1957 Bergman movie
Rating: 20/20
Plot: An old guy drives to get himself an honorary degree and takes his daughter-in-law along with him. They stop at a few of his old haunts, are haunted, and pick up some hitchhikers.
Even if you halfway read this blog, you're probably aware that I'm a sucker for a few things. Movies about old people. Dream sequences. Scandinavian movies. Black and white. Movies that effortlessly blend past, present, future, dreams, and reality. This has all those. Oh, and it's also the type of movie that you just can't understand the first time you see it. You'll feel it, you'll identify with some of it, the moods will be palpable, you'll venture into the depths of the thing and get a little lost, and then you'll notice it's somehow ventured into the depths of you and gotten a little lost. Bergman gives you plenty of space to let this drip into the parts of your subconscious that can roll with it, and when the pieces almost fit together, it grips at you, gently. And when that happens, it's pretty magical. I'm amazed that Bergman can either tell a simple story in a very complex way or a complex story in a very simple way. It's one of those. There are layers to everything here. The past is the past, but it's also the present. The present's the present but it's also bogged down by the past. The future's certain, but it's also uncertain. Reality and dreams are a blanket, one you can't keep your toes underneath. A hitchhiker is a hitchhiker but he's also a stage in the game and she's got the same name and the same hair and you just want to lay her down in the bushes and have at her if you know what I mean. Lord, I hope you do. Come on, people. What's the titular fruit represent, with those little nipples, that cum-hither cap, the juicy juice, a body that is all red, red lips. Sneaky feel-good, especially since you're not sure you like Dr. Isak Borg very much, but more than almost any other movie you'll ever see, you really feel like you understand the guy more and more as his trip goes along. Sjostrom (he doesn't get umlauts either but doesn't care because he's not around to read the blog and probably doesn't even know what a blog is) gives a performance that is quiet, a character haunted by his decisions, a little guilty, and teased by his past. And you can see all that under the Sjostrom's surface, but there's a radiant hope that also oozes more and more as he continues on this journey, and it's that hope that gives this it's feel-good denouement. Bibi Andersson--coincidentally the stage name I used when I used to strip at that nursing home back in my early-20's--is a blond sprite, and you almost want to drink her off the screen. This is Bergman at his most thrilling, tackling big ideas with personal vignettes, accomplishing the near-impossible by making somebody else's memories turn into your won. And that's the trick here that makes this so magically beautiful--this becomes your past and your dreams. Oh, and speaking of dreams, how about that dream sequence that starts things off here? A coffin, clocks with no hands, people with no eyes. It would be silly in color, and people who dream in color are all lunatics anyway.
Trivia: I read somewhere that Bergman had filmed a sequence that was nothing more than a five-minute series of fart jokes. It wasn't included as a deleted scene on the disc I had, but that would be something else.
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