Year: 1973
Cast: Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann, Kari Sylwan, Inga Gill, Erland Josephson, Henning Moritzen, Georg Årlin, Anders Ek
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design
This is, without a doubt, the reddest movie I have ever seen. If anything in this movie is not red, it's white. All the characters wear so much white you'd think they were going to a wedding, except for one scene where Maria (Liv Ullman), hoping to seduce older physician David (Erland Josephson), wears a sultry red dress.
Agnes (Harriet Andersson) is dying slowly of a painful disease that the film doesn't name, but that context clues show is likely uterine cancer. Her sisters, older and frosty Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and younger, more emotional Maria (Liv Ullman) are staying watch over her during the night, as is her devoted maid Anna (Kari Sylwan), doing their best to make her comfortable in her last days. And doing an absolutely terrible job of it, with the exception of Anna, who seems to actually be in love with her mistress, which was likely recipricated (that's them up there on the poster).
This is one messed-up family. Anna has been cheating on her husband with the doctor caring for Agnes (see above) and Karin is an icy bitch "trapped in a loveless marriage" to Joakim (Henning Moritzen), who is at least as cold as she is, so she does what any sensible person could do and slices up her uterus with a shard of glass so that she can never bear him children. As one does.
Agnes, meanwhile, only wants to feel loved as her illness progresses and she realizes she's near the hour. The first half of the film concludes with Agnes's final passing, which seems at least as painful as the symptoms of her illness, at least until it's over, and from there on, we get to really dig into the numerous issues, physical, emotional, psychological and familial, that the others are going through.
Anna has lost probably the only friend she ever had; both remaining sisters either ignore her or treat her with coldness and cruelty, and we learn she also lost her (very young) daughter to another illness. Anna's insecurities about her sisters and Karin's seeming hatred of everyone, not least of all herself, come stridently to the forefront, and, well, it's hystrionic in the extreme, to say the least.
All of it plays out against the red background and white costumes; the walls are red, the floor is red, the bedsheets are red, even the book Maria reeds to Agnes is red. Why so much red? Well, according to Ingmar Bergman himself: "Cries and Whispers is an exploration of the soul, and ever since childhood, I have imagined the soul to be a damp membrane in varying shades of red."
Ooookay, then.
What this basically boils down to is a movie rich in symbolism that seems deliberately over-the-top and unreal. I could easily see it being based on a dream, or perhaps nightmare. There are some seemingly gothic horror moments in this film. Karin's self-mutilation, or at least its after-effects, are shown prominently. At one point it almost seems like Karin and Maria have a whole conversation in their minds while frozen in a catatonic state. Eventually Agnes's corpse starts crying and begging to be held, because even though she's dead, she can't get to sleep and needs help crossing over.
There are some dramatic pauses from the living characters, but they ultimately kinda take it in stride, telling her why they can't come hold her and let her pass, with Karin even pointing that the idea is disgusting because she's starting to rot. Of course, none of them point out that, being dead, she shouldn't be speaking to them at all. I do like how Bergman shot these scenes, though; Dead Agnes is never shown speaking, only heard.
Bergman punctuates his scenes of raw emotion with scenes of utter quiet, or scenes where the characters themselves might be quiet, but we the audience can hear ghostly whispers following them throughout the large, empty house. Yeah, I guess I didn't expect the title to be so literal, but damn if that's not pretty spooky. Like I said, moments of gothic horror.
If this had been made by an American director, and filmed in English (hell, if the director was just British), I think critics would have called it "self-indulgent" and "trying too hard to be great art" and they would have been justified. This is not a movie where subtelty rules the day. It's actually why I sometimes have a hard time taking foreign language films seriously; they keep pulling stuff Americans could never get away with and everyone loves it.
Oddly enough, I don't have any issues with the acting in this piece. Sure, it's pretty melodramatic in parts, but it fits the setting and scenario. I was particularly impressed with Ingrid Thulin, who had the thankless task of playing a character that is in no way sympathetic but also not villainous.
I also thought it was a pretty engrossing story, and I did like some of Ingmar Bergman's directorial choices, like the way he would frame wide shots to communicate the character's distance from each other and close-ups when characters are having an emotional catharsis. I feel like if I was just reading this story, it would haunt me, so I strongly support the nomination here. I don't even hate that the film went overboard with its overt red-and-white-themed symbolism. It's just very heavy-handed and I don't feel like Bergman was ever really called out for that.
This was the last foreign language film to be nominated for Best Picture until 1995, though Bergman himself would receive two more Best Director nods (for Face to Face and Fanny and Alexander) and two more Best Original Screenplay nods (for Autumn Sonata and Fanny and Alexander). This might be my first Bergman film, but I'm intrigued enough by what I saw here that I'm looking forward to my next one. Bergman might have been a little crazy. But good crazy.
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