An aging professor of bacterium embarks upon a day's journey from Stockholm to Lundsk to receive an honourary award for his career work. The night before, he has a Bunuel-esque nightmare that foreshadows his own fate, seeing a watch with no hands, and his own corpse in a coffin. Cleverly, the film hints that he may be out of time before his own mortality claims him, and thus he begins a journey of self discovery where his skeletons reach out from the closet.
For my first Bergman film, I was impressed by the crisp presentation and cerebral story. Its not often that filmmakers explore the aging process in sympathetic ways, and this is helped by the characterization of Dr. Isak Borg as an every man which makes him easier to relate to. He's a successful academic, although happiness in his personal life was sacrificed for concentration on his profession. And so Dr. Borg asks the eternal question of whether his existence has had any significance at all. Along the road trip with his daughter in law Marianne (who resents his emotional distancing), they pick up passengers that each represent and harken back to the failures of Borg's past. An old bickering couple that remind him of his unhappy marriage, and a love triangle between two men and a girl who symbolize a lost love from his adolescence.
As the memories come flooding back, the old doctor descends into his recollections and subconscious dreams, where suppressed issues come hurtling forth from the depths. His clinical nature and lack of interest in relationships led to his first love leaving him for his brother, and later his wife having a bastard child with another man, who Borg still raised as his own. There is a haunting scene where he takes Marianne to visit his lonely, decrepit mother, and there the audience realizes along with her that this lack of zest for life seems to run through the family; Isak's son is too revealed to be a misanthropic bore, who rejects his wife Marianne's request for a child. The result of his resentfulness at having been raised as an unwanted child himself.
The doctor soon learns that the only good he ever accomplished was tied to his medicinal work, but at the cost of living a life of solitude and isolation, a mindset that has afflicted his own son. There is a subtle theme from Bergman that Borg's ignorance of his family and friends has been the result of his turning away from God, as hinted by the young men they pick up (a minister and a doctor, the two sides of Isak's psyche) who fight and debate over its existence. No real answer is given in the end, symbolized by the men's stalemate in the argument. But as said later in the film: "a doctor's first duty is forgiveness." It seems the first step to even beginning to comprehend the question is by forgiving the flaws of those around you and the ones within. And although Borg fears he may be too late to reconcile the animosity between him and his family, the film makes an inspiring statement by the end that it's never never too late to redeem oneself and begin enjoying life. The story is resolved, and the generational cycle of resentment broken, with the rapprochement between two lovers and the potential birth of new life.
Alas, there are flaws in Bergman's work that cannot be forgiven, and he was no God. The first major flashback acts as a crux of the plot, but appears contrived due to Isak being present for an event that was impossible for him to have known. Nor do we ever get to really see this "cold distance" that Isak possessed as a man; only its effects. The director is to be commended for not spoon feeding the audience the philosophical aspects (this is an art film from Sweden after all), but sometimes his high brow obscurity gets in the way of my enjoyment of the story. It's all a little too esoteric for me. While the message may seem a little trite and simplistic at times, this is still a heartwarming and life-affirming fable from a legendary auteur. "Wild Strawberries" has a comforting aura, although like Doctor Isak Borg himself, the film can be rather too pedantic for its own good.
For my first Bergman film, I was impressed by the crisp presentation and cerebral story. Its not often that filmmakers explore the aging process in sympathetic ways, and this is helped by the characterization of Dr. Isak Borg as an every man which makes him easier to relate to. He's a successful academic, although happiness in his personal life was sacrificed for concentration on his profession. And so Dr. Borg asks the eternal question of whether his existence has had any significance at all. Along the road trip with his daughter in law Marianne (who resents his emotional distancing), they pick up passengers that each represent and harken back to the failures of Borg's past. An old bickering couple that remind him of his unhappy marriage, and a love triangle between two men and a girl who symbolize a lost love from his adolescence.
As the memories come flooding back, the old doctor descends into his recollections and subconscious dreams, where suppressed issues come hurtling forth from the depths. His clinical nature and lack of interest in relationships led to his first love leaving him for his brother, and later his wife having a bastard child with another man, who Borg still raised as his own. There is a haunting scene where he takes Marianne to visit his lonely, decrepit mother, and there the audience realizes along with her that this lack of zest for life seems to run through the family; Isak's son is too revealed to be a misanthropic bore, who rejects his wife Marianne's request for a child. The result of his resentfulness at having been raised as an unwanted child himself.
The doctor soon learns that the only good he ever accomplished was tied to his medicinal work, but at the cost of living a life of solitude and isolation, a mindset that has afflicted his own son. There is a subtle theme from Bergman that Borg's ignorance of his family and friends has been the result of his turning away from God, as hinted by the young men they pick up (a minister and a doctor, the two sides of Isak's psyche) who fight and debate over its existence. No real answer is given in the end, symbolized by the men's stalemate in the argument. But as said later in the film: "a doctor's first duty is forgiveness." It seems the first step to even beginning to comprehend the question is by forgiving the flaws of those around you and the ones within. And although Borg fears he may be too late to reconcile the animosity between him and his family, the film makes an inspiring statement by the end that it's never never too late to redeem oneself and begin enjoying life. The story is resolved, and the generational cycle of resentment broken, with the rapprochement between two lovers and the potential birth of new life.
Alas, there are flaws in Bergman's work that cannot be forgiven, and he was no God. The first major flashback acts as a crux of the plot, but appears contrived due to Isak being present for an event that was impossible for him to have known. Nor do we ever get to really see this "cold distance" that Isak possessed as a man; only its effects. The director is to be commended for not spoon feeding the audience the philosophical aspects (this is an art film from Sweden after all), but sometimes his high brow obscurity gets in the way of my enjoyment of the story. It's all a little too esoteric for me. While the message may seem a little trite and simplistic at times, this is still a heartwarming and life-affirming fable from a legendary auteur. "Wild Strawberries" has a comforting aura, although like Doctor Isak Borg himself, the film can be rather too pedantic for its own good.