pastoral) past with a modern middle-class life. We also get to see the lack of faith and hope in Isak and his son's life. The distinction between middle-class culture and the innocence of a rural, agrarian society can be seen in the rivalry between Isak, concerned about sin and doing the right thing, and his brother, who is passionate and incorrigible. Sara, Isak's love, stands between the two. Sara marries Isak's brother and leads a fruitful life having many children. On the other hand, Isak has been the head of a dysfunctional family. Thus, Isak must confront this past in his present struggle to find meaning in his life.

This Essential Art House edition is an excellent presentation of the film. If you like this type of film, or if you are a Bergman fan, then you will enjoy this edition.

Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" (1957) follows the memories of an elderly man reminiscing about his life. Dreams, nightmares and flashbacks haunt this man as we learn about his romantic failures, and his desire to return to childhood. It is a study of old age as well as a moral inquiry into a man's life choices. This is a thoughtful film that offers us the time to reflect on the choices we make in life.