# Viskningar och rop (1972)

### reviewed by
Long Che Chan

Viskningar och Rop (Cries and Whispers) Directed by Ingmar Bergman Starring Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, and Liv Ullman Rated R (strong adult themes)

Cries and Whispers is a very painful movie to endure: a film that numbs you with its blood-red images, then works its semi-surrealistic/semi-realistic voodoo. It is at the forefront of critics' favorites of Ingmar Bergman's female explorations. It is shocking, difficult, and frightening. It is eminent and luminous.

Here we have four women living in a castle draped in a harsh scarlet color, three of whom are sisters. Agnes (Harriet Andersson) is dying of cancer and her two unstable sisters come to aid her and walk her into the next world: Maria (Liv Ullman) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin.) The servant Anna (Kari Sylwan) waits in the wings to give emotional uplifting to Agnes. Such is the basic premise of Cries and Whispers, an intensely haunting experience that is both memorable and shaking. Made in 1972, it was one of Bergman's last great films before he exited the cinema world altogether with his last hoorah Fanny and Alexander in 1982. Years before making Cries and Whispers, Bergman had directed one of my all-time favorite films Persona, which also starred Ullman. Like that film, Cries and Whispers shows Bergman trying to blend dream-like images and visions with true-to-life, earthly feelings and topics. Persona was a film that explored the day-in-day-out masquerade of life; this film explores the effects of death- the fear that results and the realizations and truth that unfolds. With a backdrop of red curtains, walls, and wine (Bergman pictured red as the color of the soul's interior), master Ingmar Bergman evokes dreadful emotions through the faces of his four principle actresses.

Agnes, a pure, chaste character, is, we soon discover, the only sister of the threesome capable of love. There are scenes in which she reaches out to her sisters, only for them to turn their backs on her. Agnes' death infuriates them because they now realize the emptiness of their own existence, their own pettiness, and the lack of love they have for her, others, and themselves. Karin is masochistic and suicidal, a woman in a rotting marriage to an as unfeeling man. Maria is a philanderer, a flirtascious, feline temptress who has captured Agnes' doctor (Erland Josephsan) for her prey. There is a perfect sequence in which we learn that both sisters have lost the knowledge of touching- the feeling of flesh on flesh. This has resulted from years of coldness, insipidness, indifference. In this legendary scene, the two touch each other's faces, hands, and hair as if it were the first time they had ever touched someone before. No words are needed so Bach and Tchaikovsky take over.

Anna is silent and subservient, ready to supply the love and affection Agnes so desires and needs that she cannot get from her heartless sisters. Anna and Agnes are very similar- both are gentle and seem to have few needs- only the need for love. Karin and Maria explore touching and feeling because they don't know anything about love, only sexuality. Their innocence has been lost, they have become stone figures. The passionate red that cloaks the mansion is a very present color that opposes the lack and loss of passion in Karin and Maria, and signifies the yearning for that same passion in Agnes and Anna.

There isn't any important dialogue in the film- the bulk of its meaning and importance lies in the poetic, fiery pictorial strength that Bergman and all-mighty cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Bergman's collaborator for 30 years, have created. Silence is most certainly golden here, in a film that is about death, life, touching, skin, love, and its absence. The images remind me of the lustrous sights in Bernardo Bertolucci films, but while Bertolucci's images are more liquid and flowing and beautiful, Bergman's images are static and free of the heavy use of details. The whole film is told through facial expression- Agnes' face is pale, dying, yet most lively; Anna's is calm, tired, yet passionate; Maria's is flirtatious and naïve; and Karin's is sinister and stagnant. When Karin yells "Don't touch me!", it almost seems like her drama is all just a play- it's been made evident that she finds pleasure in misery and self-destruction. Her face wrinkles up in pain, but I could almost detect a nuance of gratification in her face. When Maria denies to help her husband who has just stabbed himself with a knife, we know she is stone-cold. When she smiles at Agnes' doctor in the mirror, he dissects her face, telling her about her "wrinkles of indifference" and "chin of indulgence." On the landscape of Agnes' face, we see her longing: she is dying but because of her charity and love, she is more alive than any of the sisters.

One may be surprised to know that the characters are rather one-sided. Agnes is the virtuous, in-white puritan; Anna is the obeying, caring maid; Maria is the slinky two-timer; and Karin is the dark, deathly rock. None of the characters go beyond that. This is no flaw though, because Cries and Whispers is not character-driven, but idea and image-driven.

Heaven knows I couldn't sleep after watching this film. It makes your muscles stiff from start to finish, and you become a part of this surrealistic Bergman vision that you don't exit from even after the film ends. At the end of Cries and Whispers, Maria and Karin are no better off than they were when the film started- they deny their touching escapade and move on with their flat lives; after Agnes' funeral, they don't discuss how much they miss her, they only thank God it wasn't too gloomy.

    By Andrew Chan

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews