Skammen

Plot synopsis:
A husband and wife, Jan and Eva, are former violinists who are living on a farm on a rural island during a civil war. Their radio and telephone do not work, and Eva expresses frustration at Jan's apparent preference of escapism from the conflict, while they debate whether they can have children and if Jan is selfish. The couple visit the town, and hear a rumor that troops will soon come, and meet with an older man who has been called to duty.
When they return, their farmhouse becomes the site of a bloody siege. Jan and Eva are captured by the invading force and interviewed by a military journalist on camera, for a segment on the viewpoints of the "liberated" population. Eva initially seems indifferent to the conflict, but denies neutrality, and Jan declines to speak, and they are released. They are later captured again, and as soldiers interrogate them, the troops play the interview video which dubs over Eva's words with enemy language. This is primarily a scare tactic.
Eventually, they are released by Col. Jacobi, who had formerly been serving as the mayor. After the couple returns home, their relationship is strained. Jacobi becomes a regular, if not uncomfortably constant, visitor who treats them with gifts but also has the power to send the couple to a work camp. This relationship is manipulative. Jacobi convinces Eva to provide him with sexual favors in exchange for his bank account savings. They go into the green house to have sex while Jan is resting. He wakes, calling Eva's name. Eventually, he goes upstairs and finds Jacobi's savings on the bed and begins to cry. Eva enters, Jacobi stays outside and turns to leave. She harshly comments to a weeping Jan that he can continue sobbing if he feels it will help. Soldiers arrive, and Jacobi explains his freedom can be bought, as the side of the war who is here is in desperate need of money. Jacobi, the soldiers, and Eva ask Jan for the money. Jan states he does not know what money they are talking about. The soldiers raid the house to look for it, in vain. They hand Jan a gun to execute Jacobi, and he does. After the soldiers leave, Jan reveals he had the money in his pocket, to Eva's disgust. This has split their relationship irreparably and causes repeated break downs. The relationship grows silent and cold. When Jan and Eva meet a young soldier, Eva wants to feed him and allow him to sleep. Jan violently takes him away to shoot and rob him.
Eva follows Jan towards the sea, and he uses the money from Jacobi in order to buy them seats on a fishing boat. While at sea, the boats motor fails. The man steering the boat kills himself by lowering himself overboard. The boat later finds itself stuck in the middle of floating dead bodies, unable to move forward and continue. As the boat takes away the refugees, Eva tells Jan of her dream: she walks down a beautiful city street with a shaded park, until planes come and set fire to the city and its rose vines. She and Jan have had a daughter, who she is holding in her arms. They watch the roses burn, which she states "wasn't awful because it was so beautiful". She feels she had to remember something, but couldn't.

Tags: bleak, allegory

Review:
"Shame" is less symbolic than some of Bergman's works, and, an intense, psychological study of a married couple, Jan and Eva, (Max von Sydow & Liv Ullmann) who have their personal problems like anyone else, but suddenly find their otherwise quiet Swedish island life completely upset by a civil war.
When Liv Ullman's character says, "I feel like I'm in someone else's dream and they're going to be ashamed when they wake up," she is referring not only to being an  unwilling player in society's war games, she is referring to being an ignorant participant in life itself.
At the film's end, when she says that she had a dream that she had a child and she was trying to take care of it, but she forgot something else, the implication is that she has forgotten what she has learned in the war she's just survived, that like her own mother before her, she will be unable to pass on any vital lessons to her own child.
Bergman's Skammen is one of the most realistic depictions of war ever set to film.
And this film is not so much about specific historical events, with specific names and dates, but about universal human reactions to adversity and chaos.The acting in Skammen, though typically impressive from Ullman and Sydow, is not of primary importance in this film, unlike most other Bergman movies.
Shameful is of course war and life during it.Bergman makes a flawless movie, he studies people as they are.
Shame is rather unique as a war film (or rather quite the anti-war film) in that it not only doesn't focus on the soldiers or politics involved (there is politics but not how you'd think it'd be shown), it deals with its two main subjects as the only two beings that can possibly be cared about at all in this brutal, decaying society they inhabit.
Ingmar Bergman, in the midst of his prime, and following two other heavily psychological films, Persona and Hour of the Wolf, is far more interested in seeing what the effect of war has on usually civilized beings, that it brings out the worst in them, and also in a cathartic way is a reminder of what is truly crucial in living.
His two key actors are frequent collaborators and friends Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman (as the Rosenbergs oddly enough), who are musicians living on a farm on an island (not too dissimilar from 'Wolf' when one thinks about it).They see the tanks roll by, and a couple of old friends already getting worn down, but they try not to put it too much to heart; there's a sweet scene where the couple just talk, rather frankly but with heart (all one shot, as is repeated through the film is to perhaps create a sense of being provoked)...Then comes the trouble, including a fake film of propaganda made at gunpoint with the Rosenbergs, the psychological turmoil in being prisoners of war, and the terror involved with a 'friend' in the military (one of Gunnar Bjornstrand's most subtle works with Bergman).
When there is war action it's shot in unconventional, quick ways (via great amigo Sven Nykvist).And the deconstruction of the relationship between Jan and Eva is corresponded successfully with the backdrop of a chaotic kind of war-ground where the lines are never too surely drawn.
In a way this film, shot right at the height of the worst times in Vietnam, is even more relevant for today; I couldn't help but see chilling, uncompromising coincidences between Iraq and elsewhere with some of Jan and Eva's scenes with the fighters, or those 'in charge'.
Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow are brilliant as the politically uninvolved couple who suffer the terrifying consequences of being caught up in the midst of a civil war.
The Process of Brutalization of a War. The apolitical musicians Eva (Liv Ullmann) and Jan Rosenberg (Max von Sydow) have been married for seven years and live in a small farm in a remote island to escape from a civil war in the continent.
When Colonel Jacobi (Gunnar Björnstrand) stalks Eva, Jan changes his behavior and becomes a brutal man, and the love and affection they feel for each other change to hatred and indifference."Shame" is an antiwar movie by the master Ingmar Bergman focused by the eyes of a couple of artists that are apolitical and does not listen to the news, but when the war arrives to their lands, they have their love, friendship and affection destroyed by the senseless soldiers.
The film contained few characters which made the viewer focus and become only involved in the couple struggling through a time of war and devastation.
Ingmar Bergman's moderate attempts of displaying the psychological effects of war are depicted in Shame.
Although he presents emotional and deep characters, Bergman's unique film is a bit hard to follow at times.
I also think this is one of the most powerful films about the ugliness of war and what it does to the human souls.The couple of musicians, who left a big city for a remote island and make a living as farmers, find themselves capable of unspeakable and shameful acts that would have ordinarily been impossible for them even imagine, as they struggle to survive horrible reality of war.
Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow are brilliant as usual as lost, confused, and terrified couple that got caught in the midst of a civil war.9.5/10.
Ingmar Bergman penetrating, existential study of a couple on the island of Gotland dealing with surviving a long war.
The films intensity rests in Bergman's keeping our focus on the minute, intimate relations of his two characters - both accomplished musicians - trapped in a landscape they have ceased to understand.
In one of the most powerful episodes Bergman forces us to reflect on the manipulative power of the cinematic medium by showing us a filmed interview with Ullman's character that has been re-edited and distorted for political effect by one side of the conflict and is used by the other side as evidence of war crimes in a brutal interrogation scene..
Who knows, maybe that is the point: that it is this alpha mindset that sets the stage for war to begin with.I understand that I "missed the point." But everyone that speaks about this film speaks about the human race, when instead we watch a terrible wife character drive her poor husband insane: that's the thing that actually is on the screen throughout the film..
What Bergman has got here is "What if all that bad stuff happened here in Sweden, to nice people like us?" And what he gives us, in the Swedish language, with Swedish actors, on Swedish locations (and using what appear to be genuine Swedish military vehicles) is what was familiar from war films set in almost every other country in Europe-- all the confusing invasions and counter-invasions, political lies, internment camps, faked confessions, summary executions, torture, turncoats, "collaborators", and so on.
But when war finally breaks into their bucolic idyll, the man's timidity, an irritation in good times, turns into a liability, one he ends up overcompensating for-- as is often the case-- as Bergman demonstrates subtly and beautifully.
And the film is too great for such unnoticed film.Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow star as wife and husband getting caught in the horrors of war.
Jan becomes cruel and violent, while Eva becomes not exactly submissive, but rather distant.Bergman has stated his dissatisfaction with the film in several occasions, and never considered it his best work, but 'Shame' is must see film..
The film gives very little background information about the setting, time period or characters, and this ambiguity is like what it is like to live in the middle of a war.
Shame was a very practical and well depicted film of the effects of war on the general public.
A very credible and unsettling movie portraying the effects of war on the general public, Shame gives us a chilling understanding oh Ingmar Bergman's beliefs.
Feeling ashamed?"This is said by Eva, one of the protagonists of Ingmar Bergman's The Shame (Skammen, 1968).
It's disheartening to realize that, half a century later, Skammen works exactly the same way (the same boat who sails from a Swedish island in a fictitious war, sails today from the coasts of Africa for the same reasons, with the same broken dreams and the same, horrifying, results.At the end, one remains with a bitter feeling.
Ingmar Bergman is really a great director,however wasn't the best one for me, there's fine movies in his career as Jungfrukallan just to quote my favorit a near masterpiece,Skammen has something weird to start,all is based on a fictional civil war which was set place in somewhere at Scandinavia,whereupon there's no civil war at this place in that time which the picture may implied,forgetting all this the picture make sense,a overlooked at point of view over such damages for those people whose most of them don't have no idea why it should be happen,such atrocities,such pain and worst how the persons changes over for instance two leading roles,a anti-war picture but sounds a unreal for to be raised under a virtual war....therefore and just for that 7 out 10!!!Resume:
As a civil war has engulfed the area in which they live, Jan Rosenberg (Max von Sydow) and Eva Rosenberg (Liv Ullmann) an apolitical couple who used to earn their living as musicians, grasp at the remnants of what used to be their lives.
No matter how far they run, there is no escaping the conflict that has taken over their lives.Shame shows two people who purposefully don't take either side in a war, yet that very silence and unwillingness to take sides results in their being assumed collaborators.
The film takes place on Gotland, where invasion forces arrive.Pauline Kael reviewed the film in December 1968, writing, "Shame is a masterpiece, – a vision of the effect of war on two people, – but – it has many characters and incidents – in many ways, (it is) Bergman's equivalent of Godard's Week End – also an account of what people do to survive – Liv Ullmann is superb in the demanding central role, – Gunnar Björnstrand is beautifully restrained as an aging man clinging to the wreckage of his life.
Ingmar Bergman's "Shame" is a simple yet effective tale of the devastation war has on people, both physically and emotionally.
The couple whose life changes forever, Jan and Eva, are both likable characters, and Bergman does a good job keeping the film focused on them instead of getting into too many complicated stories with minor characters.
That being said, Shame's lack of depth does hurt it a bit, as it is possible audiences will not express any concern for Jan and Eva without more scenes to grow attached to them..
That's because initially, the main characters (Liv Ullman and Max Von Sydow) try to overcome adversity and are basically decent (though a bit stupid) people.
There are no sides to the two main characters in this impacting drama, which doesn't intimate a point in any ceremonial symbolism as per Bergman's usual, but plainly showcases people and their lives and exercises what Bergman has already proved he understands about a person's reaction to a movie.His top-drawer regulars Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow play an internalizing but bickering married couple who were once orchestra musicians.
The basically clearcut personalities of Ullmann and Von Sydow's characters are hurled into the degenerate world of war because they are accused of being "sympathizers," but the film, shot on Bergman's small home island of Faro, doesn't give any information about where or when it's set, who the two sides are, and for what they're fighting.
It shows the things people will do to survive during a war and the shame that comes out of these actions; however I feel that it was not complete or attention holding.
I think that Ingmar Bergman could have filmed this movie in a more riveting way..
Shame was a movie with a very interesting premise, of trying to convey the effect of war on the common people, it however fell short of accomplishing this for me.
The basic premise of Bergmans films are the relationships between the characters and how they deal with trying situations.
I tried to enjoy the critically acclaimed Ingmar Bergman film "Skammen" (Shame).
If Bergman had used more sound and created understandable characters, my experience with Shame would have been more positive..
The surreal insanity of the behavior of the soldiers and officials around our normal working-class couple seemed so exaggerated, almost Keystone Cops with guns, that it DID seem effectively anti-war, but not in the way seen by those who write of unrelieved depression and misery being where the film got its power.
Certainly, if we're supposed to take the early to middle completely seriously and literally the film works much less well for me than it did, since the horrors these people are exposed to on a literal level seem like nothing compared to the victims of 'real world' wars, where they probably would have been dead very quickly.
Bergman's regular Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann starred as a village couple, Jan and Eva Rosenberg.
Shame (1968) *** 1/2 (out of 4) A husband (Max von Sydow) and wife (Liv Ullmann) live in a peaceful, if lonely, life in the country but all of this takes a turn for the worse when war hits their town.
The opening sequences are beautifully directed as Bergman sets up the peace that these two people share and then he hits us with the scenes of war when all of the peace gets thrown out the window.
The film is about a husband and wife named Jan, and Eva. They live on an island working as farmers.
Shame, has good direction, a good script, good performances by both Max Von Sydow (who plays Jan) and Liv Ullman (who plays Eva), good cinematography and good production design.
While nowhere close to being one of his best films there is still a lot to like about Shame, and it is a good movie.
Well, as a Bergman movie, "Shame" is still a powerful character study, focusing on the evolution of a man and a woman.Jan, the husband, is detached, he doesn't care about shaving or repairing the telephone since there's not much news to hear, which explain how clueless they are about the war.
In peace, the couple didn't live happily and despite the genuine love, something in the way Eva addressed Jan showed a bit of contempt, after Jan's 180 degree turn, they fight, they admit their hatred but they stick together as if love became a negligible entity.The film offers a fascinating character study on the devastating effects war have on civilians' minds, a mix of maturity and degeneration, something that was echoed in the famous shot from "Persona" where Alma, Liv Ullman, an actress who resigned to silence, kept staring to the famous image of the burning monk, how could she live in a world that allowed such barbarity to happen.
Still, Shame, for me, was a powerful experience, with lots of perfections on many levels.Released in the same year as Hour of the Wolf, along with the same leads, Shame is a character study of people caught in a raging civil war.
Despite the epic scale of the film, it is very, very bleak; so far the most bleakest Bergman movie I've seen.
In fact, this can be seen in the first scene alone that shows the two main characters, Eva (Ullman) and Jan (Sydow), simply waking up to a loud alarm clock to start the day.
Her sadness and Jan's lack of compassion over its death show the difference in their nature, and how those traits influence the way they change later in the film.The political backdrop of the film is questionable, as Shame is more a study on the characters than being a story about surviving a war.
Even if you're not too much a fan of Bergman, this overlooked piece of work can be enjoyed as a superb war film that can leave you thinking hours, maybe days, after watching..
As with that particular film, Shame offers a story about characters in retreat; in retreat from themselves and from the world around them.
In Shame, the idea is given further dramatic weight by an approaching civil war set to eventually destroy the walls of cowardice and self-preservation that these particular characters have put up to protect themselves from the harsh realities of life.
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.
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.
However, the film focuses on a modest married couple, Eva and Jan, played brilliantly by Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman, and the shame shared by the two over Jan's shortcomings and cowardice, and, ultimately, his ruthlessness."Shame" has moments teetering on greatness, but never quite achieves that caliber.
Its ideas and bravery are commendable, and I understand what Bergman was trying to convey, but the story itself is a bit disjointed and the film feels too short for such a mammoth concept as the psychological effects of war on civilians.
Ingmar Bergman's meditation on war concerns a couple living an idyllic existence on a small island off the coast (of what country isn't specified).