#64
Post
by Sloper » Mon Oct 10, 2016 8:33 am
Since there are at least eleven forum members who want to talk about this film (possibly the same eleven who voted for it a few months ago), I thought I’d post a few questions here as well as in the Persona thread.
What is the purpose of the pre-credits sequence? Why does Bergman want us to see Isak at his desk, and hear him talking about himself and his life, before the main titles run, and before the first dream sequence? What first impressions do we get of Isak from this scene?
Parts of Isak’s first nightmare seem easy to interpret: it’s obviously about his fear of death, to some extent. But why the clock with no hands? Time running out, or something more than that? Why the strange figure with the imploded face, who deflates and leaks out into the gutter? Why is Isak dragged into the coffin by himself? And why is the whole scene shot in such glaringly bright light?
Isak decides to drive to Lund primarily, I think, because he wants to make a few stops along the way: at his family’s old summer house, at the place where he had his first practice, and at his mother’s house. Why did his nightmare prompt this decision? What is he hoping to accomplish or discover during this journey?
What does he in fact accomplish and discover? What do the unplanned elements in his trip – principally Marianne and the five hitch-hikers – add to it?
During his vision at the summer house, Isak apparently sees events that he could not have seen at the time, because he was out on the boat with his parents. Did these things really happen, or are they a product of Isak’s imagination? Bergman often plays with the blurred lines between fantasy and reality (and art), so I realise it’s not a case of either/or, but it seems like a question worth asking.
Why is this vision prompted by the ‘smultronstället’ (wild strawberry patch)? This is the real title of the film, which is subtly different from ‘Wild Strawberries’. What does this place mean to Isak, and does the vision he has of Sara and Sigfrid help us to understand the film’s title? In his reminiscence at the end of the film, Isak is back in the wild strawberry patch, and Sara tells him there are no strawberries left. I guess this is because she picked them all for Uncle Aron, but is there any deeper significance to this detail?
After his second nightmare, Isak comments that the unhappy couple they briefly picked up earlier reminded him of his own marriage, and this serves as a partial explanation for why those two played such prominent roles in the nightmare. It’s not a full explanation, though: why is it appropriate for Alman to be the coldly punitive examiner here, and Berit the seemingly dead patient? When Isak watches his wife after she has been raped, what she says about him seems to imply a different set of problems from the ones that afflict the Almans, so what is the connection here?
Bergman said (I think in the filmed introduction), that he began Wild Strawberres thinking that it was about his own father, but that it ended up being more about Victor Sjöström. First, how does it work as a film about a father? Fanny and Alexander also explores Bergman’s ambivalent attitude towards his father, who in that film is split into two figures, one impotent but benevolent, the other virile but abusive. Are similar themes being explored through the characterisation of Isak Borg?
Bergman also said (I think in Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie) that his films about faith were on some level about the struggle to come to terms with ‘the father’, the question of whether this father was benevolent or a spider-god, or whether he really exists at all. And the question of religious faith crops up in Wild Strawberries, in the argument between Anders and Viktor. So what bearing does this film have on Bergman’s ongoing discussion about the nature and existence of God?
In what way can it also be seen as a film about Victor Sjöström? What does he bring to the film, and how does Bergman’s hero-worship of this man (especially as the director of The Phantom Carriage) affect the tone and content of Wild Strawberries?
How do you interpret the film’s conclusion? Why is Isak still his ‘old self’ in this memory of his youth? Given his evidently cold relationship with his mother, and his presumably cold relationship with his father, why does this memory of finding his parents and seeing them from a distance bring him such peace of mind?
When I first saw this film, I half-expected Isak to die at the end, perhaps in his bed at this peaceful moment. But he just clears his throat and settles down to sleep, and of course must have lived at least long enough to write out this account of his journey. What is Bergman suggesting here about Isak’s future? What is the hopeful tone of this ending grounded upon?
