Wild Strawberries (1957)
Movie rating: 3/10
Overhype can be fatal to any piece of art. The wilder the acclaim, the worse the disappointment if your experience differs from critics who’ve praised something to the skies. That was what killed Wild Strawberries for me. We’re talking about a film by Ingmar Bergman, widely considered one of the greatest directors of all time. I also had my own evidence that made this movie seem very promising—exhibit A, The Seventh Seal, one of my favourite movies ever. Critical consensus seemed to be that Wild Strawberries was even better, that it was not just Bergman’s true masterpiece, but one of the greatest films of all time.
I spent a couple hours last night trying to decide on a movie and finally settled on Wild Strawberries, because how can you go wrong with one of the greatest films of all time? The answer is simple: watch a movie hyped as the one of the greatest films of all time only to find out you don’t like it. I thought Wild Strawberries sucked.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s some good here. An early dream sequence is surreal and memorable, a clock without hands providing a brilliant metaphor for the uncertainty about when our lives will end. The central performance by Victor Sjöström as Professor Isak Borg, a 78-year-old widowed physician travelling from Stockholm to Lund to accept an honorary degree, is effective. But Wild Strawberries overall is dull and pretentious, with little of interest to say. After the credits rolled, I had to periodically remind myself I had watched the film, so little impression did it leave.
On paper, the film sounds promising. En route to Lund, Professor Borg mediates on his past, his regrets in life, and his own impending death. Coming from the director of The Seventh Seal, which explored similar themes, that should be a surefire winner. But where The Seventh Seal was thought-provoking and packed with memorable characters and striking imagery, Wild Strawberries feels tedious—its philosophical reflections banal, its characters uninvolving despite the occasional twist, its many dream sequences alternatively bland and baffling.
I’ll cite one example of how the film fails to live up to its possibilities. Borg and his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin), who is accompanying him on his car trip to Lund, pick up three young hitchhikers: Sara, a dead ringer for Borg’s young love of the same name (Bibi Andersson, who plays both women); Anders (Folke Sundquist), and Viktor (Björn Bjelfvenstam). Anders and Viktor both have feelings for Hitchhiking Sara, who says she is going steady with one of them. For the life of me, I can’t even remember which. We get the following exchange when everyone takes a break by the sea during their road trip:
Anders: Ah, when creation shows so much beauty, how radiant must be the source!
Hitchhiking Sara: [to the Professor and Marianne] He is going to be a minister and Viktor a doctor.
Viktor: Reciting poetry is against our agreement not to discuss God or science on the trip.
Hitchhiking Sara: It was beautiful.
Viktor: How can anyone today study to become a minister!
Anders: Your rationalism is as dry as dust.
Viktor: I say that modern man... believes in only himself and his biological death.
Anders: Modern man is a figment of your imagination. Man regards death with horror.
Viktor: Religion for the people. Opium for the aching limb.
Hitchhiking Sara: How sweet they both are! I always believe with the one I spoke to last.
This is a perfect example of the film’s problems. Bergman goes through the trouble to set up a potentially fascinating debate about religion vs. science, then proceeds to do absolutely nothing with it. There’s nothing in this dialogue that hasn’t been said better elsewhere. Why even bother?
Early on there’s a scene where Professor Borg is visiting the home of his youth and daydreams about the girl he was in love with, his cousin Sara. Borg’s brother Sigfrid (Per Sjöstrand) was also in love with Sara, and it is Sigfrid who ended up marrying Sara and having children with her. Let’s leave aside for a second how weird it is for both brothers to be in love with their cousin. Different time, different cultural mores, whatever. Borg spends long stretches of the film having dreams or daydreams about events he was never present for. We don’t see young Isak Borg at any point. In this scene, he daydreams about Sigfrid and Sara flirting and kissing in the wild strawberry patch. If the whole point of your film is to present an old man reflecting on his life and regrets, it might be good to show experiences from his life instead of scenes he wasn’t even present for from the lives of other people.
Let’s take another plot thread. In the film’s present, Borg’s wife Karin (Gertrud Fridh) has been dead for many years. It turns out their marriage was an unhappy one. She was unfaithful to him and had relationships with other men, apparently because Borg pushed away the people who loved him (I’m drawing on other reviews because observations like the latter barely registered when I was watching the film). There’s a long scene where Borg dreams about his wife with another man. Again, I don’t see the point in Borg lingering on this imagined scene—one he could not have present for—instead of his own memories. Why not show flashbacks between him and his wife that lets us understand their relationship better? I’m sure people will tell me Bergman is being artsy by indirectly painting a picture of Borg’s life and relationships, but it didn’t work for me at all.
There was almost nothing I found compelling about this film—a bizarre thing to say about an effort that purports to tackle such existential questions and garnered such critical praise over many decades, but true nonetheless. Despite Sjöström giving it all in his final performance, Borg himself wasn’t very interesting to me. I couldn’t relate to this wealthy doctor with his fancy home and housekeeper, reminiscing about his life that we don’t even see.
Contrary to my usual practice, I didn’t even watch the end credits. Without music they were as dull as the film itself, and I don’t care to view credits for a film that mostly felt like a waste of my time. Isak Borg may not have been able to tell the time on that clock without hands. But I sure am glad I had a working clock so I could see how much longer I had to sit through this overrated arthouse bore.