Cries and Whispers -- an approachable Ingmar Bergman film

Legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman has long created thought-provoking films that explore life and death issues. As he has withdrawn to his private Fårö residence in the latter part of his career, Bergman has demonstrated profound understanding of women. His 1972 Cries and Whispers does both-exploring the souls of four women as the film probes existential musings concerning life, death, and love.

Departing from his black and white photography, Bergman maintains strict control of the colors, symbolically bathing the film in various shades of blood red (feeling that red is the color of the soul). The reds are everywhere-rugs, curtains, bedspreads, ceilings, glasses of wine, and dissolves that transition from one soul-wrenching scene to the next. Contrasting with the reds are the white gowns and dresses of the four women who are central to the plot.

The pure and chaste Agnes (Harriet Andersson) is dying of cancer and her two sisters Maria (Liv Ullman) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin) have come to the manor to help ease Agnes' inevitable passage to the next world. It turns out that Agnes is the only one of the three sisters who is capable of showing love. Maria quietly schemes and flirts with men, even capturing the affections of Agnes' doctor (Erland Josephsan), and the melancholy, suicidal Karin festers bitterly in a loveless marriage. Although Agnes cries out for the love of her sisters, only the maidservant Anna (Kari Sylwan) comforts her dying mistress during the final agonizing moments.

Indeed, one of the film's highlights features a scene with Anna baring her breast so that Agnes can rest with the comfort of flesh to flesh affection, something that her cold and heartless sisters are incapable of giving. Staying with this theme after Agnes' passing, Bergman reveals the characters of the two sisters in another scene where Maria expresses her utter contempt and hatred towards the silent Karin before breaking down and begging forgiveness. Karin has never been comfortable with physical touching, so when the two sisters begin touching each other's faces during the "make up" scene, it's like they are exploring and discovering each other for the first time.

But if you think that this will mark hopeful growth in the relationship of the two remaining sisters, recall that this is an Ingmar Bergman film-their destiny must needs be pessimistically filled with regrets and remorse. The sisters will be no better off after the funeral than they were before, and their brief interlude of actual soul to soul communication (shown in an intimate scene in which we cannot hear the whispered exchange) will remain a fleeting memory, not to be continued. They are only thankful that the funeral wasn't too morbid, as they move on closer to their own final dreary, impersonal destinations.

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