1973
Written and Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Starring Harriet Anderson, Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Thulin and Kari Sylwan
There's a point in Cries & Whispers, about 2/3 of the way through, when one comes to the sickening realization that one of the characters is too immersed in her faith to commit suicide, and the viewer is forced to accept that, unless some magical tragic turn of fate occurs, she (the character) is going to have to keep living a life that will be completely devoid of any joy or humanity until the day that age finally takes her. It's a miserable revelation--yet it's brilliantly performed and gorgeously photographed. Within minutes, Cries & Whispers joins The Piano Teacher in the lineage of "films that include willful genital mutilation," a category that no one really craves more examples of. As horrific as the scene is, as unsettling as it is to watch it play out, unaddressed, it seems like such a little thing to do--like she could degrade and torture herself as much as her body could handle, and it would still hold no comparison to the empty, soulless degradation that her entire life already holds.
Cries & Whispers only resorts to this type of on screen horror in that one scene, but the movie is a grueling journey nonetheless. There isn't a wasted moment here, not for a single of the films brief 90 minute running time. Instead, Bergman fills the film with the type of silence that people are always telling you "speaks volumes," with blisteringly honest performances from his entire cast, and a plot that serves to keep the momentum at a refreshingly steady pace. Cries & Whispers is full of meaning, yes, but it's about one thing: death. Two sisters and a lifelong maid gather at the family estate to look after the third sister as she succumbs to a torturous illness. The film is about what happens, and that's it. What it makes one think and feel is what makes it a classic.
Gasper Noe and Michael Haneke come to mind when one is asked about movies with graphic violence designed to elicit reaction in film goers--and it's reaching to put Bergman in that same camp. Still, Cries & Whispers demands a certain amount of masochism in it's viewers, a level of courage that is near absent in most audiences. What one sees on screen is scary, unsettling stuff, and it's a painful journey for anyone to experience. But, unlike Noe, what appears on screen is undiluted truth--and sometimes that's exactly what anyone should be frightened by.
-Tucker Stone, 2007
could you do a review of my play on here? i would be very honored.
Posted by: andre | 2007.03.21 at 15:46