Word: johans
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Ghosts haunt the house Marianne has just entered. Doors slam shut without warning or visible agent; a cuckoo clock breaks the silence with its bizarre chimes and chirps. The middle-aged woman survives these little shocks and finds the man she's looking for. Dozing on the veranda is Johan, her long-ago husband, whom she has not seen for many years. His age, 86, has enfeebled him; his hand shakes from Parkinson's. He is beyond the spontaneous gesture: "I intend to put my arms around you," he announces before they share a starchy hug. And his world view...
...Saraband, which Bergman shot on digital video (and which will play in theaters only in that format), is not really a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage. It uses the two main figures from the earlier film to explore new relationships: Johan's with his son Henrik (Börje Ahlstedt) and Henrik's with his teenage daughter Karin (Julia Dufvenius). All three have been handicapped by desolation over the death of Henrik's much-loved wife Anna. Henrik, a failed musician, has transferred his ambition to Karin, a promising cellist. When Anna was alive, Henrik was lost in love...
...loathes his cold-fish father. "I hate him so much I'd happily watch him die of some horrible disease," he tells the shocked Marianne when they meet in the deserted village church. "I'd visit him daily and take note of his torment down to the last breath." Johan is equally venomous, telling his son, "If you didn't have Karin, who, thank God, takes after her mother, you wouldn't exist for me at all." But behind his contempt is the ache of envy. Johan, whom Marianne describes as "notoriously and compulsively unfaithful" and who never came within...
...such expeditions are inevitable. So know that Saraband is dedicated to Ingrid, Bergman?s fifth wife, who died in 1995; she likely inspired the film's much-mourned Anna. Bergman's relationships with his children, especially his sons, were often stormy. One child he did feel close to, as Johan does to Karin in the film, was Maria von Rosen, Ingrid's daughter by a previous marriage. Last year Bergman revealed that Maria was his own daughter, and published Three Diaries, which described Ingrid's last days from her own, her husband's and her daughter?s journals...
...ULLMANN: Yes, but kind of fun scenes. And he loved that. And somewhat later he said "You know, I am writing something about Marianne and Johan." And, oh God, he was writing. Then he said, "I want to direct it with her [Ullmann]. The comedy is coming." Of course, it was no comedy; it was somewhat the opposite...