Cries and WhispersAs the end draws near, we should all wish to be surrounded by our loved ones, those who will mourn our loss. For Agnes (Harriet Andersson)--who is facing death from a physical malady (implied as cancer)--she is attended by her nurse and family maid, Anna (Kari Sylwan), and her two sisters, Maria (Liv Ullmann) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin). But their relationship is a tense one, and they are individually haunted by the pains of the past, their own lives affected in different ways by the bonds of family, marriage, love, and feminine angst. These final moments for Agnes mark both a forging of a new familial bond, and also its death knell.
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Cries and Whispers is a chamber piece drama by Ingmar Bergman, a story principally confined to the four women--their pain, longing, cold comforts. The homestead is a testament of the affluent lifestyle to which their family has grown accustomed, but they take no strong pleasure in it. In a scene when Maria is on the verge of a sleep, she looks over at a dollhouse, the tiny furniture, the statuesque miniatures of people like them; it is a facsimile of life, like the film itself. The sisters are all avatars of a kind of corruption; for Agnes, it is purely physical--the terrible pain brought from her disease--but for her sisters, it is a moral corruption, a decay of the soul. Maria wraps herself up in the comforts of domesticity, taking pleasure from being desired. It is clear that she was the most spoiled of the children, a favorite of the mother--played in flashbacks also by Liv Ullmann--and claims satisfaction from getting what she seeks. When Agnes' doctor, David (Erland Josephson) is about to leave, Maria ambushes him with a seductive play. As she recalls in her own flashback, this is far from her first attempt to weaken the resolve of the doctor, and seduce him purely for her own amusement. Maria is not lonely--she has her cuckold husband, Joakim (Henning Moritzen), who looks after her, even when the pain from her betrayals becomes unbearable, and her daughter, whom she dotes on as her mother did her. But David observes how this living for pleasure has left its almost imperceptible mark upon her, in a coldly analytical scene involving a mirror, twisting her in a fashion not unlike Dorian Gray. Maria's soul has long since snuffed out, leaving a false fire in its place. And if Maria runs too hot, then Karin is as ice, a frigid statue, composed and controlled. Her lifestyle has left her feeling hollow, an indifferent husband makes no companion, and her hatred has her coiled like a spring. In her own flashback, when she breaks a wine glass, she keeps a shard of crystal, sharp and cold like her, and uses it to inflict a masochistic wound upon herself. Her response resembles both pain and pleasure--vaguely orgasmic--but it amounts to her finding a sense of acceptance and honesty in the act of self-mutilation, born of self-hatred, making visceral her contempt for herself and her life. Agnes recalls her past--like Maria and Karin--but with a wistfulness for her mother; although jealous of her mother's attention to Maria ahead of her, she would watch--stalk--her mother, out of an absolute devotion. And yet, the difference is that Agnes finds love in the world not by expecting it or demanding it, but by discovering it, by accepting it. She senses the sorrow in her mother--which will be mirrored in her sisters--but loves and is loved by Anna, who has herself lost a loved one to illness not long before.
One of the most striking visual motifs of Cries and Whispers is the predominance of the color red--a deep, blood red. Bergman has said that the color is his idea of a representation of the soul; it is this and representative of other associations, not the least of which is an identification with womanhood. Numerous scenes actually fade to red, as though the scene were consumed by the emotions tied to the color. There is a great deal of attention given to the faces of these women, as scenes sink into the crimson portals of remembrance. The immersion in red is both the flare of warmth and of pain both, and is a sharp punctuation for the tribulation which the sisters undergo in their heart-rending reunion. The cries of pain that Agnes and Karin yield are like those of the pain accompanying childbirth; Maria is already a mother, and there are recollections by Agnes of her mother. Even when Anna cradles Agnes in bed, it is like that of a mother, evoking Michaelangelo's Pieta--a classic statue depicting the Virgin Mary holding her child. The idea that Agnes is endowed with divine grace is hinted at throughout the film. When Isak the priest (Anders Ek) delivers a prayer for Agnes, he does so with a full heart, a tear in his eye, and it is not meant to be ironic. He prays to Agnes to speak to God on behalf of those she leaves behind, and exclaims that her devotion was greater than his own. And there is the resurrection, where Agnes reemerges, covered in the shroud of her bedclothes, tears in her eyes like that of a saint. Agnes has discovered salvation through love, and tries to share this with her sisters, who are so consumed by their own pain that they cannot love like she does; the seeds of enmity have born too bitter of fruit within their hearts. They make an effort to reconnect with one another, a flimsy truce or bond born of an exchange of bitter words and cold reproach. Karin's rage thrust at Maria is a rage against herself; Maria's attempts to subdue her leave us with the a sour sense that her actions are all manipulation, even when she is no longer aware she is doing it. I cannot say whether Maria or Karin will ever really know happiness--like they may have once felt, or how Agnes felt. In Agnes' diary, Anna discovers a passage about a day when the four of them walked in the sun and sat on a swing, rocked gently back and forth; it is a moment when Agnes recalls that everyone was truly happy. The happiness is transitory; but after all, isn't all happiness a fleeting thing, to be cherished before it's gone forever?
Recommended for: Fans of an emotional drama of family and love, of sisters coming together as one of them falls prey to disease, and the emotions that are stirred up from it. It is a period piece, but in Bergman fashion, the characters do not carry themselves as though they were out of some dusty tome.
One of the most striking visual motifs of Cries and Whispers is the predominance of the color red--a deep, blood red. Bergman has said that the color is his idea of a representation of the soul; it is this and representative of other associations, not the least of which is an identification with womanhood. Numerous scenes actually fade to red, as though the scene were consumed by the emotions tied to the color. There is a great deal of attention given to the faces of these women, as scenes sink into the crimson portals of remembrance. The immersion in red is both the flare of warmth and of pain both, and is a sharp punctuation for the tribulation which the sisters undergo in their heart-rending reunion. The cries of pain that Agnes and Karin yield are like those of the pain accompanying childbirth; Maria is already a mother, and there are recollections by Agnes of her mother. Even when Anna cradles Agnes in bed, it is like that of a mother, evoking Michaelangelo's Pieta--a classic statue depicting the Virgin Mary holding her child. The idea that Agnes is endowed with divine grace is hinted at throughout the film. When Isak the priest (Anders Ek) delivers a prayer for Agnes, he does so with a full heart, a tear in his eye, and it is not meant to be ironic. He prays to Agnes to speak to God on behalf of those she leaves behind, and exclaims that her devotion was greater than his own. And there is the resurrection, where Agnes reemerges, covered in the shroud of her bedclothes, tears in her eyes like that of a saint. Agnes has discovered salvation through love, and tries to share this with her sisters, who are so consumed by their own pain that they cannot love like she does; the seeds of enmity have born too bitter of fruit within their hearts. They make an effort to reconnect with one another, a flimsy truce or bond born of an exchange of bitter words and cold reproach. Karin's rage thrust at Maria is a rage against herself; Maria's attempts to subdue her leave us with the a sour sense that her actions are all manipulation, even when she is no longer aware she is doing it. I cannot say whether Maria or Karin will ever really know happiness--like they may have once felt, or how Agnes felt. In Agnes' diary, Anna discovers a passage about a day when the four of them walked in the sun and sat on a swing, rocked gently back and forth; it is a moment when Agnes recalls that everyone was truly happy. The happiness is transitory; but after all, isn't all happiness a fleeting thing, to be cherished before it's gone forever?
Recommended for: Fans of an emotional drama of family and love, of sisters coming together as one of them falls prey to disease, and the emotions that are stirred up from it. It is a period piece, but in Bergman fashion, the characters do not carry themselves as though they were out of some dusty tome.