Ingmar Bergman’s 1971 film Cries and Whispers is really no fun to watch at all. Its subject matter is morbid and awash in hate and agony. This is not a film than can be called entertaining in any sense. That being said, Cries and Whispers is also one of the most skillfully crafted films ever made. It also features three extraordinary performances and another four well-rendered supportive roles. If you have an interest in great film-making, you really need to see this film, but be prepared for an excruciating experience.

This film is not about death – it is about dying. We sometimes say about life’s exertions that the joy is in the journey, not in the destination. That old saw could be paraphrased to relate to death: the agony is in the journey, not in the destination. I personally have no fear of death, but I have a healthy trepidation about the process of dying – both in relation to myself and my loved ones. Cries and Whispers is a movie about a person dying and the emotions that the process evokes in her, her two sisters, and her faithful attendant. The story unfolds in a mansion on a large estate in Sweden.

The dying woman is Agnes (Harriet Andersson). She is being ground in the crucible of pain. The only person in her life able to provide any substantial comfort to ease her suffering during this passage is her devoted maidservant, Anna (Kari Sylwan). Anna is a classic nurturer, a compassionate earth-mother. Symbolically, she cradles Agnes in her arms and lets her head rest against her bared breast. Anna is a woman of simple faith and that faith has sustained her through an earlier loss of her only child as well as through Agnes’s illness.

The elder sister of Agnes is Karin (Ingrid Thulman). Karin is melancholy and suicidal. The melancholy seems to have been evident ever since childhood. She is emotionally withdrawn and sometimes filled with self-loathing. She appears to despise her husband and most viewers will grant that he is a very dislikable person. Karin, at one point, maimed herself with a shard of glass because she loathed her husband so much, then smeared the blood on her own face. I found that episode not very credible. Were Karin disturbed enough to conduct that act in that way, there would have been more such episodes and she would likely be institutionalized.

The youngest sister is Maria (Liv Ullmann). She is shallow and emotionally corrupt. Her feelings are all whimsical and fleeting. She flirts and toys with people and cheats on her husband. She has no tolerance whatsoever for the distress of others. When her husband half-heartedly stabs himself after learning of one of her infidelities and begs for her help, she flees instead. She does not have the emotional strength to comfort her dying sister.

One of the key scenes, in my opinion, for understanding Karin and Maria, is one that reviewers seldom mention. It occurs early in the film when Karin reveals her feelings of jealousy about her mother. We are made privy to these recollections as Karin thoughts: “Mother is in my thoughts almost every day although she’s been dead for over 20 years. . . I loved her to such a jealous extreme. . . I loved her because she was so gentle and beautiful and alive and so all-prevadingly present.” [Karin herself, by contrast, is withdrawn and cold.] “But she could also be cold, playfully cruel and rebuff me.” [Like Maria, the mother’s offers of emotion and attachment were variable and undependable.] “I always felt frightened and left out. When Mother spoke to me in her hurried way. I could hardly understand what she wanted of me.” [Withdrawn, introspective people always have trouble responding with ease and spontaneity, especially to a person who is extroverted and unaffected.] “Mother and Maria always had many things to whisper about but then they were so alike. Jealously, I used to wonder what they were laughing at together.” [Yes, very alike. Now, Karin has double reason to despise Maria. First, because she was the mother’s favorite and, second, because Maria’s offers of affection to Karin are just like the undependable feelings offered by the mother.] “Everyone was in gay spirits. I was the only one who couldn’t join in the merriment.” [Today, depending on the severity of Karin’s problem, we would say either that she is introverted or suffers from social phobia.]

One of the most intense scenes is a showdown between Karin and Maria. Maria makes overtures toward her moody and recalcitrant sister, apparently hoping to mend fences and build bridges. “We are, after all, sisters,” she implores. Karin rebuffs her, briefly accepts Maria’s caresses, then exclaims, “Don’t touch me! I can’t stand being touched.” Later, she attacks Maria venomously, saying, “Do you know how much I hate you?” Now there’s a great conversation starter! Karin finally relents a bit and softens her stance and we see the two sisters talking gently with one another like a couple of playful littermates. Later, in the cold light of morning, Karin seeks reaffirmation of the “progress” they had made in getting closer, but Maria cruelly disowns the memory. Just like the mother who she resembles, Maria whimsically offers Karin kindness, then rebuffs her callously.

Another poignant scene occurs near the end when Karin, Maria, and their respective husbands dismiss Anna with minimal consideration – with a token payment and the offer of a keepsake (something that had belonged to Agnes) for her years of devoted love and service. Anna refuses the offer of a keepsake, though we learn later that she has already secretly squirreled away the only keepsake that is important to her – Agnes’s journal, where Agnes bares her soul and recounts happier times. One such happy remembrance is symbolic of Agnes’s (and Bergman’s) idea of paradise. Agnes recounts a perfect day in the autumn, when her pain was not too severe, and she, her sisters, and Anna strolled in the garden in gowns carrying parasols. Suddenly, they spotted the old swing where they had played as children and all rushed to it, climbing aboard, Anna pushing them as if it were one of the blissful days of their childhood. “All my aches and pains were gone. The people I’m most fond of in the world were with me. I could hear them chatting around me, I felt the presence of their bodies, the warmth of their hands. This is happiness. I cannot wish for anything better,” writes Agnes.

Themes: Dying is the final stage of life and for those who do not die suddenly or unexpectedly, it is likely to be a drawn out and excruciating period. While most movies depict death as some kind of effortless transit into a transcendent state of grace, the reality is typically much more grim. Most of us are not cut out for dying gracefully or easily, yet the grim reaper makes no exceptions in who he calls. Many of us are also not especially competent – either emotionally or cognitively – to help ease the agony of death for others, even our most cherished loved ones. Actually, it’s something that most people don’t want to get especially good at, since that would likely signify many experiences with such loses. That’s why hospice services and mortuary services exist. It is certainly an admirable quality to be able to give effortlessly (or at least graciously) to a person in their time of greatest need – as they are dying. Those who are experienced nurturers or nurturers by nature may be able to do so. Those who have never previously practiced their nurturing capacity will often be unable to suddenly discover such ability as a loved one lies dying. Each person deals with death as best they can. Although neither Karin or Maria was able to provide much in the way of comfort or help for Agnes in her death throes, I feel that it is uncharitable to interpret those failings as some kind of moral perversity. I think it is very likely that Karin and Maria truly loved Agnes – probably more than they loved one another – but that neither had the psychological stability to deal with the dying process. The last thing that Agnes needed to have around during her death struggle was a sister who was suffering more by her dying than she was herself! It would be analogous to having an especially squeamish, uptight, and sensitive person present during a childbirth. Surely that’s not a benefit to the woman in labor.

The prime issue addressed in Cries and Whispers, in my view, is not the inability of Karin and Maria to “be there” for their sister. The larger problem is the poor state of psychological health each had reached. Karin is extremely despondent and embittered. She had strengths of understanding and insight that she could have brought to bear to learn how better to deal with her despondency, introversion, and despair. Step one: leave that jerk of a husband! Maria is shallow and whimsically unstable. She lacks a moral foundation and is probably beyond salvation at this stage of her life. She’s not distressed enough about her own perversity to do much about it.

I find in frankly ridiculous that some film critics speculate about whether Agnes and Anna have a lesbian relationship. There is nothing presented in this film that is relevant to an understanding of the sexual preferences of either Agnes or Anna except that we know that Anna had a child who died. She must have had a heterosexual relationship at some point in her life. The idea that her use of her bared breast for purposes of comforting Agnes is indicative of a lesbian relationship reveals only that American film reviewers are so preoccupied with sex and sexual orientation that they can’t conceive of any other application of the human body. Sometimes warmth and affection are just warmth and affection, even if it entails taking a loved one to one’s bosom. Shades of Grapes of Wrath.

Production Values: Stylistically, Cries and Whispers leaves very little to be desired. It quite appropriately won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, which went to long-time Bergman associate Sven Nykvist. The cinematography is extraordinary in multiple ways. Not only is there the trademark brilliant shot composition and facial close-ups that are always evident in Bergman films, but a remarkable use of color as well. Bergman has stated that “All of my films can be thought of in terms of black and white, except ‘Cries and Whispers.’” The film is bathed in reds, from the wallpaper, curtains, ceilings, rugs, and wine to the full red frames that frame many of the scenes. For Bergman, red was the color of the soul. The three sisters are contrasted against the red background by means of white dresses or night gowns – until the end when they appear in the black robes of mourning.

All three of the performers playing the sisters were absolutely amazing. Ullmann won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress based on her portrayal of Maria. Yet, one critic describes Andersson’s performance as Agnes as “one of inexplicable genius” and another calls Thulin’s performance “amazing.” Frankly, they’re all right in this instance. You could shower any one of these three performers with accolades or you could complement how marvelously they play off one another as an ensemble.

Weaknesses: The psychological underpinnings of the film are flimsy at best. The respective psychologies of Karin and Maria are reduced down to one or two issues or traumatic moments apiece, as if a person’s nature is formed by just a few moments from the totality of their lives. For Karin, it is the jealousy of Maria’s relationship with their mother and maiming herself in traumatic expression of her hatred for her husband. It is absurd to imagine that her loathing for her husband would burst forward in one isolated episode of psychopathic proportions rather than motivating her choices and actions in many small ways in an on-going manner. For Maria, it is her lustful infidelities and the husband’s suicide attempt.

Another failing is that the character of Agnes is never developed in any meaningful way, though perhaps that appropriately depicts the overwhelming of her personality by pain. It is never revealed how she fits into Karin’s or Maria’s feelings for one another or for her. Considering how strong the negative emotions are between Karin and Maria, it is hard to imagine that Agnes is just some neutral or beloved character to both.

Bottom-Line: Cries and Whispers is a dark and brooding film. It is penetrating to an extent that almost feels like an invasion of the privacy of the characters. Since dying (oneself or a loved one) is difficult enough to deal with when one is forced to in real life, many viewers are not going to jump at the chance to spend an hour-and-a-half wallowing in the raw emotions of dying depicted on film, no matter how skillfully that film is constructed. That is, perhaps, the reason that Cries and Whispers was a box office catastrophe despite its critical acclaim and art house runs. In addition to winning the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Cries and Whispers received nominations for Best Film (only the fourth foreign language film to be so honored), Best Director, and Best Screenplay. The only extra on the DVD is a stellar 57-minute interview with Ingmar Bergman conducted for Swedish television by actor and Bergman friend Erland Josephson. Cries and Whispers is in Swedish with English subtitles and has a running time of 91 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Sweden:

The Best Intentions
The Magician
Miss Julie
Persona
Scenes from a Marriage
The Seventh Seal
The Shame
Smiles of a Summer Night
Through a Glass Darkly
Torment
The Virgin Spring
Wild Strawberries

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age