Don't read these crudely written things. After I watched Bergman's other movies, I have to go back and slowly revise them. And I will write it again in English.
1. Title
movie title cries and whisper. I agree with some fans that cries should not be translated as "crying". Although in the film, except for Karin's ruthless husband, there are more or less scenes of crying, but it is translated as "screaming" or "screaming". It better corresponds to the connotation of the film and the word whisper. Shouts and whispers, one is loud and public, and the other is low and secret.
Agnes has a cry when she is so sick that she can't stand it--Can anyone here help me?
There was whisper when she was immersed in family love and memories of family love, even though it was to her own-her diary.
Karin has a cry that cannot be suppressed in the face of unrepressive inner pain (unfortunate marriage, life full of lies, and emotional breakdown with sister Maria)-the kind of cry of pain that is torn in his heart-and also to Anna The bright stare and the unbearable scolding--there were also the whispers that she cut through her lower body with a blade when she couldn't accept the life full of lies--and the intimate whispers when she and Maria finally opened the emotional box to comfort each other. . .
2. Cries/Whispers
Anna and Maria are people who seem to have never called out for physical and mental pain in the play (Maria screamed for Agnes's shock after death). And they are precisely the people at the extremes of personal qualities. Anna is a symbol of selfless maternal love, an expression of love that is extremely rare and grand but has returned to the ordinary. Maria is a symbol of extreme selfishness and indifference and emptiness, but it is so emotional in appearance, and even actively seeks relief from her sister Karin.
Maria and Karin are two extremes on the other axis. On the surface, Karin looked cold and frosty, and Maria was kind. However, in reality, Karin's heart still burns a little bit of fire to seek true mutual understanding, and Maria's seemingly considerate appearance is completely selfish and indifferent. She doesn't know where her problem is, she just instinctively seeks anyone she can catch, any body that can be touched, to fill her inner fear.
Anna and Agnes are two extremes on the same axis. Agnes has been seeking the maternal love that he couldn't ask for in childhood, especially during his illness. She called out to ask her sisters for a bit of tenderness and a bit of real care (reflected in physical contact). However, the same as her mother's attitude towards her when she was alive, the sisters shunned it. Karin tells Agnes that she doesn't love her at all in a cold and merciless attitude, while Maria tries to give her a hug with a hypocritical and high-profile attitude, but is scared by the unavoidable fear of "death" and shouts!
Agnes's desire for love can only be answered by someone she never mentioned in her diary-Anna. Anna's response to Agnes's call for love was due to the death of her daughter. To a certain extent, she tilted the mourning for the deceased daughter and the remaining maternal love on Agnes who was ill. Does Agnes love her? I think. . . Hard to say. After all, Maria and Karin are sisters of the same class as her mother. When she died, when she couldn't find warmth and rest in other land, the first person she had to ask for help was her sister. In the end, however, it was Anna's broad selfless chest that gave her the comfort of rest.
Bergman is tender. From Wild Strawberry to Fanny and Alexandar, he always gives the script (movie) a warm ending. But this movie, although it ends with a bright scene that is rare in the whole show, is not so tender. . . Compared with the cold indoor world in red, black and white, this silent ending (except for narration) is even colder. Think about how they had such a warm moment before Agnes died, think about how grateful Agnes was for this moment in her diary, and even more chilling for the indifference of Karin and Maria after her death.
Agnes's words made me cry. She said, It is wonderful to be together again like in the old days. . . All my aches and pains were gone. The people I am most fond of were with me. . . I could feel that presence of their bodies , the warmth of their hands. I wanted to cling to the moment and thought, Come what may, this is happiness, I can not wish for anything better.
This feeling, Once upon a time, I had a lot of . I hope that time will stop at that moment, without fear of any evil spirits and disasters, just because of the beauty of that moment. However, the good is always so perishable, and the reality is always so cruel. . . Agnes still has a grateful heart for the short-lived beauty of suffering in life. How many people can realize the value of such gratitude! At least, Karin and Maria may not (maybe?).
3. Touch
The relatives of the body and skin play a pivotal role in the film. Agnes gets a permanent rest under Anna’s embrace, Maria and Karin get emotional release under mutual caress, Karin cuts through the lower body with a blade (remind me of the film Piano Teacher) and refuses to have physical contact with her husband, Maria The ambiguous physical contact with David but not really getting close, Maria's husband touched her with love and despair. Physical contact is a signal of trust and a signal of love. Karin wrapped her injured herself in ice and did not allow anyone to touch her, but when Maria stroked her face with her fingers, the self-bound ice instantly melted into nothingness. Even after Karin knew that she was injured, all she could hold on was "You touched me, you remember?" However, the ending of her opening to Maria was just another injury.
4. Death The
whole film is full of breath of death. Perhaps it is because most of the film is about the death of a woman, and the director also forces us to watch how she lost her life bit by bit. Agnes's hissing gasps, her distorted face due to pain, and her helpless gestures and eyes make the viewer (me) difficult to breathe and feel heavy. There was no drop of blood, but I clearly felt the horror of death.
There are some controversies about Agnes's death and resurrection on the Internet. The central topic is whether this arrangement is Agnes coming alive, or is it just a fantasy of everyone, or Anna's grief and excessive fantasy. My understanding is that neither. It would be too mechanical to think about Bergman's plot design in this way. Why can't movies exist for the sake of ideas? Why can't ideas appeal to images? The resurrection of Agnes is nothing more than the existence of a conceptual image! It has nothing to do with whether she is actually dead or alive. Who says that the dead cannot speak, express, and act? In Bergman’s view, the two realms of life and death can be traversed (Thank God, I watched Fanny and Alexander before watching this one. It couldn’t be more clear in that movie. The spiritual realm and this realm, life and Death can be traversed, there is no fixed boundary!). By the way, I watched six feet under before, and I was impressed by the free communication between the dead and the living. I didn't expect this to be a way of cooking cold rice! It has been used by Bergman as early as the 1970s (maybe earlier?)! There is also the end of Underground, which is nothing more than fried rice!
5. Colors are
red, white and black. There are also the characteristics of oil painting. Especially the scene where Anna finally calmed Agnes. Not so much as the Virgin (the Virgin I saw are fair skins, young and beautiful, or earlier, very serious and pious, but not as fat as the mother goddess like Anna...not to mention she is plump The breast... that is more like the myth of a distant nation than the Virgin Mary in the Western religious tradition). Maybe I know too little about art history.
Bergman really deserves the title of master. This movie convinced me, eventually. This shock is stronger than wild strawberries. However, I knew that maybe it was the seventh seal that I couldn't understand that finally convinced me of Bergman.
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