Released in the same year as The Seventh Seal (1957), Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries stars Victor Sjöström as Dr Isak Borg and Bibi Andersson in two roles, as Sara, the hitchhiker and as Sara, the doctor’s childhood sweetheart.
The film is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on life and death and follows a lonely and elderly professor on a car journey to accept an honorary degree. Along the way he is forced to come to terms with his own mortality, and begins to reflect on his life, his regrets, and his childhood memories.
Accompanied by his daughter-in-law (Ingrid Thulin), the trip is transformed into a journey in and out of the man’s past as the boundary between reality and dream blurs.
The viewer slowly comes to realize that the doctor is in fact two people in one body. Although he has been a good doctor and an invaluable asset to many in the community, to those closest to him he has been little more than a cold rationalist and a pedant.
Bergman gives us the man and at the same time, because he is stripped down to his soul, we retain sympathy for him. Low key and understated as the action is, the emotional impact of this story is enormous.
At the beginning of the film we are introduced to a man who has isolated himself emotionally from his closest family and friends, and within the 90 minutes it takes to get to the end of the film we see him come through a renaissance of redemption.
In its revelation of human character, desire, and chagrin, Wild Strawberries is a powerful and masterful film.
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Pingback on Oct 15th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
[...] john baker added an interesting post on Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries) - Review Here’s a small excerptThe film is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on life and death and follows a lonely and elderly professor on a car journey to accept an honorary degree. Along the way he is forced to come to terms with his own mortality, and begins to … [...]
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Jan 15th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I love old movies. I think the best way to see them is alone or with a girlfriend. Black and white images are so romantic.
Apr 13th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
In the movie Wild Strawberries, a poem is recited while the characters are eating lunch. It begins, Where is the friend I seek at break of day?
Do you know the author and title of the poem?
jb says:
Where is the friend I seek at break of day?
When night falls I still have not found Him.
My burning heat shows me His traces
I see His traces whenever flowers bloom
His love is mingled with every air.”
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Sorry, klp, I can’t answer your question. All I know about it is that it is supposed to be an old Swedish poem. But I don’t know the author. Any Swedes in the house?