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| Cries and Whispers |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 91 m |
| Public Rating: 9.25 (12 votes) |
Director: Ingmar Bergman |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Foreign/Drama |
Year: 1972 |
| Writer(s): Ingmar Bergman |
| Distributor: 1 |
| Reviewed by: Goatdog |
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Three sisters gather together for the first time in many years. It is turn-of-the-century Sweden, and they have gathered because one of them is dying of tubercleosis. Agnes, played by Harriet Andersson, has suffered all her life from various ailments; now she is on the verge of peace. Maria, played by Liv Ullmann, is the youngest; she is obsessed with sex and seems, on the surface at least, to be the compassionate sister. Karin, played by Ingrid Thulin, is the oldest. She's bitter, sexually repressed, and domineering, and she hates her family. She has come to the house out of a sense of duty. Also present is Anna, played by Kari Sylwan, who has been Agnes' servant for many years and is the only one present who really understands Agnes' pain, or who truly loves the dying woman.
Although a series of flashbacks fill us in on a bit of the background of the women, the focus of the movie is on the ravaging and revealing conversations that take place between them as they await the inevitable. We discover that, despite the fact that she is married, Maria had an affair with the country doctor (Erland Josephson), and wants to re-ignite it despite the presence of her dying sister. We learn that Karin is stuck in a marriage of convenience, and the only instance of sexual freedom she experienced was after a bizarre self-mutilation with a broken glass. She's got problems, but she covers them up with a veneer of quiet disdain. As the film progresses, it becomes more and more clear that the presence of her sisters can only prolong Agnes' misery, because the rapproachment she wanted is impossible.
Cries and Whispers is a vast, open wound of a movie. It was undoubtedly one of the most gorgeously filmed movies I have ever seen, and Sven Nykvist won a much-deserved Oscar for his brilliant use of red, white, and black to turn the forboding house into a character unto itself. All of the leads were nothing short of brilliant. Bergman's direction was flawless. But did I like the movie? I can't say that I did. I endured it. It's an hour and a half of primal scream therapy, and none of the characters ever achieves any real development, except for the dead woman. The others are basically in the same position, both temporal and emotional, that they occupied at the beginning. We learn things about them, sure, but they don't change. There is a point late in the movie where it looks like things are going to change, that their conversation, as raw and difficult as it is, has drawn the two living sisters closer together. The awful feeling I got when I quickly realized that it was all a sham was almost unendurable. I can recommend this as a truly great and important movie, but I will never, ever watch it again.
Bergman's disgust for organized religion is perhaps stated in its most succinct manner during Agnes' funeral. Agnes has endured a lifetime of misery, and the priest present thanks God for knowing that Agnes was "capable" of enduring her physical punishment, and begs Him to "forgive" her for her "sins" and allow her into heaven. Sins. She suffered a lifetime in sweet-natured silence, and she must be forgiven. Bergman's anger is usually a tad more veiled, but nothing is veiled in this film.
Roger Corman of all people (he who brought us such greats as A Bucket of Blood and It Conquered the World) is the main reason the film got the widespread recognition it received, which culminated in six Oscar nominations including Best Picture. Corman vowed that this would be the film that made Bergman's name in the United States, and he campaigned for it tirelessly.
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