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A Disappointing Continuation

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It took me a long time to get a copy of this film. I am glad I finally got to see it. I am by nature a happy person, but I still enjoy the masterful brush strokes of Ingmar Bergman. This is a top three for me. It is the story of a couple of concert musicians who live on a dull, bleak island and torment each other. It isn't that they do anything that dramatic; it's just that they seem to inject perpetual happiness into the landscape. Liv Ullman and Max Von Sydow seem an odd match. He is a whiner with a propensity for inaction; she would like to have family and he avoids the topic. In his mind, it's as if he is thinking, "Wait long enough and this will go away." He is lazy and not very well. There is a kind of civil war going on (we never know where or why it is being fought) and Jan (Van Sydow) is convinced that because of their innocuous presence, they will be left alone. Eventually, they are tossed in the maelstrom. At one point it seems as though they will die but the powers that be (and they are hard to figure out) send them back to their home. Once again, there is a sense of safety. Out of the blue, a colonel who helped get them back to "safety" comes to call. He is in trouble, and yet it is hard to know why, other than those he worked for see him as traitorous. He offers every cent (kroner) he has to be mothered by the young woman. He ends up having sex with her and Jan is beside himself. He takes the money and puts it in a pocket. When the colonel needs it back to buy his way out of this mess, Jan acts as though he doesn't have it. Jan is given the task of executing the colonel. What happens from this point on is so heavy and bleak. As is always the case with Bergman and Sven Nyquist, the images are fraught with emotion and symbolist. A film worth watching numerous times. A real trip to Hades.

I have found many of the films of director Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Persona, Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander) in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and this was another Swedish film featured in it that I watched. Basically a civil war is occurring, and musicians and married couple Jan Rosenberg (Max Von Sydow) and wife Eva (Liv Ullmann) escape the devastation in society to a rural island and farm, there they remain indifferent to politics, they will communicate with only a few people, and the only luxury they have is wine. Jan and Eva love each other, but problems develop when Jan becomes upset with the war, weeping and becoming sensitive, and Eva wants to have children, but he does not, and they cannot escape the warfare as rebels attack and their neighbours are killed. Order is restored on the other side of the fight, but the couple are arrested for enemy collaboration, but following the fright and abuse against them they are released by local Colonel Jacobi (Gunnar Björnstrand), and he becomes a frequent visitor at the farm, but it is not clear whether he is just being friendly or trying to pursue Eva, at one point she gets money from him. Chaos ensues with the return of the rebels, at one point Jan is given a gun by the soldiers and told to kill the Colonel, he does so, and over the period of time becomes increasingly violent and murderous, until eventually the rebels flee, but the question remains as to whether Jan and Eva can truly escape the war, and if they can what happens next? Also starring Sigge Fürst as Filip, Birgitta Valberg as Mrs Jacobi, Hans Alfredson as Fredrik Lobelius, Ingvar Kjellson as Oswald and Raymond Lundberg as Jacobi's son. Apparently this film is part of a trilogy, the second instalment following Hour of the Wolf, Von Sydow is good acting selfish, immature, treacherous and cowardly, Ullman is good being strong and tender, together they make an intriguing pair of concert violinists and married couple. I will confess that I found the film slow at times, the most interesting moments came from the warfare material, and these moments do feel nightmarish and chilling as it interferes and diminishes love, beauty and trust, I don't fully agree with the four stars out of five by critics, but I know it is not a bad drama. It was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film. Worth watching!

I should no longer be surprised when critics miss the most obvious things in works of art, because they are human beings, and the vast majority of human beings are lazy by nature. That said, the simplistic notion that Ingmar Bergman's great 1968 film Shame (or Skammen) is merely an anti-war film does a great deal of damage to the reputation of this very complex, and highly nuanced, film. Compared to its more filmically showoffy predecessors, Persona and Hour Of The Wolf, Shame is seemingly a more classic film, in terms of narrative. But, the key word is seemingly, for while it lacks the bravura pop psychologizing of Persona and the gaudy horror film homages of Hour Of The Wolf, it is one of the best films ever made about war- and not as an anti-war film, nor a pro-war film. As such, it has to rank with Wild Strawberries as one of his greatest films, as well as one of his best screenplays, if not the best.Although ostensibly a more psychologically exterior film than the films that preceded it, it truly says far more realistic things about the human psyche and the will to survive. In it, Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman play Jan and Eva Rosenberg (perhaps a nod at the infamous American spies, whom many European intellectuals felt were innocent), two musicians who used to play for the local philharmonic orchestra before a war broke out, and they retreated to live on a small plot of land on an island, content to working in a greenhouse. The country they live in is unnamed, as is the island they live on, although the film was made on Bergman's small island of Farö, just off the northern end of the Swedish Island of Göttland. It seems that their nation has been at war for some years with an invading country, or perhaps engaged in a civil war with rebels from another province. This is all left deliberately hazy, as this war is meant to symbolize all wars. This is reinforced as the film starts with assorted war quotes on the screen, as the credits roll. These include quotes from Hitler to Vietnam Era American military figures. After early scenes that depict the prosaic nature of their rural life, and then the coming of war, where even old men are conscripted, an aerial attack ravages the Rosenbergs' land, as enemy jets fly overhead, dropping bombs and what seems to be chemical weapons of an Agent Orange like nature. One plane is hit, and a parachutist jumps out and ends up hanging in a tree. Jan, who starts off the film as a sniveling coward, refuses to go and help, so Eva goes alone. Jan joins her and they find the pilot has been shot. It seems he is, indeed, part of the invading, or possibly rebel, force. A bunch of government soldiers soon stop at their home and ask questions about the dead pilot, then advise the couple to leave their home, as the Invaders are near…. there are the misinterpretations of the film on a micro level, such as that of Bergman scholar Marc Gervais, who provides the film commentary on the DVD of the film. Like many other critics, he claims that Jacobi is a Quisling, who has collaborated with the Invaders. But, this is clearly and demonstrably wrong, for Jacobi is with the original Fascist government. As proof, first off, the Invaders are repelled after they invade the Rosenbergs' land and shoot their agitprop interview. We know this because the government that later questions them of the faked interview, and words put into Eva's mouth, see the film as supposed proof of their treason, and Jacobi is clearly working with them, the Fascist Big Brother statists. Secondly, Jacobi is in charge of deciding which of the townsfolk are sent to concentration camps, for collaborating with the Invaders, and the Rosenbergs, again, are among those spared. Thirdly, in his seduction of Eva, Jacobi tells her his son is on leave from the military, and clearly, if he was an Invader, he would not be speaking so happily of his son serving the state. Also, rebel forces are not official armies, and do not grant official leave. Lastly, Filip is clearly with the rebels, or Invaders, of the Organization, and why would he have killed a colleague?That Gervais and other critics so blatantly and wantonly misinterpret and flat out miss such a key and manifest point of this film brings into question their ability to discern any and all aspects of all of Bergman's films. This is a wonderful and great film, and very high in the Berman canon, but it is disappointing to read how so few critics and viewers have really understand its complex message, instead opting out for the cheap, lazy, and easy claim of its being merely anti-war, and a rather simple film in comparison to its two showier predecessors. And that, in the long run, is the real shame of Shame.

This film offers one of the greatest experiences available to movie-goers. It is by no means a pleasant film, but offers realities and emotions the human mind may never have meant to touch upon. It opens pathways in how an individual thinks, and afterwards will change the person forever. The first time I saw this film was in class, and immediately after seeing it I had to skip my next class and walk around campus in order to reset my body and mind. I felt devastated and, somehow unreal, as if I didn't exist. It was only a few months later that I was telling one of my friends about SHAME, and she asked, "Oh, is that when you were messed up after seeing it, and ran into me talking all strange about it?" I didn't even remember running into or talking to anyone at all while outside that day, I was astonished. In plot terms it is the simple tale of a couple torn apart by war. There suffering is greater than that of the dead and by the end...there are no words to complete the image that Bergman creates. Its like a horrible dream which causes you to wake, altering your own reality forever. This film must be seen.