A Ship to IndiaIt's said that every cell in your body is replaced over the course of seven years, essentially making you into a whole new person. And just as the body can transform, so can hearts and minds. A Ship to India is about a young sailor named Johannes Blom (Birger Malmsten) who returns to his hometown after sailing abroad for seven years. After a difficult reunion with an erstwhile lover named Sally (Gertrud Fridh), he wanders the beach the night before shipping out again, doing some soul searching. He passes out and dreams of seven years prior when he was a very different person, and when his current life of independence and walking tall was little more than a dream itself.
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Most of A Ship to India is told as a flashback, depicting a younger Johannes as both browbeaten and jealous of his father, Alexander Blom (Holger Löwenadler), who is the captain of the ship on which Johannes resides and works along with his haggard mother, Alice (Anna Lindahl). Alex, his family, and a small crew of three increasingly frustrated workers presumably make money by salvaging sunken ships--like the rotting wreck off right near the coast they're ostensibly reclaiming--although Alex's notorious drunken binges and lechery suggests that they never get much work done at all. Unlike the older Johannes, this younger incarnation bears a hunched back, which seems more pronounced given how self-conscious he is about it, and which his father exploits to mock his son. This younger man is terrified of crossing his father for fear of violent reprisal. Before the audience has even been properly introduced to Alex, an early scene at a theater where Sally works reveals that the svelte captain is more than willing to get into a brawl over something as inconsequential as a mask he buys from an actual sailor. Masks are a familiar trope in other films by writer and director Ingmar Bergman--even his iconic Persona translates as "mask". The ones Alex collects are relics from exotic lands that he's never visited, although he implies to Sally that he has to impress her and so that he can feel that his life has been richer than it really was. Alex dreads a diagnosis declaring that he will soon go blind, and is compelled to indulge his hedonistic whims before the light fades. To that end, he has taken Sally as his most recent mistress--a chorus girl of flexible morals who conceals her withered self-esteem behind a veneer of carefree indifference. Alex has the temerity to invite Sally to live on their boat with his family, further humiliating Alice and Johannes. Already antagonized by his father for his negligence, Johannes deliberately provokes Alex--then Sally--while trying to cope with feelings of inadequacy and rejection. Despite his wild behavior toward Sally, she warms to the young man and the two open up to one another about their hopes and dream for a better life. Their most revealing moment comes when Johannes invites Sally to come ashore with him and visit an abandoned windmill, whose broken sails resemble a crucifix. Within this sacred and secret place--which Johannes no doubt discovered during one of many runaway attempts as a child--they open their hearts and begin a romance of their own. Sally--who heretofore seemed the anchor of strength among the characters in A Ship to India--claims that because she became a sex worker to survive, she lost the ability to care for others. Yet her heart betrays her when she tells Johannes that she "wishes" she could love him because he was the only person who showed her kindness without demanding something in return. Sally is struggling with her own demons, even if she buries them better than Johannes.
A Ship to India was one of Bergman's earliest films, and foreshadows the complex (and complicated) familial and romantic paradigms found in some of his later works, especially Through a Glass Darkly. (Johannes and Minus are cut from the same cloth as emotionally vulnerable sons discovering their sexuality and masculinity through unconventional means, while struggling with feelings of inferiority when compared to their fathers.) Alex is an arrogant blowhard who implodes when his fragile view of the world is shattered by what he perceives as an unforgivable betrayal--namely when Johannes sleeps with his mistress. Alex's wife tries to pull him back from the edge of his reclusive behavior to no avail, appealing to his sense of honor and nostalgia while they try to sleep, albeit in separate bunks. She recalls how she used to pump air into his diving suit, as though she were breathing life into him with every pump, and of happier days--as Alice cruelly reveals to Sally--before Johannes was born. Alex ultimately fails to control his buried feelings of impotence and powerlessness; and after his mask of assured strength slips away, he lashes out and punishes those he holds responsible, like Max von Sydow's Töre does in The Virgin Spring. (Afterward, Alex returns to his apartment in the city, bedecked with exotic paraphernalia, and tears it all down in a fury on par with Orson Welles in Citizen Kane.) A Ship to India bears similarities to the Ancient Greek tragedy, "Oedipus Rex"; Johannes is threatened by his father--and rightfully so, if Alice's stories of child abuse are to be believed--and aims to cement his own masculinity by undermining his father's. This starts through petty and tepid skirmishes, like defying Alex by attempting to salvage the wrecked vessel while his father is away, or barking back at his father when he chastises him like a child. Sally becomes a turning point for Johannes; when she takes his virginity, it infuses him with the confidence to strike back at his father, reversing the roles of the oppressed and the oppressor in one retaliatory slap. What makes the relationship between Sally and Johannes compelling is how they compliment one another. Both are emotionally scarred, but long for genuine love, having been deprived of it for so long. Sally's time in the theater (another trope of Bergman's films) likely contributed to the hardening of her heart--implied through an off-hand comment made by her manager (Åke Fridell)--as much as Johannes' upbringing was for him. When he comes home seven years later, he finds Sally a nervous wreck, who is sent into fits of screaming at the suggestion that he has finally returned to be with her. Johannes remembers how Sally saved him at a crucial time in his life, and desires to return the favor, not out of mere obligation but from a love for someone who completes him.
Recommended for: Fans of an early Bergman film that showcases elements yet to come from the auteur's finest works, and a drama about a pair of damaged lovers who find acceptance in one another. Although never directly acknowledged, I suspect A Ship to India draws its title from the ship that took Johannes away for seven years and transformed him, motivating him to take Sally with him when he departs again, so that she too can be healed by the experience.
A Ship to India was one of Bergman's earliest films, and foreshadows the complex (and complicated) familial and romantic paradigms found in some of his later works, especially Through a Glass Darkly. (Johannes and Minus are cut from the same cloth as emotionally vulnerable sons discovering their sexuality and masculinity through unconventional means, while struggling with feelings of inferiority when compared to their fathers.) Alex is an arrogant blowhard who implodes when his fragile view of the world is shattered by what he perceives as an unforgivable betrayal--namely when Johannes sleeps with his mistress. Alex's wife tries to pull him back from the edge of his reclusive behavior to no avail, appealing to his sense of honor and nostalgia while they try to sleep, albeit in separate bunks. She recalls how she used to pump air into his diving suit, as though she were breathing life into him with every pump, and of happier days--as Alice cruelly reveals to Sally--before Johannes was born. Alex ultimately fails to control his buried feelings of impotence and powerlessness; and after his mask of assured strength slips away, he lashes out and punishes those he holds responsible, like Max von Sydow's Töre does in The Virgin Spring. (Afterward, Alex returns to his apartment in the city, bedecked with exotic paraphernalia, and tears it all down in a fury on par with Orson Welles in Citizen Kane.) A Ship to India bears similarities to the Ancient Greek tragedy, "Oedipus Rex"; Johannes is threatened by his father--and rightfully so, if Alice's stories of child abuse are to be believed--and aims to cement his own masculinity by undermining his father's. This starts through petty and tepid skirmishes, like defying Alex by attempting to salvage the wrecked vessel while his father is away, or barking back at his father when he chastises him like a child. Sally becomes a turning point for Johannes; when she takes his virginity, it infuses him with the confidence to strike back at his father, reversing the roles of the oppressed and the oppressor in one retaliatory slap. What makes the relationship between Sally and Johannes compelling is how they compliment one another. Both are emotionally scarred, but long for genuine love, having been deprived of it for so long. Sally's time in the theater (another trope of Bergman's films) likely contributed to the hardening of her heart--implied through an off-hand comment made by her manager (Åke Fridell)--as much as Johannes' upbringing was for him. When he comes home seven years later, he finds Sally a nervous wreck, who is sent into fits of screaming at the suggestion that he has finally returned to be with her. Johannes remembers how Sally saved him at a crucial time in his life, and desires to return the favor, not out of mere obligation but from a love for someone who completes him.
Recommended for: Fans of an early Bergman film that showcases elements yet to come from the auteur's finest works, and a drama about a pair of damaged lovers who find acceptance in one another. Although never directly acknowledged, I suspect A Ship to India draws its title from the ship that took Johannes away for seven years and transformed him, motivating him to take Sally with him when he departs again, so that she too can be healed by the experience.