July 30 is the tenth anniversary of the two great masters of 20th century cinema: Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni.
The names of these two always remind me of my university. I guess the film history and labels of "European New Wave", "Author's Film" and "Left Bank" are always in the hearts of many tutors, and my tutor is no exception. Throughout the school year, he spent the longest time dissecting to his students frame by frame the various European art films on his CDs, from Buñuel's "An Andalusian Dog" to Truffaut's "The Four Hundred Blows," Alan ·Renais "Last Year at Marienbad", to Antonioni's "Zoom"...Although the bottom is sleepy, he still talks intoxicated. It was at this moment that I first saw Bergman's "Wild Strawberries." I remember that the get out of class was about to end, so the instructor only played a dream in the first five minutes of "Wild Strawberry", which was very impressive immediately, as if being sucked into that hideous and peaceful daydream. So in the following years, I have almost forgotten about other lectures. In "An Andalusian Dog", I can only remember the transition of the blade across the eyeball and the thin cloud across the full moon, and "Four Hundred Blows" only Remember the long shot of the last boy running, "Last Year at Marienbad" can only remember that it has three layers of dreams... The only one who can remember the whole picture is Antonioni's "Zoom" (a favorite for a long time), And the opening 5 minutes of Bergman's "Wild Strawberries."
The review of "Wild Strawberry" this time on the eve of the anniversary is not only a demand for manuscripts, but also a small tribute to the master, the time, and the mentor who led me to knock on the door of art film.
In the early 20th century, European modernism led to a complete transformation of the art of film, from a form of entertainment to an independent art.
Ingmar Bergman, with his silent and simple aesthetic style, pioneering stream-of-consciousness film technique, his attention to the human spiritual world, his discussion of self and reality, existence and death, loneliness and belief, has opened up a serious philosophy. The pioneering film has influenced the later development of French New Wave directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and even the entire European art film.
Bergman was born in the small town of Uppsala, Sweden in 1918. His father was a devout Lutheran, and his mother was from a high society, withdrawn and willful. Bergman's childhood was full of religious immersion and strict discipline, all of which affected his Filmmaking has a profound impact.
In the 1940s when Bergman began to create , it was the heyday of Western existentialism and other trends of thought. Influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sartre's philosophy and Freud's psychoanalysis, Bergman's works showed The distinctive modernist philosophy, the "subjectivity" advocated by modernism, constitutes the most prominent feature of his films, so it is also called " subjective film ".
By the 1950s , Bergman's style had matured, especially the landmark works of "The Seventh Seal" in 1957 and "Wild Strawberry" in 1957, which made him one of the world's film masters.
"The Seventh Seal" uses a highly religious symbolic story to question the god of death, and there is still a relatively complete story; when it comes to "Wild Strawberry" , it is already a work of stream of consciousness. Bergman uses dreams— -Reality-memory-illusion intertwined, almost negatively questioning the existence of God, and almost coldly dissecting the sense of loss, loneliness and guilt of the self.
Fellini , who sympathized with him, said: "I have only seen "Wild Strawberry" once, but it is enough to realize what a great artist Bergman is. Comparing me with him is a compliment to me."
There is no shortage of people who say the film is obscure and convoluted, but in his own words, he just uses the film as " a way of speaking to one's own kind ."
The film tells that a medical professor named Isaac is about to attend an honorary ceremony, but the morning before departure, he had a strange dream -
It was a brightly dazzling street in the early morning, but there were rotten eyes on the signboard of the optical shop, the clocks on the street had no hands, the anxious man suddenly turned into black water, the funeral carriage rolled down a coffin, but inside was the professor himself. corpse.
According to Freud's "Analysis of Dreams", if you divide a dream and deduce its meaning from each detail, you can get the dreamer's true intention. Then we will find that in this less than 5-minute dream, Professor Isaac put a lot of metaphors into his subconscious:
The clock without hands symbolizes the loss of time and the approach of death; trying to touch the man on the street symbolizes the search for oneself;
A person who will turn into black water at any time symbolizes a life that is vulnerable and uncontrollable; while the self in the coffin is a judgment of oneself - I am dead, symbolizing a loss of self.
Professor Isaac, who was nearing the end of his life, started his journey to the ceremony with this confused and lost self-knowledge. The part where the film enters into reality is also a concentrated passage of family relationships. Professor Isaac and his daughter-in-law, Marianne, were in the car talking or arguing, and then came to visit her mother's remote residence.
We know from this that professors have an awkward relationship with the previous generation and a very poor relationship with the next generation. He lost his father since he was a child, and he lacked fatherly love in his childhood, so he didn't know how to show love to his son at all, and the family relationship fell into a vicious circle. Let Marianne terminate the pregnancy and refuse to have a son.
Childhood experiences and family relationships are the key to interpreting Professor Isaac's heart, as well as a reflection of Bergman's self.
Bergman had a childhood with a lack of fatherly love. Due to his father's long-term priestly work, the education methods were mostly indoctrination and harsh discipline, which created a growing environment in which God was present and his father was not present for the young Bergman. , which led to his mixed feelings of infatuation and rebellion against God, as well as his resentment toward his father. This complex psychology of God and parents often appears in his film themes.
Freud believed that dreams (even nightmares) are the disguised satisfaction of subconscious desires and childhood desires . So Professor Isaac stopped in a strawberry field by the side of the road and fell into a daydream . He actually has a problem of forgetfulness, but in his daydreams, the images of his childhood appear vividly in front of him. Mirror, spit on the old self now.
Mirrors are images that often appear in many films. Whether it is Plato's "cave metaphor" or Jacques Lacan's "mirror stage" later, mirrors/mirrors lead to people's self-cognition and value judgment. The young lover accused Isaac of being indifferent, aging, and incompetent. In fact, Isaac “sees” himself with the help of a mirror and “hears” himself through the mouth of his lover, which is his own judgment and accusation.
Stepping out of the daydream, Isaac fell into another terrifying hallucination . In hallucinations he sees himself appearing in the courtroom, he cannot use the microscope properly, he cannot read the words on the blackboard about the doctor's vocation, he sees his wife copulating with her lover, and hears the accusations that he kills his wife, to " Loneliness" sentenced him to life death.
This paragraph can be said to be so lonely that it can't be lonely anymore. At the moment when he heard the verdict, Isaac didn't even turn his head to look at the adjudicator, but just subconsciously asked "Can't I ask for mercy anymore?" This is not a real question. , just a sigh looking back at the past, he has already accepted the judgment, because the judgment itself is his life.
After walking through the consecration ceremony in a trance, Professor Isaac returned home, perhaps as Freud said: "A person's life always makes up for the lack of childhood. " He suddenly remembered to care about his son's life, hoping Having a long talk with him might make up for his indifference towards him back then, but his son has become accustomed to indifference and is unmoved by his sudden attention, and has rejected him with distance and courtesy.
He turned to Marianne to be friendly, saying: I like you. Marianne smiled and said: I like you too. Then he couldn't wait to leave to find his lover.
He expressed his love to the three young children he met on the road. The children sang carols for him, gave him flowers, said goodbye to him in a warm and affectionate way, turned around and walked on the road giggling, and he didn't even have time to say: "Writing to I."
Is communication between people possible? For the people under Bergman's lens, obviously impossible . Just like the quarrelsome couple that the old man met on the way, like the two young people who fought over the existence of God, like the old man's own life.
Modernism's examination of life is like an island. There is only one thing on the island that can be deeply rooted and flourishing, and that is loneliness .
So the old man finally lay back in the crib by himself and healed himself with the phantoms of childhood.
In the phantom, he returned to the wild strawberry field, which represented all the beauty that Isaac recognized in his heart, symbolized his hometown, and embraced the family he longed for. Here, he sees his young lover again, and like a child, he says he can't find his parents. This time, the lover did not make fun of him, but took him to the river. He finally saw his parents on the other side of the river, and his father waved to him.
The old man just stared at his parents on the other side of the river so quietly, the dazzling sunlight still blurred their faces and could not be recognized, but the old man smiled lightly, he was cured, and in the pleasant dream he created, he obtained Compensation for his childhood, he found the missing parental love, re-identified himself , and he died with the feeling that a new warm life was about to unfold .
Bergman once said:
"Memories are often a sharp weapon, lethal and bloody."
The whole "Wild Strawberry" shows this silent, irreparable, cruelty and bloody murder without blood. He cunningly gave a seemingly healing ending, but the warmth of the ending makes the loneliness of life even more nowhere. Escape.
Perhaps as Isaac's old mother said: looking back on the past, a dream come true . The issues of self-existence and value, family and communication, life and death discussed in "Wild Strawberry" are still lingering in the minds of modern people.
Allow me to pay tribute to Ingmar Bergman, the film master who uses the lens to point directly to the heart.
This article was first published on the Barcelona Film APP and has been modified.
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