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As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The actor, screenwriter and director Victor Sjöstrom was a major figure in the silent film of the early 20th century. Decades later, when film had long since transitioned to talkies and Sjöstrom had disappeared from the scene, focusing instead on theatre, Ingmar Bergman called him back for the 1957 effort WILD STRAWBERRIES. And instead of trying to evoke the great achievements of Sjöstrom's younger days, Bergman let this now 78-year-old man depict with no holds barred what old age and the thought of imminent death are really like.As the film opens, we are introduced to Professor Isak Borg (Sjöstrom), who started out as a provincial doctor but made some new medical discoveries and established a shining career in academia. Borg must travel to the distant Swedish city of Lund to accept an honorary degree from the university there, and he decides to drive the whole distance. He is accompanied by his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin), who had been staying with him after a row with Borg's son Evald, and who eventually takes the wheel for the old man. Along the way they pick up three young hitchhikers, and later they get into a fender-bender with an unhappy married couple.Initially Borg's housekeeper and Marianne are puzzled that the elderly professor wants to drive all that way, but we soon discover that the route passes some places from Borg's younger days. Flashbacks that are shown during stops, and the professor's own dreams as he doses off, reveal feelings of regret and guilt that the old man had been harbouring all his life. The three hitchhikers in the bloom of youth remind Borg even more sharply of his elderly state, and the married couple only serves as a reminder of his own unhappy family life. He is tormented by the thought that he has little time left to set things right with those close to him that he had alienated years, even decades, before.WILD STRAWBERRIES is very touching, and it is one of those films where the main character is played in such a great bit of acting that all the other details hardly matter. Still, the supporting roles are memorable. Bibi Andersson plays two roles that are worlds apart. In one, Andersson is the main hitchhiker character, a sort of liberated woman and tomboy. The other role is Borg's early love interest, a woman reflective of upper-class society in early 20th-century Sweden with all its strict ideas about proper female behaviour. Other longtime members of Bergman's stable appear: Max von Sydow as a rural petrol station attendant, and Gunnar Björnstrand as Borg's son that takes all too after the old man.In spite of the film's strengths, I must admit that WILD STRAWBERRIES is not among my favourite Bergman efforts. It seems especially flawed by one subplot: among the hitchhikers that Borg takes, two of them are always squabbling about whether God exists. I find this bears very little relationship with the protagonist's dilemma (Borg himself doesn't muse on what they say), and instead it's like Bergman was trying to shoehorn in the religious themes of his other major films of this era, such as THE SEVENTH SEAL. Still, even what I feel to be lesser Bergman is still great cinema, and I imagine most viewers will enjoy this poignant tale.

Dr. Isak Borg, 78, is a renowned physician and researcher. His life's experiences have left him cold, distant and uncaring. Now he is traveling to be awarded an honorary degree by a university, a reward for his life's work. Driving with his daughter-in-law Marianne, currently estranged from his son Ewald (whose personality seems to be following that of his father's), he finds himself reminiscing about his past, especially his 20s. He has also been having strange dreams, dreams that remind him of the person he has become, and potentially what lies ahead for him.Incredibly thought-provoking and emotional movie. A metaphor for life and what you make of it. As someone who could understand how Isak could get that way, and even endorse how he feels, this was an eye- opening, and potentially life-changing, movie.While many of Bergman's movies are sombre and depressing, this, having started that way, turns it all around, channeling the negativity to find something positive. A very nostalgic and uplifting movie. Also, not that predictable in its positivity. The upliftment sneaks up on you...Wonderful film.

WILD STRAWBERRIES is a romantic drama that could cause some confusion and rebellion of the human spirit for the viewers. One very cold and realistic story about the differences in human emotions and aging is full of strange harmony. An aged professor of medicine examines his life while traveling to university where he taught for years in order to receive an honorable mention. His estranged daughter in law travels with him and the two of them visited many important places from his past.The Professor meets, on this journey,interesting people and they become part of his fantasy...The atmosphere is grim and scenery is presented in the form of a beautiful wasteland. They are a kind of symbol of solitude, loneliness and leached life. However, the three youngest protagonists try to disturb this harmony. Young people are full of life, even if that life does not make sense.Mr. Bergman has symbolically linked every appearance, details, events, things and objects together. He connects them in a life story. A certain conflict in the character is visible in this film. Youth, playfulness and innocence against old age, remorse and guilt. Victor Sjöström as Professor Isak Borg is a cold and egoistic old man. Wild strawberries are a symbol of love in his youth. However, wild strawberries have chosen someone else. His story is real, touching and painful. He is a character who is admired, but never loved.Ingrid Thulin as Marianne Borg is a woman who tries to understand the cold emotion. However, she yields under her own emotions. Gunnar Björnstrand as Evald Borg is an unwanted son and a ruthless husband. He rejected his life for no reason. However, he understands the difference between love and loneliness. Bibi Andersson as Sara is a playful girl who has two wooers. She will awaken deeply buried memories in an old man.The story, perhaps, is not sufficiently simple and clear. Life is not simple. Redemption is not the point of this story. Life is strange and tortuous path between emptiness and self-realization. Some people manage to fill their emptiness with emotions. Some people fail. Understanding and reconciliation between the different characters are the point in this movie.Mr. Bergman is a genius.

An aging professor of bacterium embarks upon a day's journey from Stockholm to Lundsk to receive an honourary award for his career work. The night before, he has a Bunuel-esque nightmare that foreshadows his own fate, seeing a watch with no hands, and his own corpse in a coffin. Cleverly, the film hints that he may be out of time before his own mortality claims him, and thus he begins a journey of self discovery where his skeletons reach out from the closet.For my first Bergman film, I was impressed by the crisp presentation and cerebral story. Its not often that filmmakers explore the aging process in sympathetic ways, and this is helped by the characterization of Dr. Isak Borg as an every man which makes him easier to relate to. He's a successful academic, although happiness in his personal life was sacrificed for concentration on his profession. And so Dr. Borg asks the eternal question of whether his existence has had any significance at all. Along the road trip with his daughter in law Marianne (who resents his emotional distancing), they pick up passengers that each represent and harken back to the failures of Borg's past. An old bickering couple that remind him of his unhappy marriage, and a love triangle between two men and a girl who symbolize a lost love from his adolescence. As the memories come flooding back, the old doctor descends into his recollections and subconscious dreams, where suppressed issues come hurtling forth from the depths. His clinical nature and lack of interest in relationships led to his first love leaving him for his brother, and later his wife having a bastard child with another man, who Borg still raised as his own. There is a haunting scene where he takes Marianne to visit his lonely, decrepit mother, and there the audience realizes along with her that this lack of zest for life seems to run through the family; Isak's son is too revealed to be a misanthropic bore, who rejects his wife Marianne's request for a child. The result of his resentfulness at having been raised as an unwanted child himself.The doctor soon learns that the only good he ever accomplished was tied to his medicinal work, but at the cost of living a life of solitude and isolation, a mindset that has afflicted his own son. There is a subtle theme from Bergman that Borg's ignorance of his family and friends has been the result of his turning away from God, as hinted by the young men they pick up (a minister and a doctor, the two sides of Isak's psyche) who fight and debate over its existence. No real answer is given in the end, symbolized by the men's stalemate in the argument. But as said later in the film: "a doctor's first duty is forgiveness." It seems the first step to even beginning to comprehend the question is by forgiving the flaws of those around you and the ones within. And although Borg fears he may be too late to reconcile the animosity between him and his family, the film makes an inspiring statement by the end that it's never never too late to redeem oneself and begin enjoying life. The story is resolved, and the generational cycle of resentment broken, with the rapprochement between two lovers and the potential birth of new life.Alas, there are flaws in Bergman's work that cannot be forgiven, and he was no God. The first major flashback acts as a crux of the plot, but appears contrived due to Isak being present for an event that was impossible for him to have known. Nor do we ever get to really see this "cold distance" that Isak possessed as a man; only its effects. The director is to be commended for not spoon feeding the audience the philosophical aspects (this is an art film from Sweden after all), but sometimes his high brow obscurity gets in the way of my enjoyment of the story. It's all a little too esoteric for me. While the message may seem a little trite and simplistic at times, this is still a heartwarming and life-affirming fable from a legendary auteur. "Wild Strawberries" has a comforting aura, although like Doctor Isak Borg himself, the film can be rather too pedantic for its own good.