Cries & Whispers (1973)
Directed by: Ingmar Bergman.
Written by: Ingmar
Bergman.
Starring: Harriet Andersson (Agnes),
Kari Sylwan (Anna), Ingrid Thulin (Karin), Liv Ullmann (Maria / Mother), Anders
Ek (Isak), Inga Gill (Storyteller), Erland Josephson (David), Henning Moritzen
(Joakim), Georg Ă…rlin (Fredrik).
I’m not
sure Ingmar Bergman ever made a darker, more despairing film than Cries and
Whispers – and if he never did, you have to wonder if anyone ever did. It is
essentially a film about four women – three sisters, one of whom is dying, and
the dying woman’s nurse who cares for her. It is a film obsessed with death –
and the moral failings of this family. It is also the most stunning use of
color in Bergman’s career – he preferred black and white, but black and white
would be unthinkable for Cries and Whispers – which uses red perhaps better
than any film in history. This is a story of love, death and faith.
Agnes
(Harriet Andersson) has been sick for over a decade now – slowly dying of some
form on cancer, and now in her final days, she is in almost constant pain.
Throughout all that time, her companion has been the family servant and nurse –
Anna (Kari Sylwan) – who loves Agnes more than anyone, and has a simple faith –
praying to God for Agnes, and for her own dead child. Like most all of Bergman’s
films, Anna only receives silence in response to her prays – unlike most of his
films, she is not haunted by that silence. It does not shake her faith.
In the
final days of her illness, Agnes is joined at the family estate by her sisters,
Maria (Liv Ullman) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin). There are perhaps not two more
vain characters in Bergman’s entire filmography than these two. They are
repulsed by Agnes and her dying body, so they pretty much avoid her. Maria is
obsessed with her own beauty, and when the doctor (Erland Josephson), a former
lover, arrives she tries to seduce him, not caring about her own marriage. The
doctor is also a horrible person – he knows Maria’s vanity, and so picks on the
few flaws of aging that have started to show on her face. Karin is hard and
cruel – if Maria is overtly sexual, Karin is the opposite. What she does to
avoid having sex with her husband makes for the film’s most shocking moment.
This is
perhaps the most claustrophobic film ever made. It keeps us in this manor house
– which is decorated almost entirely in reds and white, and keeps us inside of
the pain of the film. These three sisters come from a wealthy family, and have
essentially done nothing with their lives, except to remain wealthy. They were
once close – we see in some flashbacks – but that has gone away now. Maria and
Karin despise each other – and they despise Agnes as well. Her death brings
them close for a moment – the only moment we see the sisters touch each other,
as they caress each other’s faces, and talk briefly how they love each other,
before Bergman drops out the sound, so we can no longer hear them. It’s all an
act anyway. They are incapable of loving each other – or anyone else. The next
day, they will revert back to their cold, calculating hatred of each other,
spoken in polite terms – not like earlier when Karin confesses her hatred for
Maria. As they prepare to leave, the family – Maria and Karin, and their
husbands who they hate, all talk dispassionately about Anna – about giving her
something remember Agnes by before they dismiss her without a thought after
more than a decade of service. Anna, in what passes for raising her voice,
tells them she doesn’t want anything. She has already taken Agnes’ journal –
something that wouldn’t interest her family anyway.
If Maria
and Karin are among the worst characters Bergman has ever put on screen, then
Anna is probably the most purely good. She has faith in God, and that gets her
through everything. She loves Agnes – and doesn’t shy away from her as she is
dying. She cradles her against her bosom when she cries out in pain – bringing
to mind religious painting of Mary cradling Jesus in the gripes of horrific
pain. Agnes does endure that pain with Christ-like resolve. Bergman admires
Anna and her faith – even if he never confirms it. The silence of God haunted Bergman – but it
doesn’t haunt Anna. It brings her comfort and faith. Bergman admires that –
even if he can never share it.
There is
more going on than that in Cries and Whispers – it is about maternal sexuality
in its way. It is also the film in Bergman’s filmography that most resembles a
dream – that operates on a dream logic. It’s the culmination of a number of
films, perhaps starting with Persona (1966) that tried to capture that feel.
Perhaps feeling he perfected it here, he moved on to something more realistic
with his next film – Scenes from a Marriage – and continued for most of the
rest of his career (pretty much retiring a decade later) with Fanny and Alexander
(which takes some elements from Cries and Whispers as well).