I've been waiting for this. Out of the 39 Bergman films in this set, there had to have been one movie that I had never heard of that I would end up loving as much as Bergman's best stuff, and it finally happened.
Brink of Life is an amazing movie. It is the story of three pregnant women in a maternity ward. Each has different outlooks on the child within them. Cecilia enters the ward in the middle of a miscarriage. She views the death of her child as confirmation that there is no love between her and her husband whom she scorns when he visits after the D&C. Stina is a settled, middle class woman with a loving husband and both are eagerly anticipating the arrival of the newest member of their family. Hjordis is a young, unmarried woman without any real means who is in the ward because of attempts to self-induce an abortion.
The movie takes place on about two sets. The vast majority of it takes place in a single room. And yet it never gets old visually. There's a feeling of claustrophobia that comes out rather forcefully when Cecilia first arrives, though. She screams about how the place has some sort of power over her and she has to tell the truth in it. But is it the truth? She thinks it's the case at the time that she wants her husband to leave her, but, as with many Bergman characters who lie or simply are speaking from a heightened emotional state where truth is difficult to settle on, Cecilia may not actually mean it.
After the first half hour, Cecilia becomes more of a fixture and Stina and Hjordis take center stage. Stina is simply bubbly and joyous at the prospect of her baby. Her husband arrives for a visit and shows sketches of a bathing solution for Stina that will make her life just a little bit easier when the baby arrives. The loving look the two share as they look down at the simply sketch speaks so much to how they view the future. When Stina loses her baby in an overlong delivery where they end up putting her under, it is one of the most emotionally resonant moments in all of Bergman's filmography.
That tragedy has a profound effect of Hjordis. She's been talking to people about how she has no support, but refusing to find real solutions. She's convinced that her mother will never take her back after she did exactly what her mother had predicted she would do: return home with a baby. She feels so completely alone. The father wants nothing to do with the baby and is the driving force behind the abortion attempt (in fact, Hjordis says that this wasn't the first time). Watching Stina go from the bubbly personality to the broken woman who lost her baby for seemingly no reason drags Hjordis back to the reality of the small person growing inside her. She picks up the phone and calls her mother who welcomes her daughter back with open arms, a second emotional moment that hits me almost as hard as the first.
This is a great, almost completely forgotten Bergman film. Made in the middle of his existential period, it feels like it should have been made ten years later or ten years earlier. It has a weird spot in the timeline of the filmography, but that shouldn't diminish its greatness. I adored this film.
Brink of Life is an amazing movie. It is the story of three pregnant women in a maternity ward. Each has different outlooks on the child within them. Cecilia enters the ward in the middle of a miscarriage. She views the death of her child as confirmation that there is no love between her and her husband whom she scorns when he visits after the D&C. Stina is a settled, middle class woman with a loving husband and both are eagerly anticipating the arrival of the newest member of their family. Hjordis is a young, unmarried woman without any real means who is in the ward because of attempts to self-induce an abortion.
The movie takes place on about two sets. The vast majority of it takes place in a single room. And yet it never gets old visually. There's a feeling of claustrophobia that comes out rather forcefully when Cecilia first arrives, though. She screams about how the place has some sort of power over her and she has to tell the truth in it. But is it the truth? She thinks it's the case at the time that she wants her husband to leave her, but, as with many Bergman characters who lie or simply are speaking from a heightened emotional state where truth is difficult to settle on, Cecilia may not actually mean it.
After the first half hour, Cecilia becomes more of a fixture and Stina and Hjordis take center stage. Stina is simply bubbly and joyous at the prospect of her baby. Her husband arrives for a visit and shows sketches of a bathing solution for Stina that will make her life just a little bit easier when the baby arrives. The loving look the two share as they look down at the simply sketch speaks so much to how they view the future. When Stina loses her baby in an overlong delivery where they end up putting her under, it is one of the most emotionally resonant moments in all of Bergman's filmography.
That tragedy has a profound effect of Hjordis. She's been talking to people about how she has no support, but refusing to find real solutions. She's convinced that her mother will never take her back after she did exactly what her mother had predicted she would do: return home with a baby. She feels so completely alone. The father wants nothing to do with the baby and is the driving force behind the abortion attempt (in fact, Hjordis says that this wasn't the first time). Watching Stina go from the bubbly personality to the broken woman who lost her baby for seemingly no reason drags Hjordis back to the reality of the small person growing inside her. She picks up the phone and calls her mother who welcomes her daughter back with open arms, a second emotional moment that hits me almost as hard as the first.
This is a great, almost completely forgotten Bergman film. Made in the middle of his existential period, it feels like it should have been made ten years later or ten years earlier. It has a weird spot in the timeline of the filmography, but that shouldn't diminish its greatness. I adored this film.