Rust in Blue

Violence subtly encroaches on a quiet Baltic island. Four people have a subtly desperate, superficially warm, relationship in 1969's The Passion of Anna (En passion). The English title draws attention to Liv Ullmann's character but this brilliant Ingmar Bergman film also stars three of his other regulars--Erland Josephson, Bibi Andersson, and Max von Sydow.

Andreas (von Sydow) is the point of view character for most of the film. He lives alone, nursing emotional scars from his failed marriage. One day, Anna (Ullmann) turns up to use his phone. She accidentally leaves her purse behind and, inside, Andreas finds notes from her husband about her violent behaviour.

She's living with two friends--a photographer named Elis (Josephson) and his wife, Eva (Andersson). Andreas finds himself at dinner with the three of them and the human contact turns out to be something he desperately needs.

The film features interviews with the actors talking about their characters and von Sydow discusses how he found it difficult to play a man whose experiences have made him naturally reticent to express himself in even the slightest way. Of course, having that interview thrown in does make von Sydow's job a little easier, and I wonder if that's what Bergman had in mind, and if von Sydow was at all insulted. Anyway, he does a perfectly good job. I'm not sure I think the interviews help the film a lot.

Ullmann's is more interesting. She talks about Anna's passion, which is for truth, and her deranged response to a world that contradicts what she sees as truth. The film is wonderfully subtle about it and it feels like you discover the horrifying aspect of Anna's personality by accident. Little things that happen quite naturally, or big things that don't seem connected, slowly take shape. A little dog Andreas rescues from a noose, a bird that Anna mourns after it's crashed into a door, Anna's and Eva's warnings to Andreas about each other.

Andreas has a brief affair with Eva which is really sweet. She gives the impression of being very open and at the same time very distant. Like she has no serious regard for the powerful feelings she has around Andreas.

There's a beautiful rust and powder blue palette throughout the film, except for a few scenes lit by a fiery glow.

The Passion of Anna is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1565

Robotic arms could clutch reactor stars.
The safety glow reminds the brain to sleep.
I'll meet the woman late behind the bars.
But spirit pumps could never step too deep.
The sky's a doom, a blue contained in rust.
Replacing brains with mouths the plan evolved.
A northern speech invites a southern bust.
It's easy now to heighten screen rescolve.
The party crossed a bridge of wicked vines.
Another loading screen awaits beyond.
The ivy crushed a shiny bunch of lines.
A hundred fish explode the tiny pond.
A quiet day appeared amid the ice.
A tiny hat dispersed among the mice.

Privilege or Pain

Three women are confined to a hospital room together, each one dealing with pregnancy, in Ingmar Bergman's 1958 film Brink of Life (Nära livet). Performances are centre stage in this movie which takes place entirely inside a few bland hospital rooms. Eva Dahlbeck, in particular, brings something absolutely devastating to the screen. The whole film is unrelentingly fascinating, though.

The film begins with Cecilia (Ingrid Thulin) who's been brought to the hospital because she's been bleeding. Of the three women, she comes off as the wisest, possibly because of a delirious monologue she has on being brought to the room. She strings together pieces of dialogue from the two or three previous scenes and weaves a perfectly sensible, entirely disoriented, impression of how things stand. The tiniest suggestions of indecision and insecurity have now become the certain omens that predicted her miscarriage, the hints of incompatibility in her marriage now become the undeniable sin for which she must surely now be punished.

There's something religious about it, like a Puritan's or Calvinist's compulsive thoughts on predestination.

Meanwhile, the youngest of the three women, Hjordis (Bibi Andersson), was unhappy with her pregnancy. She's not married to her boyfriend and sees her new child only as a sign of trouble. Her story feels oddly conventional compared to the other two women and she works best just as someone for them to react to.

Stina (Dahlbeck) meanwhile exhibits and extreme, very charming eagerness to have her child. Dahlbeck giggles and speaks rapidly, doing things that might have seemed more at home in a lighthearted comedy. But her performance does a horrific 180 degree turn that is all the more effective for these earlier scenes. I wasn't surprised to find out one of her scenes was censored in Italy.

Brink of Life is available on The Criterion Channel.