“My ghosts, my demons, phantoms and spirits never appear at night. They often appear in bright daylight… Sometimes the things you do, the things you write can be therapeutic.”
I like Ingmar Bergman (Swedish, 1918~2007) who is regarded as one of the finest filmmakers who managed to make the motion picture as an art capable of exploration of self and facing the psyche through the director’s flamboyant Freudian symbols and metaphors.
Bergman and Faro Island
(1/6, 2/6, 3/6, 4/6, 5/6, 6/6)
WILD STRAWBERRIES is Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film and stars the Scandinavian director, Victor Sjostrom as Isak Borg, an aging medical professor who takes stock of his life, embarking on a long car trip to receive an honorary degree in Lund from Stockholm with his estranged daughter-in-law and some other strangers who he encounters on the road, conjuring up memories from his past. The juxtapositions of old age and youth (both Borg’s youth and the young people he meets on his journey) and the desirable and undesirable force us, as well as the doctor, to examine life and our actions.
Especially the first uncanny dream sequence is hauntingly marvellous and I reckon the surreal dream sequence itself is a great cinematographic art work like those fine art works by Dali and Magritte; the clocks with no hands, the symbolic eyes on the signboard, the man with closed eyes and mouth, the horse-drawn hearse suddenly becoming stuck, being pulled by his own dead body to the coffin. All of them are great metaphors. As the story going, we are able to interpret all the symbols along with personal understanding and adaptation to our own life and actions. So does the other dream sequences in the film.
THE SIGN OF ANGUISH (1932~36) by Salvador Dali,Oil on panel 22.3x16.5cm, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, UK
DANGEROUS LIAISONS (1926) by Rene Magritte,Oil on canvas 72x64cm, Private collection
This film’s original Swedish title is ‘Smultronstallet’ or ‘The Wild Strawberry Patch’ which is idiomatically understood as ‘An Underrated Gem of a Place’ and through this film I managed to figure out it means “Where our Happiness resides”.
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In the movie, Isak Borg is professionally successful and honored but privately self-withdrawn from relations. Isak Borg starts his story by saying “In our relations with other people, we mainly discuss and evaluate their character and behavior. That is why I have withdrawn from nearly all so-called relations. This has made my old age rather lonely.” And we can expect Ingmar Bergman is to talk about relations in WILD STRAWBERRIES.
The most interesting question and enlightenment to me on Isak Borg’s journey was the contrast between his distorted disillusionment with his ex-wife and the unconditional pint-tinted glasses on his one-time sweetheart Sara, in which ‘Carpe Diem’ was craved with the past not with the present.
According to a psychologist, family and friends are crucial for one’s happiness and the wider and deeper the relationships with those around you the better, which is depicted in this film as well.
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My interpretations of this film could be different from yours. However, if you are in no where to go, like as I did a couple of years ago and looking for a key ingredient of ‘Carpe Diem’ by loving oneself and embracing the people around you, WILD STRAWBERRIES is yours.
6 comments:
That dream sequence gave me the chills at the end, even though I had pretty much guessed he was going to see himself in the coffin...shades of ghosts of Christmas future. And you are right. The iconography of the film remind me very much of a Salvador Dali painting. It is uncanny even. I wonder if Bergman was actually trying to go there.
You've piqued my curiosity. I have only watched The Seventh Seal, which I like very much, but I have not watched any other of his films. I have heard about them, but never watched them. I will seek out Wild Strawberries at least.
How did you get the links for the parts of the interview videos to show up along the bottom? I'm talking about the 1/6, 2/6, etc. not the row of images after the video ends; you always get that if you enable the "include related videos" option. I'll come back and watch the rest of the interview.
Nice post! Thank you for the introduction to Bergman. I know this has been up a while, but I've only just gotten around to looking at it.
Well, if you ask how to put a "hyperlink" in a text..
Please take a look at
http://www.poppydog.com/help/textHyperlink.jsp
or if you use Microsoft office word, you can see the "hyperlink" icon which looks like a chain and on Blogspot, it also has a hyperlink icon or "Link", right next to "Text Color". :) *bisous*
Sorry. I don't mean to turn your blog page into a "help the idiot learn html" but each of those numbers, then, the 1/6, 2/6, etc. is a label you assigned to the link? I'll have to try that sometime. I've inserted hyperlinks before, but they look like the www address, not those spiffy little labels you have. The video window must be the embed code for the clip from YouTube.
I don't mean to take away anything from your comments on Bergman, either. I enjoyed the post very much and I thank you for the gratuitous tutoring.
Don’t say like that, Bob, I’m so glad that I can help you. :)
Now I think I understand what you want to know and let me try to explain one more time.
First when you use Microsoft word.
1.you type first 1/6, 2/6, …
2.you NEED TO HIGHLIGHT 1/6 WITH YOUR MOUSE AND ON the highlighted 1/6
3.click on “Insert” and click on “Hyperlink” and then paste or type the address in a URL, such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjGw9p--t7A (interview 1’s url)
4.then on 2/6, you need to repeat that; highlight and then click on “Insert”, “Hyperlink” and type in a URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51WUgKcIXBw&feature=related (interview 2’s url) and so on.
When you write directly on Blogger
1.you type 1/6, 2/6, 3/6..
2.Highlight 1/6 with your mouse and on it click “Link” and past or type the interview 1’s url in URL and so on..
I think you missed the HIGHLIGHT part, just think like this, all you need to do is to put hyperlink on the exact WORD or NUMBER you want to have by highlighting the word or number with your mouse first.
I hope this will help you, Bob :) *bisous*
Ah, thank you so much! What I didn't realize was that you could highlight anything. See, what I did (silly me in retrospect) was to paste the address onto the page, highlight the address, and then did the "insert hyperlink" thinking I was converting the address into the link. Well, I was, but it never occurred to me that the highlighted text could be anything other than the address itself. It is clear to me now. Thanks again!
You're always welcome, Bob :) *bisous*
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