Film: Bergman’s Quest

A “NIGHT OF DISTANCE”: Thus does a character in Saraband, the latest and likely last film from famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, describe a silent, acrimonious evening with his wife. From the medieval knight probing the absence of God in The Seventh Seal (1957) to Johan and his anguished isolation in Saraband, Bergman’s most memorable characters are knights of distance. Wracked by guilt and emotionally crippled by loss, they are preoccupied with the expanse that separates them from God, spouse, children, even the past itself. Amid habitual self-laceration and a seemingly limitless capacity for humiliating others, they seek desperately for the “miracle of belonging,” as it is described in Saraband.

Bergman has been rather quiet himself since his self-proclaimed farewell to cinema with Fanny and Alexander in 1982. He has been involved in TV and theater productions and wrote a searing script for Faithless (2000), directed by his longtime collaborator and former girlfriend, Liv Ullmann. As Marianne in Saraband, Ullmann reprises her role, 30 years on, from Scenes from a Marriage (1973) opposite Johan (Erland Josephson, another performer in numerous Bergman classics). Recalling the family portrait from the opening of Scenes, Saraband begins with Marianne sorting through a pile of family photos and directly addressing the camera about her idea of visiting Johan, the ex-husband she hasn’t seen in many years.

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Thomas S. Hibbs

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A “NIGHT OF DISTANCE”: Thus does a character in Saraband, the latest and likely last film from famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, describe a silent, acrimonious evening with his wife. From the medieval knight probing the absence of God in The Seventh Seal (1957) to Johan and his anguished isolation in Saraband, Bergman’s most memorable characters are knights of distance. Wracked by guilt and emotionally crippled by loss, they are preoccupied with the expanse that separates them from God, spouse, children, even the past itself. Amid habitual self-laceration and a seemingly limitless capacity for humiliating others, they seek desperately for the “miracle of belonging,” as it is described in Saraband.

Bergman has been rather quiet himself since his self-proclaimed farewell to cinema with Fanny and Alexander in 1982. He has been involved in TV and theater productions and wrote a searing script for Faithless (2000), directed by his longtime collaborator and former girlfriend, Liv Ullmann. As Marianne in Saraband, Ullmann reprises her role, 30 years on, from Scenes from a Marriage (1973) opposite Johan (Erland Josephson, another performer in numerous Bergman classics). Recalling the family portrait from the opening of Scenes, Saraband begins with Marianne sorting through a pile of family photos and directly addressing the camera about her idea of visiting Johan, the ex-husband she hasn’t seen in many years.