Product: Saraband (2005)
Rating: 5.0
There's Nothing as Dysfunctional as Love ...
... whether it be Eros or Agape, man and woman, parent and child, as Ingmar Bergman has forced us to perceive in film after film. "Saraband" was Bergman's last film, released in 2006. It's certainly not his best film, or even one of his best five films, and I'm certain he didn't intend it as such. It's not an ambitious or original film. Rather it seems to be a 'last dance' with the brilliant actors and actresses whose performances made Bergman the greatest Director per se of cinema history. Whatever resistance you may have toward Bergman's torturous pessimism, whatever your discomfort with his pace of observation and/or his disingenuous detachment, you will have to be astonished at the performances of Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson in "Saraband". They 'inhabit' their characters as richly as a goldfinch inhabits its feathers. Ensemble acting, and the direction of actors who knew each other thoroughly as an ensemble, was the core of Bergman's creativity. But "Saraband" also features a young actress -- Julia Dufvenius in the role of Josephson's granddaughter -- whose performance is also utterly Bergmanesque. The old Director hadn't lost his touch with actresses!I don't mean to tell you what this film is about, or to critique its moral/psychological message. I merely want to suggest that any film-goer who has esteemed Bergman's greatest poignant works -- Wild Strawberries, Fanny and Alexander, and others -- would be foolish to miss his last saraband.