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Highly Overrated But Still Good

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

As one goes through the Bergman canon (I've seen all the films that are available to me) I continue to embrace them. I don't know why. There is enough angst to light a city in his work and this one, originally made for television, is no exception. A woman, Marianne, goes to see her ex-husband, Jonas, after thirty some years. He is a self centered, cruel man who has attained great wealth. They strike up a conversation and she stays for a time in his house. He has a son, Heinrich, who is a failure in the eyes of his father, even though he is an accomplished cellist and organist. He loved the old man at one time and was pushed away for the most trivial of reason. Heinrich has a daughter, Karen, who is also a cellist and since the death of her mother, two years previously, has been under the constant thumb of her father. He is about as needy as one can be and forces her to stay lest he do harm to himself. I could go into great detail concerning these people. but I will leave that to you, the viewer. As with so many Bergman characters, honest discourse is nearly impossible for them. The loving an fragile are ground into the turf. This was Bergman's swan song and he didn't back off from the blackness of human nature.

If anyone familiar with the works of Bergman were to see this without advance knowledge, it would not take long to peg it as classic Bergman, even if Liv Ullman were not playing a main part.As the film opens Marianne (Ullman) is looking over many photos spread out on her desk. This prompts her to take a trip to see Johan, an ex-husband whom she has not seen in decades. Describing the complex relationships that exist between Marianne, Johan, Johan's son Henrik, and Henrik's daughter Karin could take several pages. Suffice it to say that, in the classic Bergman style, there is enough bitterness, anger, angst, destructive ego, sublimated love, and brutal verbal sparring to satisfy anyone who appreciates Bergman .Since most of this movie is dialog with close-ups of faces, it would fail without the superior talent of the actors involved. I was particularly taken with Julia Dufvenius as Karin. Where does Bergman find these beautiful and talented women?What is the value of sitting through such an emotional experience? For one thing it is to appreciate actors at the top of their form. And witnessing the men's inner selves exposed to the extent that we can see how they have come to live such unhappy lives, and how they can poison the lives of others, is instructive. The women fare better than the men.It is fitting that Bergman should end his film career with such an emotionally complex and accomplished movie as this.

"Saraband" is another one of those Bergman movies which, it seems, could all be fittingly entitled like that other movie of his, "Through a Glass Darkly". Making things perfectly clear, once considered an essential element of a successful literary creation, is by Bergman intentionally and carefully avoided. The story is simple: An old, long-divorced couple (Marianne and Johan) meets again; and Johan's son Henrik from another marriage, recently widowed, and their daughter Karin live nearby. A simple story of essentially four people, but oh so dark and contradictory are the feelings between them. Johan hates his son, for reasons we never learn. Yes, cash-strapped Henrik needs to ask his rich father time and again for an "advance on his inheritance", but this could not quite explain the father's disdain. Henrik the musician drills Karin on the cello and loves her madly, but won't let her move to a decent music school for her further education. Now this may not be quite so puzzling as it first appears when we learn in passing that they both sleep in the same bed, an arrangement none of the other two people on hand seem to perceive as unusual. While this tidbit may further Sweden's alluring reputation, the casual acceptance of this matter is in fact quite unrealistic, as this reviewer was assured by a reliable Swedish source (who even mentioned "jail"!) Karin's mother Anna, on her deathbed, may have had a hunch that something like this was in the wings, but again, we don't learn for sure, since Karin won't read to Marianne (and hence to us) the last page of her mother's farewell letter (which masterful move, incidentally, spared Bergman the writing of it).We can't quite figure out what Karin's notion is about her domestic setup - does she hate the sex but loves daddy otherwise (whom she calls "Henrik", isn't' that cool?), or does she really only hate the daily cello drills (since she just wants to play in an orchestra rather than train to be a soloist, as we hear in her great emotional outburst)? Well, when she finally tells the old man that she's going to split, he attempts suicide. Of course, we can't be sure if it's successful. But hold it - taking all clues, there is a finite probability that it was not. Ah, now, will that persuade Karin to come back? What do you think this is, a documentary? That's the final mystery!No, wait, there is one more: Marianne lets us know that she has a definite opinion about this whole affair. But she won't tell.Some tedious writing avoided again!Surely, Bergman smiled all the way to the bank.

It seems to me that with Julia Dufvenius, Bergman has found a worthy successor to his great acting beauties of the past.Unfortunately we will see little of her in the US since almost no Swedish films make their way here.I watched this film almost by accident, and was happily surprised to see it ranks with some of his finest character efforts. The "Making of..." section on the DVD was quite fascinating, since almost the entire picture was filmed on a stage set, except for one brief woodland scene.Top marks.