Pretty Good

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Grouchy, stubborn and egotistical Professor Isak Borg is a widowed 78- year-old physician who specialized in bacteriology. Before specializing he served as general practitioner in rural Sweden. He sets out on a long car ride from Stockholm to Lund to be awarded the degree of Doctor Jubilaris 50 years after he received his doctorate from Lund University. He is accompanied by his pregnant daughter-in-law Marianne who does not much like her father-in-law and is planning to separate from her husband, Evald, Isak's only son, who does not want her to have the baby, their first.During the trip, Isak is forced by nightmares, daydreams, old age and impending death to reevaluate his life. He meets a series of hitchhikers, each of whom sets off dreams or reveries into Borg's troubled past. The first group consists of two young men and their companion, a woman named Sara who is adored by both men. Sara is a double for the love of Isak's youth. The first group remains with him throughout his journey. Next Isak and Marianne pick up an embittered middle-aged couple, the Almans, whose vehicle has nearly collided with theirs. The pair exchanges such terrible vitriol and venom that Marianne stops the car and demands that they leave. The couple reminds Isak of his own unhappy marriage. In a dream sequence, Isak is asked by Sten Alman, now the examiner, to read "foreign" letters on the blackboard. He cannot. So, Alman reads it for him: "A doctor's first duty is to ask forgiveness," from which he concludes, "You are guilty of guilt."

Ingmar Bergman is the quintessential, existential filmmaker. To me, he is the black angel of cinematic death, and please, I mean that in the best way possible. He's most famous for attempting to answer the questions that all of us want answered. What is the meaning of life? What happens when we die? Is there a god? Is there a heaven or a hell? Bergman is always asking these questions in his film, and always, does he find interesting answers and hypothesis formed by these questions. He uses his actors and his framing abilities to help drive home the main idea of these films, and thus, his movies are notoriously not very hard to understand. Most importantly, he has an ability to make us understand the answers, and to help us understand ourselves. Bergman is an introspective filmmaker by definition, and because of that, his films have become so cherished and remembered for being so. In a period slightly before his heyday, no film makes a better example of his unique cinematic mission than "Wild Strawberries""Wild Strawberries" focuses on an elderly professor, Dr. Isak Borg, who lives by himself with his common-law wife in Stockholm. After a lifelong journey of achieving greatness in himself and academia, he has been invited to Lund University to receive an honorary degree. He gets in a car with his daughter-in-law, Marianne, and together they travel to Lund. Through the travel, Isak is haunted by his own thoughts and dreams that have accumulated after years of isolation and reflection. At the not-so-ripe age of 78, Isak want's to understand what led him to this strange point of his life, where he went wrong, and what on Earth will happen next? He is remembered of the place of his childhood, where the wild strawberries grew. A time when he romanced his young, beautiful cousin, Sara, before being stolen from him by his older, arrogant brother Sigfrid. Before going on the trip, he has a vivid, terrible nightmare of being old, as a dead body follows him through a city street and a hearse crashed in front of him, revealing a clone of himself in a casket. Through the ways of the trip, and through the hitchhikers he meets along the way, his mind keeps racing and the dreams of his past and future keep following him. The journey becomes so strenuous and visceral to his memory, that by the time he arrives at his destination, his psyche is entirely cleansed, and he is greeted with the memory of a peaceful fishing trip with his family. What Bergman is doing here is experimenting with time and space, through memory and reflection. His style reminds me of "Hiroshima Mon-Amour", considering that there is no clear pattern between what happens in the moment, and what happens in the past. Bergman is giving us a deconstructed narrative that in essence, gives us a clear indication of the kind of crisis that Isak is going through. As a man that has been through everything and nothing, his mind is racing, much like our own, of scenarios that did and didn't happen. This is quite an interesting introspective device that Bergman uses. He is making movies about people, the exact way that we think about each other. Bergman typically uses characters that wrestle with their own identity, and bravely ask questions that might have no answers. Thus, it doesn't take much interpretation of the audience to understand, because all of the questions and answers are presented on screen. "Wild Strawberries" is a very entertaining, beautiful piece to that effect. The entire time, I was haunted, confused, and rightfully engaged with Isak and the characters he meets. My favorite scene of the film is the nightmare at the beginning. The surrealism of this section is frightening and so wonderfully imaginative. I loved the giant eyeglasses that appeared over his head, as well as the dead man with no face that appears to him in the middle of the street. Bergman was really experimenting with some wonderful visual concepts, especially for the 1950's. I thought the acting, was also very real and interesting to watch. Bergman was always known to be a director for actors, and in this film especially, he makes his actors play these characters as real people, not merely as stage personas. What we get because of that is a real, frightening portrayal of an older man, and seeing that alone is fascinating. In conclusion, "Wild Strawberries" is a dark and interesting classic about the struggle of understanding our fate, and without question, it should regarded as one of the great films of Ingmar Bergman.

I remember when a see it first time. the images. the impressions. the feeling than it is a total film. because its virtue is a delicate manner to reflect the feelings of an age and the build of hope. because Bergman does the best choice for the lead role as homage and as reflection of a great career. because the image of empty clock is the most powerful metaphor for define the time and the run against it. because it is a film about each of its viewers. the regrets and the old age. the memories as way to survive and the fear of death. the strange links with the others. the sense of life and the need to have second chances. a masterpiece in a special form. because it has the gentle grace to be not only optimistic but wise support for reflection.

I begin this review with an acknowledgement that viewing this film 56 years after it's initial debut has diminished it's impact for me. Some of the techniques, both in story telling and in visual stimuli are very dated. Although I can appreciate the care and attention to detail utilized in the making of the film it does not deliver anything that I have not seen before. Mostly it conveys a familiar message in an time and tradition that may have been ground breaking in it's day but is not now. The photography is beautiful. The characters are not singular in their originality or their behavior. I recognize many of the actors from other Bergman films such as the Magician, The Seventh Seal and the Virgin Spring. This is a nice little movie about an old man reflecting on his past on an important date in his life. Good but not necessarily a classic. Classic in the sense that it is from a classic era of film making and by a heralded director no less but it does not reside in my top 100 movies of all time. Perhaps that opinion is a byproduct of my era? Perhaps it's not. There are other films made before this one that I regard much more highly. Gone with the wind, Double Indemnity, Spellbound, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Sunrise, Pride of the Yankees, Key Largo and 12 Angry Men are all old films yet they suit my sensibilities better.