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First of all the story is not so simple as many earlier reviewers tend to emphasize, it is actually a very complex story, unlike Bergman's other movies that are more bend towards character study. In Skammen we have two main characters but as we are thrown from the start in the middle of a war we have no idea who is fighting and why, everything is open for any resolution. This creates a huge tension and makes every event meaningful. As the story unfolds we are introduced to numerous characters, that are turned into symbols of humanity, both its dark and luminous sides. We have the example of the innocent bystanders who try to get by during an absurd war, the cynical doctor who makes fun of his patients and provides the only bitter humor of the whole movie, the perverse opportunists who try to make the best of an atrocious event (Bjornstrand's character), the innocent dead children, the nameless figures almost turned into animals from the boat etc. All of them are somehow seen through the eyes of Jan (von Sydow) and Eva (Ulmann), their characters are more restrained then in other Begrman films (En Passion) and this is exactly because what is important here is the story, the way exterior events have the capacity to radically change human nature.
Bergman made this film two years after Persona where the main conclusion expressed by the only word uttered by Liv Ulmann's character is INGENTING, nothing. That's it: the meaning of art and the meaning of life, the latter being nothing more than a play that includes all plays. But what about war? And especially the annihilating ones of the XX'th century. In Persona, the only real emotion suffered by Ulmann's character is when she sees a victim of the Vietnam war turned into a human torch. In Skammen that idea is extended to a complex analysis of the dehumanizing nature of war. In a nameless region of a nameless country (we only assume it's Sweeden) two factions speaking the same language fight an absurd war. Jan and Eva are two dreamers caught in the middle but their dreams are woven in a sort of counterpoint. Jan is at first an idealist, unable to react properly to the world and a subject to his wife's will. Towards the end he turns into a radically different personality, capable of unmotivated murder, strong-willed, pitiless (watch carefully the suicidal on the boat..the simplicity of the act is harrowing). On the other hand Eva progressively looses touch with reality and at the end she is completely suffused in her own unfulfilled dream.
From a technical point of view the whole movie delivers its message in a very effective way. Bergman places the viewer alongside the character, putting the camera in the car with the actors, or in an extreme close-up behind the actor. Nykvist manages an extraordinary control of the camera, there are some masterful "hand-held" effects, very good in making everything seem "real". The shots when the characters are captured by the army look remarkably documentary-like. The screenplay is minimalist but the story is quite complex for that matter. Actually the whole movie is paradoxical, it has an intensity in the subject that is in a sharp contrast to the coldness and lack of emotional involvement with which it is directed and filmed. Nothing is melodramatic here, there is no compassion, no hope and no apparent redemption. But, as in Liv Ulmann's dream at the end it is all so beautiful one cannot help but being amazed at it...It was not so awful since it was so beautiful!


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