Smultronstället

Today's Thursday, and that means that it's movie night, but since my friends ditched me (for various reasons) I'm stuck home alone with yet another "bought and never saw" DVD. 

Being true to my renewed sense of blogging, I may share with you my keen, yet not so many, readers, a little bit of Bergman's Smultronstället (that's Wild Strawberries).

Director	Ingmar Bergman
Plot	Ingmar Bergman
Cast	Victor Sjöström (Dr. Isak Borg) Bibi Andersson (Sara) Ingrid Thulin (Marianne Borg) Gunnar Björnstrand (Dr. Evald Borg) Jullan Kindahl (Agda) Folke Sundquist (Anders) Björn Bjelfvenstam (Viktor)
Country	Sweden
Company	Svensk Filmindustri
Music	Erik Nordgren

Interesting facts: 

Bergman wrote this masterpiece while he was in the hospital. It became Victor Sjöström's last movie, and in words of Berman himself, it ended up being more his movie "than mine".

It premiered the same year as "Det sjunde inseglet" and counted with the participation of some of it's cast, like Gunnar Björnstrand, Gunnel Lindblom, Bibi Andersson and Max von Sydow. The director's assistant was actor Gösta Ekman (grandson of another famous swedish actor with the same name), he was just 18 years old.

The poem that Isak Borg reads at the table is one of the verses from Johan Olof Wallins' psalm “Var är den vän, som överallt jag söker” (Where is that friend, whom I seek everywhere).

The Swedish title “Smulstronstället” also makes reference to one of the houses occupied during the "Husockupation" movement or squatting, in October 2008. 

Synopsis:

Isak Borg is an elder medic and professor who decides to drive, alongside with Marianne, his daughter in law, from Stockholm to Lund, where he would receive a honorary title from Lund's University. During the journey, through various dreams, nightmares and his own senility, he seems forced to re-evaluate his life. So he meets a variety of characters on the road, from Sara, a backpacker girl who travels with her fiancé and her chaperon, to the troubled couple, that reminds Isak of his own life and marriage.

Crític:

Smulstronstället is a beautiful movie that just as his earlier, or rather simultaneous movie, "Det sjunde inseglet", Bergman brings us the philosophical journey of a character in conflict. Curiously in the Seal's case, its about a young knight in search of a reason to die, to abandon this world. In Strawberries, it's not a young man but an old man in search for a reason lo live, as he seems witness to past events in his life, events in which Berman masters the audiovisual language to not only do without the oh so common flashbacks, but also to forge in the audience the solid idea that the character is indeed who he is now, and not disturbing this vision with any reference to his youth, in other words, Isak Borg is a grumpy old man that once was young, but he will never be it again.

As in the Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries has in its narrative line the element of the journey, as a point of introspection an knowledge, also as a way in which to opposing characters may confront their differences in the limited space of a car. Bergman uses once more the personal encounter between strangers and the kindness of his characters, so we have that during the journey Isak meets a group of youngsters looking for a way to Italy, amongst them, a girl, Sara, identical to his first love. Then they meet a couple, conflictive, a dysfunctional and violent marriage. Couple that they decide to eliminate after a while, but that stays in Borg's subconscious and eventually become judges and executioners as his own marriage is set on trial. So the "secret life" of the main character in Wild Strawberries is not one from the underworld in which he has to gamble his life with Death itself, but one much more closer to him, his dreams and memories. Finally this journey ends up as a lesson to both character and audience, we see Isak's transformation from this grumpy old man, and slowly becoming a wise and caring person, who we could dare to see as the model for the perfect grandfather, because you cannot avoid falling in love with the man, just as the youngsters that traveled with him, or his daughter in law, who hated him so much, and now she sits on his bed and kisses him goodnight, because besides everything it's never too late to change and it's never too late to live life as it is.