Acts of Love and Contrition
Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman
unite again, and the result is sublime
By
RICHARD SCHICKEL
It
is a thrice-told tale. Ingmar Bergman first brought it to
the screen in Scenes from a Marriage, then devoted a chapter
of his autobiography, The Magic Lantern, to it. Now, at 82,
he has written it again, this time as a savage domestic tragedy.
He calls
it Faithless, and since he no longer directs films, he has
given it to his onetime star and sometime lover, Liv Ullmann,
to direct. It is, they both insist, very much her film. Bergman
visited her set only once and never intruded on her editing
room. Her style is warm, almost glowing, and it makes an ironic
comment on a harrowing narrative. More important, her manner
may grant Bergman something he cannot grant himself-forgiveness
for bad behavior that has haunted him for a half-century.
"He wants a woman's vision," says Ullmann, "a woman's experience
Š to confront him."
Why he has
turned this experience into what amounts to his own harsh
Strindbergian Ghost Sonata remains a mystery. One can easily
imagine someone less guilt ridden than Bergman regarding the
incident more as a youthful folly than as a life-shaping event.
The facts of the matter are mundane enough, as he says in
his book. In 1949, Bergman and a journalist named Gun Hagberg,
both unhappily married, entered into a passionate affair,
beginning with a long tryst in Paris, and continuing after
their return to Sweden, where she discovered she was pregnant
with his child. A bitter wrangle with her husband over custody
of their children ensued. One night, Hagberg's husband called
and proposed meeting to discuss an amicable solution. He was
lying: he would settle with her only if she would sleep with
him one more time. Hagberg succumbed to what amounted to a
form of rape.
Bergman
immediately discovered the truth and, instead of offering
sympathy, flew into a jealous, unappeasable rage. There was
an attempt to patch things up, and their child was born, but
their love died, and they separated. Hagberg died years later
in a car crash, having inspired, according to Bergman, at
least five of the women in his films, a model of "indomitable
femininity."
In Faithless-which
screens this week and next at the Sydney Film Festival and
in July as part of the Melbourne and New Zealand film festivals-a
character called Bergman (the elder version is played by Erland
Josephson, who also knows, as Ullmann puts it, about "being
older, being alone, fearing death") sits alone in his study.
He is dreaming this movie. In the process he conjures up his
old love, called Marianne and played by the luminous Lena
Endre, who settles in to offer her reflections on the history
they shared.
Comfortably
sexy, occasionally angry at the opacity of the young Bergman
(played with tight, menacing restraint by Krister Henriksson),
she's still amazed at how their self-absorption, matched by
the self-destructive, almost 19th century romanticism of her
conductor-husband (Thomas Hanzon), leads from the merely regrettable
to the definitively tragic.
Here Bergman
has fictionalized or, possibly, is revealing more than he
has before. What is obvious is that the law of unintended
consequences stirs steadily beneath the surface of Faithless.
Its largest impact is on Marianne's nine-year-old daughter,
devastated by the breakup of a seemingly contented marriage,
who then, of all horrendous things, is invited to join her
father in suicide. It is her innocent victimhood-her betrayal
by heedless adults-that emerges most clearly and movingly
in the film.
Ullmann
does not think Hagberg/Marianne was Bergman's "great love,"
but was perhaps the first woman "who really fired him up"
sexually. What Ullmann does believe is that when his lover
confessed her enforced unfaithfulness, "he lost control, and
I think that's the only time in life that he lost control,
and he abandoned her-I mean completely." To borrow a phrase,
"After such knowledge, what forgiveness?"
Probably
none. But Bergman, who long ago abandoned his anguished search
for God in favor of a belief that striving for a high, austere
art is as close as we can come to redemption, is here, as
Ullmann says, "face to face with himself. I believe he's forgiving
himself, doing this movie." She is not, of course, certain
of that. But we have, at least, the minor miracle of this
intricate, devastating work, passionately involving us in
this old man's wintry, unspoken quest for grace.
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June 12, 2001 | No. 24
COVER
STORY
A
Hero's Ascent
For mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer, just crossing the street can be a risky
venture. The first sightless person to reach Mount Everest's summit, he
gives millions-both blind and seeing-the courage to reach for new heights
TRAVELERS
ADVISORY...
PACIFIC
BEAT: Post-Olympics blues; fractured Fiji...
THE
ARTS
MUSIC: Rock rises from the dead, again...
CINEMA: Keeping faith with Ingmar Bergman
BOOKS: A fresh look at a founding father
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