Intrusive Fire

Governments and revolutionary groups spend a lot of time convincing citizens that the ideological motivations behind war are deeply personal. And yet, it often seems that to the people whose lives are affected by mass armed conflict, such phenomena are invariably, violently alien. Ingmar Bergman's 1968 film Shame (Skammen) presents the lives of a young married couple suddenly caught in the gears of war. Bergman's normally quiet and desolate Faro is quite plausibly transformed into a war ravaged hellscape. Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann find the physical and psychological threads of their existence upended and violated by bombs, soldiers, and officers whose motives seem surreal or arbitrary but always terribly human.

Von Sydow and Ullmann play a couple of musicians, Jan and Eva, who have been exiled from the world of concert symphonies for reasons that are never divulged. They dwell in a poor little home on Bergman's desolate island, growing bored and dissatisfied with each other.

Bergman establishes their relationship very effectively in the first scene as they wake up one morning. Beautiful Eva walks around topless and Jan doesn't seem to care and neither does she. He tells her about a dream he had that brought him to tears and she responds only by coldly asking if he plans to shave to-day.

A friend in town talks about his panic at the idea of being drafted and says he knows no-one will miss him if he dies. Jan and Eva's reactions confirm this is probably true and that they only feel faintly sorry about it. They awkwardly excuse themselves from the house.

Troops move about the streets and crowd the ferries. Jan and Eva run into Bergman regular Gunnar Bjornstand, in this movie a wealthy man to whom they sell fruit. Their acquaintance proves lucky when he manages to save them from execution later in the film. But it comes with a price as human psychology is wedded uneasily to the responsibilities retained by military officers in a conflict.

Paratroopers from the enemy faction force Eva to make statements on camera which are later used for propaganda. Even when it's obviously faked and coerced, it seems interrogators think she ought to be executed anyway. Everyone in a uniform seems dead certain but it's never really clear what's happening or for what reason. All that's clear is that people who used to have lives and dignity are robbed of both as they're hustled en masse into small rooms or confronted by random murder and destruction.

Shame is available on The Criterion Channel.