Saraband
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.48 You Save: $16.51 (83%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.64 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Saraband
Movie Review: Dance of death
Summary: 5 Stars
Bergman was a devoted admirer of Strindberg, and as a theatre director produced several of Strindberg's plays. One of the best from Strindberg was "Dance of Death," a two-part drama that explores the tangled webs of hatred and dependency that close relationships can breed. I don't think it's too much to see "Saraband," Bergman's final--and one of his best--film as a dance-of-death themed exploration. It's also the case, of course, that a "sarabande" is a dance. In the context of the film, the title also refers to a piece from Bach's 5th cello suite which one of the characters, Karin, plays.
The four actors in "Saraband"--Johan (Erland Josephson), Marianne (Liv Ullmann), Henrik (Borje Ahlstedt), and Karin (Julia Dufvenius)--are caught in relationships which, although life-craving, are in fact life-destroying. Karin, the daughter of Henrik, is a budding musician to whom the widowed and grieving Henrik poisonously clings (with just a hint of incest thrown in). Henrik, a 60-year old failure, is the son of Johan, who treats him with an icy indifference that's absolutely chilling (at one point, Johan tells Henrik that so far as he's concerned, his son simply doesn't exist). Johan and Marianne, the old couple first encountered in "Scenes from a Marriage," are both alone in their old age, but cling rather desperately to one another in one of the film's final scenes, as though they know that the night is closing in.
If there's any hope from the dance of death that they and we must perform, it's represented by Karin's resolution to break from her father, even with the bitter knowledge that their separation will destroy him, and the moment of recognition that Marianne's adult but schizophrenic daughter displays in the film's closing scene. But these two moments of grace must be taken for what they are. The first brings tragedy, the second is fleeting.
This film, beautiful to watch and hear, acted with skill and directed by the 87-year old Bergman with a master's touch, is without doubt one of Bergman's very best. It's also his swansong, which makes the message even more poignant.
Movie Review: An intimate confessional!
Summary: 5 Stars
Ingmar Bergman returns to his origins with this superb story, of visible theatrical tinge. Sarabande resumes all an febrile existence, dedicated to explore and visit the most recondite corners of the human soul, fears, anguishes and frizzled emotions, amalgamated by the time, the far distances and the weight of the memory.
The initial sequence in which we are in front of a table covered by pictures with Liv Ulman starring us reminds us the cinema is a collection of photographs in movement; a frozen lapse of time and preserved for the eyes of the future. In this sense it begins with similar approach respect "Persona" or Tarkovky' s "The mirror."
A collection of frozen images that nevertheless make to Marianne to undertake a journey of more than two hundred miles to visit to her husband Johan, after thirty years without exchange impressions of any sort.
Since this visit we will aware about a serene gaze around their lives, past and present blend one each other; she is a lawyer and he is writing a book. They had two daughters; he knows nothing about them and she is aware about a distant and random contact with Sra who lives in Australia and Martha, who is serious sick, since has missed in the dark shadows of the forgetfulness and the diffused labyrinths of her memory.
But their lives will turn around the talented niece of Johan, who plays the cello with her father as musical preceptor. Hindemith's Sonata for cello Op. 125 will become the entrance for her to open her heart in the verge of the desperation and the infinite loneliness she is immersed. And so, Marianne who always had kept so isolated from her daughters finds herself trapped in the web of her own memories. Johan and Marianne will make the last act of self redemption with this girl who lives sheltered by her father, an ambitious and resented human being incapable to stand up since her wife died of cancer.
An intimate portrait admirably directed and magisterially narrated by this genius of the camera: Ingmar Bergman.
Movie Review: The Monolithic Artistry of Ingmar Bergman
Summary: 5 Stars
The problem with reviewing any Bergman title is that his work can only be assessed in light of his own oeuvre. That considered, I would venture that the very wise, and quietly disturbing Saraband, though admittedly not in the same league as Cries and Whispers, Persona, or The Passion of Anna, is a gift--to both the history of world cinema and those who love the monolithic artistry of Ingmar Bergman--that I would easily place alongside Autumn Sonata in stature.
Visually, Saraband is gorgeous to look at, though I cannot deny missing Sven Nykvist's peerless cinematography. That the acting is superlative is no huge surprise of course. Ullman's performance is so subtle that it took a second viewing to begin to comprehend her intent. (And while I'm there: at least SIXTY cheers to a great and beautiful actress who has embraced with dignity the increasingly rare phenomena of aging naturally.) Börje Ahlstedt is devastating, as he was in Fanny and Alexander. It's terrific Bergman gave him the opportunity to shine in a larger role here. Julia Dufvenius deserved a "best supporting" actress nomination and one can only hope that the multi-critic buzz that international stardom awaits her will become a reality. But I feel that it is Erland Josephson, overlooked in many of the reviews I've read, who shines the most brilliantly here. His Johan is a monster of Shakespearian proportion, oh-so-skillfully humanized without diluting the character's venom. Josephson's has always been a gargantuan talent, a voice that has not "mellowed" with age one iota.
Saraband's unsettling and enigmatic resolution is but one of the many reasons that Bergman, reconsidered in this, his final film, remains the artistic genius he has always been--in this instance authenticated, once again, by his ability to capture, and then relate, the catharsis that life so often denies us.
Oh, and concerning the special feature, The Making of Saraband.... An 80-something Bergman? Down on the floor? Placing his actors? You expected LESS, perchance?
Movie Review: The follow-up and dramatic life of Johan and his son
Summary: 5 Stars
Saraband, Bergman's last film, is about a family destroyed with hostility, obsession, attempted suicide, pain, hatred and music. As a follow-up to the successful Scenes from A Marriage, 30 years ago. Marianne, a lawyer, visits her wealthy through an inheritance, ex-husband Johan, 86, who lives in the forest near the lake. During the marriage, he was unfaithful. Living nearby is Johan's 60ish son Henrik, who heads an orchestra and his 19-year old daughter, a celloist, Karin, who is taught by her father. Johan and Henrik despise each other.
Henrik's wife died two years ago and he is miserable. He has an unhealthy obsession, in other words, an incestual relationship with his daughter. Bergman clearly leaves that impression as they sleep in the same bed. Karin is the recipient of his pain.
Marianne encounters the sadness of Karin, they share talks openly, and Marianne learns the hostility of Henrik of his father. Through a letter Karin discovered, she learns about Anna, the wife who died.
A memorable quote:
Henrik speaking to Marianne of his father: "I hate him in every dimension of the word. I hate him so much I'd happily watch him die of some horrible disease. I'd visit him daily and take note of his torment down to the last breath."
The movie is set in chapters, uniquely played out. Most scenes call for two persons and no one else enters, it becomes a closed set without intrusions. The sets were manufactured with great detail. And Bergman favors the close-up shots. The film is lengthy, quiet, and absorbing.
A special treat is to view the master at work in The Making of Saraband, and moreso, you will see readings by the actors. This treat offers great insight into Bergman's work. Enjoy! Rizzo
Movie Review: saying and meaning
Summary: 5 Stars
Bergman is deeply aware of the gap that separates "saying" from "meaning". His characters always put honesty before consideration, and this is usually the drama they are faced with. His plots take place in the hiatus that separates the depth of thoughts and feelings from the surface of expression. The soothing, conventional expressions, the high-sounding words of love and gratitude, the hollow and pathetic apologies are never uttered, or when they are they do not come without a sense of betrayal. The most genuine impressions are faked as soon as spoken-- because as soon as they are shaped into words one becomes aware of what one is saying; feeling gives way to acting, and, in an irony that reveals the ambiguity of the very word "acting", we, the actors, immediately become spectators of ourselves. We then listen to ourselves speaking, we weigh the words against their meaning and watch ourselves as if from outside while hoping to speak from the inside, and in taking the utmost care to make sure the words and gestures are convincing, we betray them with a false, phony spontaneity. This complex tension between words and meaning, spontaneity and acting, truthfulness and consideration, is the matter of which Bergman's movies -- particularly Scenes from A Marriage, together with its sequence, Saraband-- are made. There's a grain of contempt in every spoken word, Nietzsche said somewhere. In Bergman, each word is spoken as if the speaker, or even the words themselves, were painfully aware of the contempt they carry and the betrayal in which they incur. And because of this they carry a weight and a significance that are rarely to be found today, when the right expression comes instantly on-demand and tailored for the right situation, and words abound full of sound, fury, and little else.