Autumn Sonata

The works of Ingmar Bergman carry with them an almost indescribably potent weight, particularly his, as I would posit, ‘second period’ starting with Winter Light in 1963. His ability to just utterly devastate an audience is entirely unmatched. There is a quality to his work - I would suggest honesty - which makes it so, so overwhelmingly powerful; to such an extent that I very rarely finish one of his films without at the very least needing to suppress my tears. But - essentially, these are not tears of suppressed sadness, or misery, or whatever synonym you could apply: I find myself so overpowered not by any kind of sombreness, but by something so much loftier. What Bergman’s later films really excel in is their ability to present the human condition in a truly genuine, authentic, raw manner. He shows people for what they are, and not in some dramatised or poeticised sense, but in a real, truly unadulterated sense. His characters are human beings, stripped down to their rawest, ugliest, cruellest, most capricious, most conceited, most anxious and most trembling selves. It isn’t cynical, it is merely non-superfluous - honest. In a word, confrontational. In fact, I find that Bergman’s films have a similar sort of outcome for the audience as the old archaic plays do. It feels as though you are being so overwhelmed, so totally compromised by the ugly, brutish figure of Truth, that by the end you have undergone a kind of catharsis; purged, in a sense. They are cripplingly revelatory experiences. I would suggest that there is something of a ‘Bergmanian formula’ which he uses in these kinds of films, which makes them so much more powerful. Like many of the great directors, the effect of his films is reliant on deception, on audience complacency; on subverting their expectations, on jarring them, and on having reeled them in. You see it constantly in his work. He will establish the cracks, as it were, which exist within his characters, but he will endow these cracks with a seemingly agreeable setting, somewhere that will come off as redeemable. In Winter Light it is the parish, in Persona it is the summer house, in Scenes from a Marriage it is the marriage itself, and in Autumn Sonata it is the homely setting. By having the humanity bubble over, by demonstrating the futility of these environments, Bergman always makes the result that much more affecting, that much more devastating. He gives our humanity no place to hide - it always comes through. He will only establish a seemingly modest narrative framework so as to make the realised product be that more disquieting for the audience. Autumn Sonata, I believe, is the film that achieves this best. That is, this rawness, this honesty, this unshakeable, ugly humanity. It is not quite as formally exquisite or thematically ambitious as Persona is, and it’s not as perfectly constructed as Fanny and Alexander is, but it is certainly the one Bergman film that brings me closest to my knees and drains me the most of my tears. It is probably Bergman’s single most compelling film in that regard. It is one of those rare films which actively pulls back the curtain on yourself, and which makes you discover things about yourself. And the maturity (a word I use often in regards to late Bergman but justifiably so) of Bergman’s aesthetic method just enhances the emotional richness infinitely. We can quite easily detail the application of this ‘Bergmanian formula’ in Autumn Sonata, if we firstly condition its constitution. We can thusly recognise the steps of this method as: 1. establishing the characters’ weaknesses, vulnerabilities, fears and follies in a generalised, surface manner; 2. giving the characters an agreeable environment in which these weaknesses may be subdued, and; 3. having these weakness overcome the material, superficial solace of the environment, and giving emotions and humanity free rein to be revealed and explored for what they are. In Autumn Sonata, we: (1.) glimpse in the opening monologue, (where Viktor outright addresses the audience) Eva’s struggles with reconciling her sense of identity following her troubled past, and consequently Viktor’s inability to ever really penetrate her and reach the plain of intimacy with her that he desires to reach. The groundwork of the characters’ struggles has been lain, but it’s not quite self-consuming inner-turmoil yet - these struggles haven’t been seen in their rawest form, only alluded to. We (2.) have the setting and the immediate environment reinforce a certain sense of placidity and stability, despite these struggles. After all, the marriage is happy, they work with the local parish, and they live in comfortable pleasantry in the gorgeous Swedish countryside. It’s a comforting layer that simmers down and subdues, reassures both character and audience. And finally, we (3.) have the deceptive blow, the tearing of the curtain. The environment proves futile in the face of human passions. Pleasant artifice yields to ugly humanness. The layer dissipates. The chasm of contempt between mother and daughter begins to expand, leaving mounds of past trauma and anguish in its wake. In the end, it seems that Bergman has only employed this seeming placidity as a means of juxtaposition in order to heighten the emotional wreckage of the film. This critical method of narrative extraction could be used for many of Bergman’s films and the result would be similarly accurate, and although for the sake of brevity I won’t expand to any of his other works, you could easily use this as the model for a thought experiment and apply it to them. What, in essence, this reveals, is that the pillars of Bergman’s narrative methodology are audience deception and (when it comes to his characters) complete honesty. That, I believe, is what makes his films so wonderfully crushing to watch. Bergman’s narrative methodology aside, in looking at Autumn Sonata on a more intricate level, I think a reasonable case could be made that it might just be the most harrowing portrayal of human relationships ever put to film - at least in my experience. I am compelled to draw comparisons between this film and Persona, released twelve years earlier. Both films depict two women, wherein an unspoken hierarchy exists between the two (in Persona it is Elisabet’s status as a renowned actress, whilst in Autumn Sonata, Eva’s mother is a successful pianist); and, subsequently, both films show the underling of the hierarchy ultimately revealing themselves as seethingly contemptible and resentful to the other, forcing both characters to confront their own, true, most vulnerable selves. Now, in Persona, this conflict ultimately brings under scrutiny the idea of the self, whilst in Autumn Sonata, it is more the inter-relationship between mother and daughter which is scrutinised. (That is not to say that these distinctions between the psychological and the sociological for these respective films are by any means binary; there is obviously a natural crossover in both films.) Eva, the daughter, is - I think it would be fair to say - lost. Her sense of self has been debilitated by her mother’s neglect in childhood. It almost seems as though everything she says and does is in some way tied to her mother. At the beginning of the film especially, we see how almost servile she is; how accommodating, how anxious to lend herself to others. In the opening scene, she is needlessly shy with her husband, afraid she has disturbed him. When her mother arrives, her first impulse is to spoil her, to listen to her patiently and obediently. She has a glaring necessity for validation, as if she were terrified of in some way displeasing them, and of summoning their apathy. Her seemingly selfless and overly nice disposition merely masks her uneasiness around others, and, crucially, it also masks her bitterness. It becomes clear, even from the opening scene, that Eva supplants her lack of identity and her trauma with domesticity. The domestic is to her, a means of coping. In his monologue, Viktor talks of how at-home she felt when he first took her to his house. The insinuation goes so far as to perhaps even suggest that she married him not necessarily out of love towards him, but out of comfort derived from his abode. His inability to ever really penetrate his own wife is shown in this quietly powerful, previously mentioned opening scene, where Eva’s out-of-focus figure is positioned by the window in the background whilst Viktor addresses the camera itself in the foreground, speaking of how desperately he wants to tell her how she is loved. Moreover, her aforementioned constant fussing over others could also be seen as an extension of her cloaking the past with the domestic. It were as if she feels the need to recompense her mother’s lack of motherliness with her own abundance of motherliness. It is suggested by Viktor to Charlotte (her mother) at one point that having a child stabilised her marriage, and that the subsequent death of her child reinforced an instability in her that she is yet to recover from. Her almost intuitive understanding of and immense care for her disabled sister, Helena, only further exemplifies this. Her mother Charlotte is, by comparison, completely disconnected from and foreign to the domestic on almost every level. Her life as a pianist, her constant travels, and her extramarital affairs have totally distanced her from her family. She seems almost innately unable to do what Eva does so well. Her own daughter, Helena, whom Eva is so effective with, is repellent to her. Despite her domineering nature and constant, frivolous bustling, Charlotte is equally as empty as Eva. Her now aged life is marked at once by enormous success, and by profound sadness. In these immensely powerful dialogue exchanges between mother and daughter, we come to realise that Charlotte’s career has, despite its immediate bravado, served much the same function as Eva’s domestic life has. It is a hiding place from her own inner-void. It is an escapism. For whilst for Eva, domestic life is an escapism, for Charlotte it confronts her. It forces her to behold her crueller self, to realise how little she knows her children - her children of whose births she only remembers the pain, her children whose childhoods have been characterised by absence, both when she isn’t present and when she is. Her concerning herself only with the frivolous is as similar a coping mechanism as Eva’s servility. There is a really brilliant piece of filmmaking where Charlotte, having just discussed the death of her friend (and probable lover) and by extension having been confronted by her own mortality, suddenly switches back to discussing the banal, whereupon the camera shifts to show her in a mirror, as if to infer that she is living against the grain of reality. What is so intensely compelling about all of this, however, is how these actualities are all exposed. Bergman’s methods of narration are almost entirely circled around dialogue, and subsequently the spoken passions of his characters. The film plays out like the stitches in a wound: the wound is evident but controlled, and when the individual stitches are torn at, eventually a mistake is made, a rip occurs, and the blood seeps out uncontrollably, as contempt and envy and ravaged pride all explode, all verbally explode. I’m afraid that my merely explaining these characters’ insecurities and pains has not been enough at capturing the sheer volume and depth of emotion which is elicited from these dialogues. The prose I have used in this essay has been analytical (a mistake in hindsight) not emotive or dramatically stylised. Thus I have not even punctured the surface of how this manifests on screen, exchanged between the expressions and glances and words of two of the indubitable Gods of acting, and on the camera of one of the medium’s indubitable masters. There is something hauntingly pure about it. The emotion has manifested perhaps too crystallised, and I’m afraid merely writing about it in some way shrouds it. Nevertheless, I think there is a question that arises from all of this: why would Eva even ask Charlotte to visit in the first place, and why would Charlotte accept? Well, one part of it would certainly be complacency. Perhaps both characters, living in their own illusionary realities, simultaneously uphold the illusion of mother and daughter. There seems to be a sort of yearning from both that only things should be pleasant between the two. This seems to encourage a poorly-founded desire from both parties to meet. In a strange way as well, I get the impression that Eva wants Charlotte to visit so that she can mother her, and that Charlotte accepts the visit out of some subconscious desire to be mothered. Indeed, continuing on from the similarities I drew up between Autumn Sonata and Persona, the inversion of diametrics plays a very interesting role in both films. In Persona, there is an inversion of the relationship between patient and nurse, and in Autumn Sonata, this opposition is expressed in the relationship between mother and daughter. In each of these films, Bergman displays the inner desire to break free from the societal roles and positions we are placed within, often without regard for one’s personhood. The substance of both Eva and Charlotte’s persons is inconsistent with the positions in which they find themselves. In trying to play into these roles, they merely further tear the gash of hatred. There is a reason why this film is called Autumn Sonata. The film is, surprisingly enough, autumnal both thematically and as regards to mood. It is a painful reflection on the irrevocable past (a past which has heretofore been left to linger in the mind’s backrooms). It is the realisation that the inexorable flow of the past has run its course, and that now only winter lies ahead. That, I think, is why Charlotte leaves so abruptly at the end, resigning herself to superficial conversation with her disinterested, half-asleep, half-dead agent; on a train which is taking her back to the reclusive diversion of concert halls. It’s not only that she does not have the strength to confront the past anymore, it is that confronting it nonetheless would be futile. The damage is irreparable. This unwilling to be confronted is perfectly displayed through the character of Helena herself, who, as a disabled, bed-ridden, speech-impaired member of the family, assumes an almost symbolic role in their dynamic. She is a direct representation of how at once Eva assumes a motherly role in compensation for her past and as an act of hiding, and, concurrently, of how Charlotte is repulsed by her inability to mother, how she is literally unable to communicate with her own daughter. This is both characters manifest in one form, where one is entirely caring for her, and the other quite literally speaks a foreign language. The quality of the dialogue here is unmatched, really it is. The excellence of the performances, coupled with how cruelly the dialogue slices through the core of everything makes this something of a deceptively palpable nature. And then when you take into account Bergman’s filmmaking, how unsettlingly tight his camera tends to be to his subjects’ faces, how perfectly framed the more open shots are, how evidently seasoned the artistry is through the use of soft, autumnal lighting for tone is, and how the editing works like sheet-music in how subtly it is applied, it becomes something not only tear-worthy, but tear-demanding. I believe I mentioned this scene in my previous, far shorter review of Autumn Sonata. It is a scene which in the year that had passed since I saw it last, I had never forgotten, and I do believe it will stay with me, vivid, forever. If it’s not the best scene Bergman ever filmed, then it’s at the very least in contention. In this scene, towards the begging of the film, Charlotte and Eva exchange their different interpretations of Chopin’s second prelude. Charlotte is obviously much better at it, but Eva nonetheless demonstrates it for her mother first. Charlotte’s response to her playing is cold and critical, and she sits down to play her interpretation. Chopin was ‘proud’ and ‘manly’ she says, describing how the piece demonstrates his emotions bubbling up and overwhelming his stoic demeanour, though ultimately being suppressed by it. Explaining this, we see a close-up of Viktor walking awkwardly in the background. And as this piece plays, a kind of stillness settles on the room, yielding to its beauty; the scene plays out in a series of close-ups, inter-changing between the three characters in this pure, incredible temporal composition. And finally, we get a devastating shot; a facial composition so devastating, that only Sven Nykvist could have created it. Whilst Charlotte plays this piece in the foreground, her face framed in total concentration, entranced, endowed with the piano itself, Eva’s face, also in close-up watches on from the background in the very same shot. Eva is looking right at her mother, eyes yearning, mouth slightly ajar, whilst Charlotte’s eyes remain fixed on the keys, her face just slightly - just slightly out of focus. The use of a long lens here only crushes their faces closer together, paradoxically emphasising the sheer distance between them, the pain in this proximity which divides them. I cannot describe its beauty, so will leave it here as it is.