Spotlight on Ingmar Bergman at Teater Utan Kayu

Spotlight on Ingmar Bergman at Teater Utan Kayu

JAKARTA (JP): A number of qualified films by Swedish director
Ingmar Bergman will be screened at Teater Utan Kayu, East
Jakarta, this weekend.

The three-day event is organized following the theater's
success in showing films noirs last month. Previous fests have
included works by Woody Allen, Zhang Yimou, Walt Disney animated
movies and other alternative films mostly unavailable at
mainstream movie theaters.

The schedule for this weekend is The Seventh Seal (Friday,
4:30 p.m.), A Lesson in Love (Friday, 7:30 p.m.), Wild
Strawberries (Saturday, 4:30 p.m.), Smiles of a Summer Night
(Saturday, 7:30 p.m.), Cries and Whispers (Sunday, 2 p.m.), and
Scenes from a Marriage (Sunday, 4:30 p.m.).

Ingmar Bergman (b. 1918), the son of a Lutheran pastor to the
royal court of Sweden, was trained in Swedish theater and opera.
Between 1945 and 1955 Bergman wrote and directed 13 somber films
that explored the themes of loneliness, alienation and the sheer
difficulty of being alive.

Then came A Lesson in Love (1954), one of Berman's best
comedies. It is a witty look at marriage and adultery, igniting a
fascinating battle of the sexes between David, a middle-aged
gynecologist, and Marianne, his wife of 15 years. When David has
an affair with a patient, Marianne returns to a former lover, his
best friend. The doctor becomes desperate to win his wife back,
as much out of love for her as his fear of being alone.

It was, however, Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) that brought
Bergman to worldwide attention, although few critics recognized
beneath the surface of this sophisticated farce (a Swedish
version on Jean Renoir's La Rhgle du jeu, 1939).

The Seventh Seal (1956) is a story about a tormented knight
returning from the Crusades in search of God, but confronted
instead by the black-robed figure of Death. This film is a poetic
allegory of a medieval knight caught up in a long chess game with
Death. Bergman brilliantly evokes the Middle Ages and poses the
first of a series of metaphysical questions about the
relationship of man to God (a theme that was to occupy him for a
decade).

While The Seventh Seal established Bergman as an important
artist, Wild Strawberries (1957) was clearly his greatest work of
the 1950s. This visually rich dramatic film follows an aged
doctor's journey through a compelling landscape of dream and
memory as he travels to receive an honorary degree. Haunting
flashbacks and incidents along the way force him to confront his
life and its failings.

His other important film was Cries and Whispers (1972), which
was hailed as a masterpiece. Here, in a highly stylized film
about the nature of death and dying, is a work of excruciating
beauty in which reality, memory and fantasy become one. It
concerns the interrelationship of four women who are brought
together by death in a manor house at the turn of the century.
One is a spinster, dying slowly and painfully of cancer; two
others are her wealthy married sisters, who have returned to
their former home to attend her death; and the fourth is the
peasant servant, Anna, the only true "sister" of the dying woman
because she can minister to her failing spirit with a warm,
fleshy love. This film is constructed like a Strindberg dream
play, but it is also quintessential Bergman (a brilliant
distillation of his stylistic and thematic obsessions).

The last film being shown is Scenes from a Marriage (1974),
originally made as six 50-minute installments for Swedish
television but cut to two hours and 50 minutes for theatrical
release. The cinema version retains Bergman's original episodic
structure: six scenes from a middle-class marriage spanning a
decade. In this 10 years, the relationship slowly disintegrates
and ends in divorce, but the two individuals become progressively
stronger in separation, and by the end of the film, both are
married to other people. As usual, Bergman relies heavily on
close-ups to convey anguish, but his characteristic psychological
realism is pursued with uncharacteristic verisimilitude in this
film, without fantasy, memory and metaphor.

Scenes from a Marriage is actually structured like a soap
opera but possesses a depth of feeling and intelligence usually
alien to the form.

Teater Utan Kayu's film curator, Rayya Makarim, said: "It was
very difficult to select which Bergman films to screen because
they all seem to be a masterpiece in one way or another.

"There were requests left, right and center, even complaints
after I made my choices. However, I felt that it was as important
to show the great classics like Wild Strawberries and The Seventh
Seal, as the lesser known ones like A Lesson in Love and The
Devil's Eye (eventually beaten by Cries and Whispers).

"It was also important to show some comedies because I cannot
imagine a whole weekend of heavy movies. Scenes from a Marriage
was chosen because of the television style. It will be a break
among the heavily stylized other films."