Wild Strawberries - Criterion Collection | Victor Sjöström, Bibi Andersson

Wild Strawberries - Criterion Collection | Victor Sjöström, Bibi Andersson | What a Journey

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Wild Strawberries ...

	Wild Strawberries - Criterion Collection Victor Sjöström, Bibi Andersson Criterion, 2002 average customer review:based on 83 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Bergman's inner search for truth and redemption

Seventy-eight-year-old Professor Isak Borg (played brilliantly by Victor Sjostrom) is on his way to Lund from Stockholm with his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) to receive an honorary doctorate degree; more importantly, along the journey he will get back his humanity and peace of mind.

The trip he takes is a journey back in time, but only in a psychological sense (he remains a 78-year-old man throughout the movie). Borg is a cold, uncompromising, irrascible man. He experiences a number of dreams - of his childhood home; of being rejected by his sweetheart Sara (Bibi Andersson) for his brother; of his mother, who is as cold and death-like as he; and of his dead wife who is unsatisfied with the cold professor. Through these dream visions he gains insight into himself and by the end of the movie is making good on them, beginning with Marianne.

The most famous dream sequence occurs with Borg walking through an empty cityscape and includes encounters with a faceless man (representing himself), a handless clock ("timeless" death), and a funeral wagon that seems to beckon him to get in. At first Borg is frightened by the dreams, but then experiences calm as he understands what they mean about himself. The final dream is one of peacefulness.

Bergman's artistic vision is powerful and brilliant. The choice of Sjostrom, one of the creators of Swedish cinema in the 1920s, as the main character is a masterful stroke, and is Bergman's salute to the Swedish film industry. Once viewed, movies like this, with their potent images and sublime messages, are hard to forget.

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What a Journey

"Wild Strawberries" is considered one of Ingmar Bergman's best movies and that, in itself, is quite a recommendation. Still, there are some art films that are more art than film and many of us go away from one of those wondering "What the heck was that all about". This, however, is a film that has a story to tell in a serenely subtle way. The main character is Professor Borg who is a man of some modest reputation about to be honored with a special award. He decides to journey to the site of his award presentation by car. It is a good 10-12 hour journey and with him he takes his daughter in law. They don't particularly like each other but are willing to at least discuss this fact. Along the way they pick up, and sometimes discharge, other passengers in their spacious touring car. Also along the way they make several stops at places that generate memories in Professor Borg. At times while he naps his dreams give us other insights. It is through these dreams and recollections that the professor comes to understand much about life. The movie ends with our understanding the changes in Professor Borg. He is no longer the self-centered, argumentative man who is set in his ways. He now finds himself sincerely solicitous of others, concerned about the welfare of his son and daughter-in-law and their relationship. Though elderly, we see a man who has discovered that there is life still in him and that is something not to be wasted.

I didn't just give away the movie (I hope) because the beauty of "Wild Strawberries" is in the subtlety of its' message. We travel the journey with Professor Borg and company. We see his dreams as he experiences them and we, too, can see the distant truth available in each segment of the journey. For me, the meaning of the title, "Wild Strawberries", is the willingness to care enough for someone who can't do much for you and will probably forget that you were the one who went to the trouble to give what you gave. In other words; kindness for its' own sake alone.

I have the feeling that each time I see "Wild Strawberries" I will get more and more out of the movie. I'm content with what it's given me thus far. It truly is a beautiful film.

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Leaves A Sweet Taste

Wild Strawberries was shot in 1957, a time when Bergman was enjoying worldwide fame but going through a rough personal patch. His efforts to work through the preoccupations of that troubled period led to one his most emotionally coherent and best-loved films.

Bergman wanted to recapture the feeling of his childhood as an adult - to see if he could literally walk back into his past. He was also trying to get a grip on the emotional dynamic between himself and his estranged father. The character through whom Bergman brings these longings to the screen is Isak Borg, an elderly doctor and professor of medicine. Over the course of a long day, Isak journeys from Stockholm to Lund, in southern Sweden, to receive an honorary doctorate. Along the way, he detours into memories and old desires.

The movie opens with a dream sequence. Isak is wandering through deserted streets filled with lurid light. The clock faces have no hands, nor does his watch; he's outside of time. A horse-drawn hearse catches its wheel on a lamppost, and a coffin spills off the back and pops open. Isak reaches for the body and sees that he's tugging at his own cadaver. This scene foreshadows many other moments in the film where the old man will be a physical presence on stage sets built in his own mind.

Isak stops at the cottage where his family spent summers during his youth. As he stares at the house, he drifts back half a century, when he was in love with his cousin Sara, and hoped to marry her. Hidden in the trees, he watches Sara cavort with his older brother. Later in the same fantasy, the old man wanders into the house and hears Sara say that she really admires Isak, but finds him almost too high-minded. We learn later that Sara married his earthier, more passionate brother. In another dream sequence, the woman he eventually married complains to a lover that she suffers under Isak's emotional distance. Isak's not an unfeeling man, but somehow he became a cold man; through his dreams and reveries he's trying to work out how he turned onto the road that led him to so many emotional dead ends.

The issues from Isak's past tumble into the present. He's accompanied on his journey by Mariana, the wife of Isak's only son, Evald. As they drive south, Mariana tells him that Evald is trudging into the same emotionally barren territory where Isak ended up. By the time he arrives in Lund to receive his degree, Isak understands that professional competence hasn't compensated for the sins of omission and commission in his emotional life. As Sara says to him in another dream sequence, "You know so much, and yet you know nothing."

As Isak, veteran film director/actor Viktor Sjostrom steals the movie. Bergman's camera devours his face, and Sjostrom delivers a lifetime's worth of fears, longings, and regets, often with no more than the merest shift of an eyebrow. It's a bravura performance. Otherwise, Bergman is working here with his usual troupe of stage and film actors, and they are uniformly excellent. Ingrid Thulin makes Mariana's shift from wariness of Isak to fondness for him completely convincing. Bibi Andersson plays the Sara of Isak's boyhood as well as a hitchhiking gamine (also named Sara) with her usual warm intelligence. We even get a cameo by Max Von Sydow as a gas station attendant. This is pre Sven Nykvist, but the black and white cinematography uses a full expressionist palette.

Wild Strawberries continues Bergman's lifelong argument between his head and his heart. He understands that most humans can't survive for long in the alpine zone of abstract intelligence. But once you descend to the realm of human interaction, you're plunged into impossible conundrums over mortality, identity and making relationships work. Isak realizes that he needs the heat that comes from rubbing up against other people. The price of human warmth is accepting that the human condition can't be cured by isolating yourself from contaminating contacts. It's a price he's ready to pay, and he proves it by reaching out to his son and to Mariana.

By the end of the movie, Isak has fought his demons to a draw. Tucked in bed after his long journey, his memories comfort rather than claw at him. He can rest easier now. Bergman has spared us nothing of life's hardships and disappointments, but the old man's journey toward acceptance and fellow feeling is exalting rather than depressing. This is artistry of the highest order.

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Life is a basket of strawberries

"Wild Strawberries" is perhaps Ingmar Bergman's warmest and most accessible film to understand. Certainly for those uninitiated to Bergman it would be the first of his films to watch.

The plot is rather simple, but by no means is it a simplistic story. What seems to be a series of ordinary events in a day actually gives the ageing Professor Dr. Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom) time to reflect on his life. The dreams he summons up, the journey he takes to a university to receive an academic honour and the people he meets along the way, all serve to summarise key moments in his life and to define his personhood.

Interestingly, Bergman only shows us the kindly, old-world demeanour of Professor Borg. He allows us to see how Professor Borg perceives himself to be to others. His reflections of family and their happy moments at the summerhouse paint him in a gentle light. The dalliances of his betrothed cousin Sara (Bibi Andersson) with his brother while collecting wild strawberries shows his plighted innocence and vulnerability. When he interacts with the young travellers who have hitched a ride, he is the jovial old uncle. Even his rapport with his housekeeper Mrs Alman(Gunnel Brostrom) suggests flirtatiousness.

However, the people close to him insinuate the opposite. In their eyes he is aloof, insensitive and self-centred. His daughter-in-law Marianne(Ingrid Thulin) tells how coldly he reacted to her request for shelter after leaving her husband Evald (Gunnar Bjornstrand). She even states at one point that his son Evald's indifference mirrors his own temperament. The housekeeper, while caring is cantankerous, inferring that he has been equally crabby towards her in over 40 years of service to him. And lastly, his 95-year old mother is cold and rigid, suggesting the cause for his disposition.

Or, could it perhaps be that Bergman wants us to think the old professor is turning over a new leaf? The Dali-esque dream he has at the start of the day is certainly sobering. He wanders an empty street amid shop houses. He sees a handless street clock and pocket watch (which is seen in reality when he visits his mother much later). As he walks along the sidewalk, a horse-drawn hurst pulls up, knocking a lamppost, careening to and fro, screeching like a baby and symbolising the similarity of birth and death. A wheel breaks free and a casket slides onto the street. He approaches the casket. He sees a hand slither forth and grasp his own, pulling him face to face with the corpse of himself. Obviously, it is an unsettling nightmare to him.

So too is the dream Bergman introduces near the end of the professor's trip. In it, the professor is judged by one of his peers (actually the husband of a bickering couple met earlier in his drive). He is presented a couple of episodes from his past. He relives the amorous tryst of Sara and his brother he witnessed in his youth. He then undergoes a mock medical exam of absurd questions from an examiner. In one sense it is his day of reckoning; in another sense, it is Bergman putting the professor's personality under the microscope and allowing us to see his troubled life.

To add sympathy for the professor, the camerawork of Sven Nykvist is brilliant as usual. In the final scene when the camera lens focuses on the smiling face of Professor Borg while sleeping, Bergman lets the lighting and expression radiate such warmth and contentment that the old man immediately captivates our heart.

And that is precisely the effect Bergman had in mind. He once commented that some moviegoers had just viewed "Wild Strawberries" and were so touched they subsequently visited their elderly relatives the following day. To Bergman, it was the perfect compliment. Hopefully after watching it, we too walk will away sufficiently impressed to feel more empathy and respect for the aged. For it is truly a beautiful, beautiful film!

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