Saraband

[MacGuffin]

Trailer

Release Date: July 8th, 2005 (LA/NY); expands to other cities at later dates

Cast: Liv Ullmann (Marianne), Erland Josephson (Johan), Borje Ahlstedt, Julia Dufvenius

Director: Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal, Fanny and Alexander, The Faithless, Persona, Wild Strawberries)

Screenwriter: Ingmar Bergman

Based Upon: This is the sequel to Ingmar Bergman's 1973 film, Scenes from a Marriage.

Premise: Thirty-two years after the divorce that resulted from the events in Scenes from a Marriage, Marianne (Ullman), a successful attorney, returns to visit her ex-husband, Johan (Josephson), at his summer home, where she becomes deeply involved with the drama that enfolds between him, his son from another marriage and his granddaughter, a talented cellist.

[NEON MERCURY]

this looks like shit.

[cron]

this looks like shit.

it was filmed in a tv studio but i've read that that doesn't hurt the results.

[mogwai]

it was shown on swedish tv and was later released on dvd:



it's a full framer, sorry.

[Kal]

wow, 86 years... amazing

[Brazoliange]

sorry and thanks, MG

[cowboykurtis]

Opens today in Manhattan:

Rummaging in the Ruins of Bergman's 'Marriage

By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: July 8, 2005

"Saraband" was shown as part of last year's New York Film Festival. Following are excerpts from Stephen Holden's review, which appeared in The New York Times on Oct. 15, 2004. The film, in Swedish with English subtitles.

Ingmar Bergman has said that "Saraband," his bleak made-for-television epilogue to "Scenes From a Marriage," will be his final statement on film. For the great Swedish writer and director, final turns out to mean unbendingly severe. There has been no mellowing with age.

As you watch his swan song, which stars Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, playing the embattled ex-spouses Johan and Marianne 30 years after "Scenes From a Marriage," you feel the crushing weight of time pressing in around them. These solemn, world-weary characters rummaging through the past are still possessed by their nagging inner demons.

Ms. Ullmann, now 65, and Mr. Josephson, 81, have a supreme mastery of the Bergman style. Their performances are spiritual and emotional X-rays.

As in all of Mr. Bergman's later work, you have a sense of a ritualized penitence being re-enacted. To these actors, who have served him for decades, he must loom as an omniscient visionary whose canon is as inviolably sacred to them as Freud's theoretical writings appear to be to a dwindling pool of Freudian acolytes.

Mr. Bergman's psychic world is an unchanging Scandinavian twilight, saturated in deep music (here it is Bach, Bruckner and others) that invites contemplation and evokes tormenting dreams of an elusive spiritual peace. As ever, women are the salvation of men. They alone have the capacity to forgive and empathize, even after their terrible mistreatment at the hands of the opposite sex. And men, no matter how accomplished and feted by the world, remain hard-bitten patriarchal taskmasters vainly striving to rule their pitiful little fiefs.

"Saraband," which unfolds in 10 short chapters, opens with a prologue in which Marianne, sitting at a desk strewn with old photographs, addresses the camera and introduces the story of her impulsive visit to Johan, whom she hasn't seen in 30 years. The couple have two grown daughters, one married and living in Australia, the other catatonic and confined to a mental hospital.

Although Marianne shares some marital reminiscences with Johan near the beginning of the film, she is predominantly a sounding board for the emotional wreckage she encounters on his estate in the middle of a forest. Living in Johan's lakeside cottage are his 61-year-old son, Henrik (Borje Ahlstedt), by an earlier marriage, and Henrik's 19-year-old daughter, Karin (Julia Dufvenius). Both Henrik and Karin are musicians, locked in grief over the death of Henrik's wife, Anna, two years earlier.

Henrik has transferred the fierce possessiveness he felt toward Anna to his daughter, a musical prodigy and his student on the cello. Father and daughter even share the same bed. Henrik believes he can't live without Karin and fears an imminent break that would leave him "destitute," as he puts it. Karin has already begun fighting his tyrannical devotion.

No love is lost between Johan and Henrik. As they trade bitter accusations, Johan, who controls the purse strings, systematically humiliates Henrik, treating him like a whipped dog. Their warfare makes for one of the ugliest portraits of father-son hatred ever filmed.

The screenplay for "Saraband" has the oratorical tone of a theater piece. The film consists almost entirely of anguished verbal confrontations in which the characters rub salt in one another's open wounds.

Ms. Ullmann has finally lost the earth-mother bloom that has made her the director's most reliable gauge of whatever slender hope he wishes to convey. Marianne is able to draw back from the desperation and hold herself in. Of her 16-year marriage to Johan, once a compulsive womanizer, she can now say with some equanimity, "I was so naïve."

The character (and perhaps Ms. Ullmann herself) has reached the time of life when you realize that any dreams you may have had of saving the world, or even saving a single lost soul, are probably futile. That may count as wisdom, but it's wisdom of a very sad kind.

[cowboykurtis]

this looks like shit.

it was filmed in a tv studio but i've read that that doesn't hurt the results.

I think Neon's response was do to the content/format of the trailer - not the visual quality.

If one was just judging from the trailer - I agree, this DOES look like shit - that trailer is just terrible - completley wrong tone for this film.

I havent seen it but everything i heard and read - as well a knowing that this a follow up to scenes from a marriage - this film will be extremely dynamic.

Scenes from a Marriage is one of the most brutal films i'ev ever seen (if you haven't seen it make it a priority!) -  other "relationship dramas" pale in comparison - Woody Allen and Mike Nichols owe a lot to Bergman -  If one thinks "Closer" was brutal, it's like a walk in the park compared to Scenes from a Marriage -  I hope Saraband follows the tradition - From everything I've heard, Bergman is just as melignant and brutal - very excited about this.

[Ghostboy]

I didn't think the trailer was shit, but it was skewing itself entirely towards people who know who Ingmar Bergman is, have seen 'Scenes From A Marriage,' know the piece of music from which the title is derived, etc. It's limiting itself to fans.

I tried to find ultra-cheap tickets on Priceline to NYC so I could see this today.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

I knew this was Bergman's latest and last, I didn't know it was a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage, and now I really hope that it gets a semi-decent release so I can get my hands on it.

[modage]

I knew this was Bergman's latest and last, I didn't know it was a sequel.

Based Upon: This is the sequel to Ingmar Bergman's 1973 film, Scenes from a Marriage.

This is a sequel nobody asked for.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

I try not to read the Now Showing threads until I see the movie itself, but couldn't contain myself on this one... I had to read it...

[Ghostboy]

I just got back from this, and it's unbelievably good. Actually, that's hyperbole - it's exactly as good as I had hoped it would be. A perfect career cap. Review coming soon.

I was expecting to see a film print, but it was actually projected digitally. It looked great, but cowboykurtis, beware! Anti-aliased drama awaits you!

[cowboykurtis]

It looked great, but cowboykurtis, beware! Anti-aliased drama awaits you!

can you elaborate w/out spoiling?

[Ghostboy]

I just recall you having a distaste for most things digital, and thus my comment was meant to suggest that you might be distracted from the drama by the artifacts inherent to the medium...

I remember rustinglass (I think) saying that Bergman was unhappy with how the HD image looked transferred to film, and only let it be shown in Swedish theaters via digital projection. I guess Sony Pictures Classics is respecting that wish.