Saraband

Saraband (2003) _Directed by Ingmar Bergman_ Even though some of Bergman's blocking and filming here have taken on a 21st century tinge (this was made for Swedish television), the narrative and film overall are still recognizably pure Bergman: the highly spiritual church scene of Marianne, the horizontal parallel faces, the tight close-ups like that of Karin and Henrik, and some wide vistas that are just so Bergman. It's ironic that the day before I saw Saraband, I happened to watch A White, White Day, and it is impossible not to compare these two filmmakers who are treating nearly the same subject: grief, damaged relationships, family dysfunction, the inability to let go. It is like putting an Icelandic novice boxer in the ring with Mohamed Ali. Hlynur Pálmason makes a competent film about a man consumed by grief and suspicion; Ingmar Bergman makes a masterpiece about how pain gets transmitted across generations, and how some emotional wounds metastasize. Ingmar Bergman, if nothing else, is the world champion playwright of messy relationships, of the truths in human interactions. Saraband is all this and informed by Bergman's long life experience. Thirty years after Scenes from a Marriage, Marianne (Liv Ullmann) visits her ex-husband Johan (Erland Josephson) and finds herself in the middle of a gut-wrenching family drama. The film isn't really about Marianne and Johan's relationship; they're at peace with their divorce. Instead, it explores Johan's toxic relationship with his son Henrik (Börje Ahlstedt) and the disturbing closeness between Henrik and his daughter Karin (Julia Dufvenius). This is how trauma echoes, how the failures of one generation cripple the next. Julia Dufvenius is certainly no Liv Ullmann when Scenes was filmed, but she held her own very well here. She dug far enough into subtext to create a believable character, someone trapped by forces she barely understands. Ullmann and Josephson, returning to their characters after three decades, bring weight and weariness; these are people who can observe the younger generation's destruction with compassion, but have no power to stop it. Interesting here is that although we don't remember Bergman as thinking too much about film scores, in Saraband, the score is another character. The film's title refers to a baroque dance movement, typically introspective and dark, and that musical structure informs the film's rhythm and tone. Bach's cello suites recur throughout, played by Karin, and the music becomes an expression for buried emotions these damaged people cannot voice. As Karin grows into her own, the soundtrack switches up to Schumann, and from solos to multi-instrument, a place of safety for Karin. This was Bergman's final film, and it's a fitting farewell: bitter, unsparing, yet not without moments of grace. Roger Ebert called it "powerfully, painfully honest", and that's exactly right. Bergman doesn't offer resolution or redemption. He shows us people locked in patterns they cannot escape, love twisted into possession, grief calcified into cruelty. That's the difference between a master and everyone else. Bergman shows us truths we'd rather not see, and does it with such precision we can't look away.