Cries and Whispers (1972)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Film Review

Cries and Whispers is a film about pain, or more precisely, about the inability of human beings - torn between a cry and a whisper - to exorcise pain.  Of all of Ingmar Bergman's films it is probably the one that provides the least comfortable viewing experience, and not only because of its uncompromising portrayal of suffering.  It is a film which presents human experience in the bleakest terms, as an ordeal that must be endured, with death the only resolution to life's accumulated imperfections.

The colour that we most associate with pain is red, and this is the colour which predominates in almost every shot in this film.  Red, the colour of blood, of fire and Hell, is also the colour of love, and this is also a film about love, human love at its most primal and most elusive.  There are five female characters in the drama - the three sisters, their mother (seen only in flashback) and the young maid.  The relationship between the three sisters is complex, clearly poisoned by their childhood experiences with a seemingly ambivalent mother.  Whereas the maid's love for Agnes is genuine and enduring, the other two sisters regard their dying sibling only with a strained compassion.  Maria's show of affection has a touch of Brontë-esque romanticism that makes her appear insincere or naïve, whilst Karin stands aloof, looking on the dying girl with pity but no real sympathy.

The reason for Maria and Kartin's coolness towards Agnes and each other becomes apparent in a series of flashbacks showing their childhood and their recent traumatic experiences.  Both women are trapped in loveless marriages and inflict on themselves mutilation (psychological and physical) in a futile attempt to free themselves.  They perhaps regard their virginal sister with some envy, for she will not know the horrors they have known as victims of male lust.  Their suffering will certainly endure far longer than hers, and there will be no one to heed their cries or their whispers.

Two familiar Bergman themes play an important part in the narrative.  First there is the idea of duality - two characters representing two contrasting aspects of humanity which must be brought together to make a complete person.   Maria and Karin form a pair of opposites - Maria the childlike idealist who exudes affection, Karin the strong-willed adult who can neither give nor receive any form of tenderness.  They remind us of the two female characters in Persona (1966) but also prefigure the daughter and mother of Autumn Sonata (1978).   The flawed nature of these two women, haunted by neuroses and incapable of handling their emotions, is then contrasted with Anna, the unschooled, unsophisticated servant girl who knows instinctively how to care for a dying girl.  Anna represents the goodness and purity that the two other women lack and which is, ironically, the key that might release them from their own misery.

The second Bergmanesque theme which is so apparent in this film is the sense of mortality, the passing of time voiced by the constant ticking of clocks in the background, a constant reminder that we each have only a limited time span in this world.  Agnes's death is presaged by one of the most brilliant openings to any of Bergman's films, with close-ups of clocks mechanically counting down the last few minutes of her life.  In a similar fashion, the death of Agnes sounds like the striking of the hour on her two elder sisters, reminding them that death has nudged a little closer in their direction.

Cries and Whispers is a haunting and strangely compelling work in which Bergman for once eschews rigorous realism for a darkly Baroque kind of poetry.  It may lack the coherence, emotional intensity and intimacy of some of the other films which the director made in this, his later period, but it is nonetheless a captivating, beautifully composed piece of cinema, and a portrayal of human experience that is as spectacularly daring as its is insightful.  It also contains one of the most shocking sequences of any film and is therefore most definitely not a film for the squeamish.

Film Synopsis

In the bedroom of a large country house in the 19th Century, a young woman, Agnes, is enduring the last excruciating days of a terminal cancer.  She is tended by her faithful servant, Anna, and her two elder sisters, Karin and Maria.  Agnes's physical ordeal prompts her sisters to reflect on the misery in their own lives and allows them to make an unexpected reconciliation...