Tension between family members no doubt exist within every family group, but some situations are worse than others. I couldn’t imagine making a deliberate refusal to associate myself with close family members and to extend it for years at a time, but you often hear stories about those very same things. It’s even worse if it involves the closest of familial bonds -- between parents and children. How could this happen? What sort of complex issues are strong enough for parents and children to break off the bonds they have?

Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata involves just such a case, of a mother and daughter who haven’t spoken to each other in seven years. It is only through the death of the mother’s friend that the two even find a reason to re-ignite their communication. But, befitting this huge gaping hole in the relationship, what should be a joyous reunion ends up being a painful rehashing of the past.

It is quite clear that these two people are very different from each other -- the mother, Charlotte, was a famous concert pianist, while the daughter, Eva, lives quietly with her husband in the countryside, doing religious work in the community. Charlotte is an outwardly confident and dramatic woman, used to glamour and recognition. Eva is quiet and mild, more able to sacrifice for the sake of others if need be. Eva’s nature comes alive due to the fact that she takes care of her extremely ill sister. The sister was formerly in a hospital, until Eva decided that the best thing for her sister’s happiness would be to stay with her and her husband. Charlotte, however, has a great fear of someone like her ill daughter -- she’s nervous and awkward with the unsettling reality of the illness, even to the point that she nervously asks Eva if the girl will be eating dinner with the rest of them. It’s clear that Charlotte can’t deal with anything outside of the safe and predictable cocoon of her career.

These two women are obviously very different from each other. These differences were obviously molded from the events of the past, although it is only on this night when these truths come out........

Autumn Sonata’s biggest draw, over all else, is the fact that the mother is played by Ingrid Bergman, the Swedish-born Hollywood star whose most famous roles include playing opposite Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, and opposite Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. Autumn Sonata was made in 1978, and apparently was Ingrid’s final theatrical film appearance, although she did appear in some TV-movies in her final years. Here, however, instead of appearing with other big legends of the silver screen, she’s playing opposite Ingmar Bergman regular Liv Ullman.

There’s something patently surreal about seeing a major Hollywood legend cavorting around in a European art film. Sure, Ingrid is speaking her native tongue her, and the man whose directing her isn’t exactly small potatoes here, but nothing about this movie would seem, at a glance, to be a standard leading role for a famous Hollywood star. But that doesn’t mean that Ingrid isn’t a good choice to play the lead. Her character is a dramatic, stubborn, and fairly arrogant person, and while any decent actor can play such a part, it doesn’t hurt to have that larger-than-life Hollywood attitude, even if you’re now speaking Swedish and playing something closer to reality.

I have to admit that I’ve not seen a whole lot of Ingrid - I think Casablanca, Gaslight, and Notorious are the only films of hers that I’ve seen. And Ingrid has clearly changed in the thirty-plus years between those films and Autumn Sonata. To be frank, I barely recognized her! She no longer looks like a glamourous Hollywood star, but an old lady. A tough old lady, sure, but there’s nothing extremely glamourous about it. I know that a lot of my reaction is because I haven’t seen the progression of her career --- it was just the fairly early stuff, and then this final film of hers.

What transpires is almost like a stage play. With the exception of a few extras, there’s only four people in this entire movie -- Charlotte, Eva, Eva’s sister and husband -- and the storyline is minimalist. Virtually everything happens within Eva’s house during a 24 hour period, and the “action” is in the words between the characters. The centerpiece of the film is a long, late-night bout of intensity between Charlotte and Eva, as all the anger, hurt and regret come flooding back. Truthfully, by this point, things kind of petered out for me -- the problem in the dynamic between myself and films like this is that there is so much to focus on. Unlike films with a lockstep plot where she did this and he did that, and you can easily remember the important things, Autumn Sonata is all about the words, and the emotions associated with them. (the fact that there’s subtitles to read just makes for more work) And there’s a lot more complexity in a torrent of words than in simple, visually attractive images.

Even so, I was still able to get a lot out of the situation, and I found myself taking sides here. Eva was the far more sympathetic character, which could be why I was better able to recall more of her words and emotions. Liv Ullman’s body language, and even her face -- a fragile, tender face with eyes that seem more wide-eyed due to the big glasses that she wears -- suggest a damaged soul. Sure, she does fine with her life; she’s normally calm and collected, but we know right from the beginning that her peaceful nature belies a lot of pain. A monologue spoken by her husband to us at the very start of the film tells us a few specific things -- including the fact that their young child had drowned a few years previously -- but the overall message is that Eva does not think that anyone loves her or appreciates her for who she is.

And when Eva finally encounters her mother again, her dormant anger slowly creeps up to the surface. A message that one can take from this film is that one’s relationship with one’s parents shapes that person, and the lengthy and painful dialogue between these two in the last part of this film is Eva’s attempt to regain the power that she feels she has lost by her mother’s actions during the years that she was growing up. Specifically, Eva has never felt loved - or, possibly more accurately, understood -- by her mother. Through a clever mix of dialogue and silent flashbacks, we see how Charlotte, at the height of her fame, distanced herself from her daughter by focusing wholeheartedly on her career. Then, due to a medical setback, Charlotte was forced to stay at home more often, and tried to make up for her lack of parental interest by smothering her daughter with attention. In both cases, Eva was unhappy, because her mother’s life with her was of extremes -- Eva felt herself unappreciated while Charlotte was career-focused, and she still felt the same way when Charlotte took the opposite extreme, because all her mother was doing was pushing and prodding her in a person that Charlotte thought her daughter ought to be, instead of loving her daughter for the way that she is. This life while growing up is surely what molded Eva into the person that she is today.......

This major sequence is strong stuff. It isn’t some simple dialogue, but a lengthy conversation that feels like life, if a lot more dramatic and intense for cinematic purposes. But another equally intriguing sequence that comes earlier in the film hardly involves any words at all, and explains almost as much. The two women talk about music; Eva plays a piece of music for her mother, whose reaction during the piece, at least to our eyes, is somewhat distracted. Charlotte gently critiques her daughter on her performance, before playing it in the “correct” way. And as Charlotte plays the piece, Eva watches, her face painted with awe, anguish, confusion -- Eva is watching a woman that she admires just as much as she resents. She looks up to her and is amazed at her, even as she always felt hopelessly inferior to her.

This piano scene is a small example of Ingmar Bergman’s famous style. Bergman has a thing for close-ups of faces -- and for almost the entire four or five minute stretch of Charlotte playing the piano, we see these two faces, Charlotte’s in profile as she concentrates on her playing, and Eva watching her. The framing is such that we are forced to understand Eva’s side of things, as she watches. It is probably scenes like this that made me more conscious of Ullman’s character; even though her mother is played by a Hollywood legend, I walked away from this film with a more memorable impression of Ullman.

I like Ingmar Bergman -- even though a number of his films, especially this one and Cries and Whispers, are very claustrophobic and talky, he somehow is able to transcend the static nature of some of these movies, making them as cinematic as possible. I don’t believe that there’s anything gratuitously “artsy” about these films -- although I’m sure that the very serious nature of some of these pictures intimidates many. I also don’t find his films too “difficult”. Sure, movies like this one and Cries and Whispers are serious and deep, and would probably be more rewarding with more than one viewing, but I’ve never been confused by his films. He’s talking about real emotions and feelings between people -- even though, unlike in Hollywood, he often goes all the way and gets into some emotionally raw territory, his films are accessible for people who want something more challenging. At least I think so. Autumn Sonata is definitely on par with the best Bergman works.




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day