In a nutshell, "Wild Strawberry" is about a person's alienation. Doctor Isaac has achieved extraordinary achievements in his career, but in life, he has almost lost everything he should have as a complete person. Callous, selfish, narrow-minded, irresponsible, unloving, unsympathetic, etc.
The film begins with Professor Isaac's dream. The dream was actually an omen that Professor Isaac's life was running out. The coffin fell from the carriage, and Isaac himself appeared in the coffin, indicating that Isaac had reached the end of his life, and half of his feet had stepped into the coffin. A clock without hands suggests that time has stood still. It was time for Isaac to stop and reflect on his life.
This film, like The Seventh Seal, is expressed through a journey. The difference is that this film uses a lot of flashbacks, and this flashback is a flashback between the past and the present time and space. Other characters, including Isaac's cousin Sarah, have returned to their youth, but Isaac is the only one. Kerr himself, in the form of an old-fashioned bystander. Bergman's arrangement is very ingenious. Isaac's life, whether he was physically young or old, was actually a callous, dying old man, without a trace of anger or vitality. His state of physical decay is the symbol of his psychological decay.
His cousin, Sarah, fell in love with him with pure, romantic love. She thought Isaac's mind had reached a terrifying height, and she was too small compared to him. They talked about many elegant things together, and she had a great reverence for him. However, she did not find that under the cover of this deep and handsome appearance was actually a cowardly, irresponsible and cold soul. How advanced is Isaac's thinking? It is so high that it is beyond the human world, beyond the ordinary feelings of human beings, that is to say, it is separated from ordinary human emotions, and only circles around in his own narrow heart. Compared to his cousin's enthusiasm, he seemed so sophisticated, as his wife later remarked after being raped, "as if he were God."
He is indifferent to the world. He lives only within his area of expertise. However, in the end, he even forgot his major. When he was asked about the doctor's first rule, he couldn't answer. The doctor's first rule is "ask for forgiveness", and Isaac's life was a life that violated this rule. He couldn't see anything under the microscope. He examined the patient and concluded that the patient was dead, when the patient laughed and opened his eyes.
What a wonderful irony! A person who has lost the basic professional ethics of a doctor will not get very far in his business. On the surface, Isaac was successful as a doctor, but because of his failure to be a complete person in other aspects other than medicine, as a doctor, it should be said that he was also a failure. of. In the dream, his medical level turned out to be questionable, and he was finally found guilty.
The failure of his relationship with his cousin and the failure of his marriage were the result of his daring to face the reality and the result of not thinking about others. There is only himself in his heart.
In the relationship with his family, the maid has served him for 40 years, but they still maintain the way of addressing each other as strangers, and even at the end of the film, when Isaac proposes that they only call each other by first name, the maid very shocked. At the beginning of the film, Isaac offers to drive himself to receive the award, and there is an argument between them. It should be said that such similar disputes between them must be commonplace. It's a miracle that this maid was able to endure Isaac for forty years!
Indifference, which has been passed down from generation to generation from Professor Isaac's mother to his son, seems to be a disease of their entire family.
Apathy, isn't this the biggest problem in our modern society? Compared with traditional society, the biggest difference between modern society and traditional society is that the relationship between people is increasingly materialized. The operation of modern society is built on the basis of "rationalization". One of the requirements of rationalization is to incorporate as many things as possible into "calculation". And the most uncalculable thing in the world is the relationship between people. Isaac and his family are actually a microcosm of modern society. Isaac himself is a person shaped by a high degree of "rationalization".
In economics, there is an assumption of "rational economic man", which means that all people are selfish, and even if they do good things, it is ultimately for their own personal interests. Each individual's pursuit of his own interests ultimately brings about the interests of the whole society. But no one is willing to directly take the interests of society or their interests as the goal of their pursuit.
Isaac is a very complete "rational economic man". His daughter-in-law said that he only had himself in his heart. When Isaac is dealing with interpersonal relationships, he also performs precise "calculations". He cares about his own interests, but he is very indifferent to things that do not involve his own interests.
In the face of his cousin's passionate love, he did not have the courage to embrace. When his wife was raped by others, he watched helplessly without saying a word. When his son and daughter-in-law borrowed money from him when their life was difficult, he was obsessed with asking them to repay the debt quickly. (It can be seen in his conversation with his son towards the end of the film.) When his daughter-in-law came to live with him in the hope that the eldest son would help her in her strained relationship with her husband, he said he ignored the spirit Pain, asking not to drag him into their feud.
Although Bergman severely criticized "modernity" through Isaac, as in "The Seventh Seal", he did not give us a hopeless world, he was exposing people At the same time as the difficulty of the inner situation, it points us to the light. The three young people are the light, and the change in Isaac's attitude towards the maid and his daughter-in-law after receiving the award is the light.
There is only one way to save modern society from being overly "rationalized", and to save people like Isaac or those who will become Isaacs, and that is to reject "rationalization" to a certain extent and to a certain extent, to reject Transformed by "calculation".
Traveler Sarah's two boyfriends, one is a believer in science and the other is a believer in God. The dispute between them reflects the conflict between two contradictory ideological trends in modern society: religious and scientific. The absolute arbitrariness of any trend of thought is not acceptable. History has proven that it is impossible to have only religion without science. However, it is not enough to have only science without religion. Professor Isaac is an extreme product of the latter trend, namely science and reason. In him, the "love" between people advocated by traditional religions has disappeared, and only cold "calculations" and selfish "rational economic people" remain. Where it should be rationalized, actively rationalize; however, where it should not be rationalized, resolutely irrationalize.
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