Bergman Island
“Maybe he just didn’t like grocery shopping”
Watching
Bergman Island (2021)
The fourth through sixth centuries AD produced a number of cartographical narratives written by Christians taking pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Sometimes these were sparse and read like a set of Google Maps directions (“from Bordeaux travel this far east, then travel this far south, then travel this far east, then travel…”). More elaborate documents had an element of travelogue exaggeration to them: here are five stones from Jacob’s well, here is the rock where St. John the Baptist dolloped honey on his locusts each morning.
Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island begins with a pilgrimage of modern spiritual import. Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Anthony (Tim Roth) are a filmmaking couple enrolled in a residency for artists on Fårö Island, the longtime home of Ingmar Bergman. The movie takes its time in getting them there. We see them on the bumpy plane ride in to Sweden, Chris cowering over Anthony’s lap with her eyes shielded, vowing never to fly again. We watch them drive a rental car from the airport to the ferry, following directions from a robotic GPS voice that reads out Swedish street names with a straighter face than either Chris or Anthony can keep. When they arrive at Fårö, the couple are shown around their idyllic lodgings by some locals, many of whom seem to be employed by the Bergman estate to run the island like a tourist attraction (don’t forget to buy Bibi Andersson’s Persona glasses in the gift shop after the Bergman Safari). The woman who shows them around their lodgings makes a point of noting that they’re staying in the house where Bergman filmed Scenes from a Marriage, “the film that launched a million divorces.” Does correlation imply causation here? No matter.
Hansen-Løve always incorporates autobiographical elements into her work, and here it’s clear that the relationship between Anthony and the 20-years younger Chris has taken some inspiration from her relationship with filmmaker Olivier Assayas. Chris carries herself with a bit of anxiety. As a woman she’s producing art under different constraints than her partner. At dinner with some Swedes early in their visit, conversation turns to the matter of Bergman’s 9 children by 9 different women. “I’d like to have 9 children by 9 different men,” Chris says with wry amusement. What she wants more immediately is to be able to finish a script, for which she takes up residence in the windmill opposite the house where Anthony works to get some peace and solitude.
At the halfway point of the film, Chris shares a near-finished screenplay with Anthony. While she pitches him on it, the movie switches vantages to show us Chris’ film-in-progress. In this new narrative, which Chris has titled The White Dress, Amy (Mia Wasikowska) comes to Fårö Island for a wedding, joined by Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie). Amy and Joseph have partners back at their respective homes, but they’ve been carrying out an affair for years and putting off tending to the emotional debris that’s accumulated over time. This film-within-a-film maintains the tone of the first hour of Bergman Island with one notable difference. Chris and Anthony are at a point in their relationship where sensuality is no longer the defining characteristic or its raison d’être. The White Dress by contrast reads in part as a fantasy where Chris can explore the erotic longings that are left unfulfilled in her current partnership. If the casting of Danielsen Lie is any indication, our girl’s mad thirsty.
Hansen-Løve has always been attentive to small gestures in her films. Here, the placidity of Fårö—everything ranging from the natural landscape of short grasses by the sea to the built environment of tidy Scandinavian homes and earthenware-stocked kitchens—throws these gestures into sharp relief. We see men and women negotiating boundaries through small but intentional maneuvers, whether that’s carefully withholding eye contact or bombarding a lover with emoji in a sarcastic text message. Bergman Island takes some cues from Bergman movies (notably Persona), but it isn’t trying to be a Bergman film. “Why didn’t Bergman make films about happiness?” Chris asks at one point, in part as a challenge to Anthony, who is enamored to a fault with the gritty psychological drama that so characterized the Swede’s work. Bergman Island isn’t really a film about happiness, either, so much as it’s a film that shows how our relationships with our environment and with each other determine whether happiness, once found, can stay in our grasp.
Reading
I once again refer everyone to Peter Labuza for a great rundown of the IATSE strike situation:
Though the various unions representing writers, actors, and directors have all gone on strike or come close to it, this is the first time IATSE has even come close to striking since World War II. The problem, as everything in the industry seemingly comes down to these days, is the future of the streaming market.
Streaming has become a boom for Hollywood, as there is more production occurring throughout the industry, which should translate to more jobs. But for IATSE members, this has often meant that the general work load times that rise and fall throughout the year, usually dependent on television’s fall and spring premiere basis, have now become steady enough to feel like a full-time position. It is often hard to say no to work, so members are finding themselves overworked.
Because Hollywood budgeting is often designed by the day (one extra day of shooting can add thousands in production costs), producers are often incentivized to squeeze as much as possible into a single day of work. This often means not only going into 14-hour days, but having crew skip meals, or forcing weekend work. Those decisions require penalties paid out to members, but often production companies budget those decisions in, and accept the extra cost as a small tax.
Coming Soon
Chess of the Wind (née The Chess Game of the Wind), which was the find of 2020 for me, is finally getting a wider release. The trailer:
So is that dumb movie the Red Scare girls made in the Epstein mansion: