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The Criterion Channel Presents: Autumn Sonata (1978)


It wasn’t long ago that I watched Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth -his first non-Japanese film. It was about the relationship between an aging celebrity (Catherine Deneuve) and her visiting daughter (Juliette Binoche) confronting old family demons and a deeply troubled relationship going back decades. It was sharp and interesting, but as much as I love Kore-eda, I now realize Ingmar Bergman did it better.
Autumn Sonata was the final theatrical film from the Swedish master –fitting, given the implicit swansong implied by the title (Yasujiro Ozu’s last movie likewise had such a late seasonal name, An Autumn Afternoon). It was also his only movie with the other iconic Bergman of cinema, Ingrid –who had wanted to work with him for some time –and Autumn Sonata would prove her final movie as well. Only Liv Ullmann of the films’ principal figures, would continue on to a long and successful career afterwards. There’s a sense of great importance to the film then as this meeting of three of the titans of Swedish stardom (even though Ullmann is technically Norwegian). And it is true that their power of presence overwhelms the movie and is part of what makes it so great.
With a slightly toned down style compared to some of his other films, Autumn Sonata tells the story of Eva (Ullmann), a rural, somewhat repressed and secretly miserable pastors’ wife reconnecting with her recently widowed mother Charlotte (Bergman), a genial but unconsciously self-absorbed world-famous pianist, with whom she hasn’t spoken in years. Eva is also the caretaker of her mentally disabled sister Helena (Lena Nyman) –whom their mother neglects and is uncomfortable around.
One of the early things I found compelling about the film is how Charlotte and Eva are not typically estranged, and in fact in their early scenes together show quite a bit of apparently healthy affection. However, the cues to their true feelings are in the subtleties both actresses bring to the roles: their expressions and mannerisms when the other is talking, or small details in how they explain or reflect on things. Offhanded and extremely authentic bits of passive aggression are scattered throughout their interactions.
Like Persona, Autumn Sonata is set almost entirely in a single home, and while not nearly as experimental or deliberately incoherent, there are still provocative technical choices at work. The colour is incredibly radiant -especially the contrasts at that beautiful piano scene between Charlotte’s exuberant red and Eva’s faded green. There’s an echo of the famous deep focus shot from Persona here as well, and throughout a number of such instances of Bergmans’ signature visual language. For instance, the infantile connotations in how Eva presents herself style-wise as representative of her entrapment in perpetual childhood.
The best come in the eruption of passions that encompasses the last third of the film, and they’re not so much revelations as outcries of perspective from Eva, who recontextualizes memories that Charlotte had only ever seen a certain way. It is intense and disturbing (particularly where it concerns Helena) and utterly gripping. Ullmann does most of the heavy lifting through her extremely empathetic succession of outbursts, but Bergman is just a tad better in the utter dissolution of her defences. It’s also worth noting that while all the evidence points to her as a terrible mother with serious moral failings, you yearn for her redemption, and her reconciliation with Eva –in large part because Bergman has such unimpeachable humanity in her performance and is impossible not to like. She was nominated for an Oscar for this, as was her namesake for its script –both completely deserved. For each it is one of their finest films.
 
Criterion Recommendation: Waking Life (2001)
I’ve noted before how animation is extremely under-represented in the Criterion Collection, but one especially that’s certainly weird and indie enough to deserve a spot there is Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. The first of two rotoscope animated works from Linklater, it’s a lucid dream of a film following a wide range of interesting and bizarre characters in and around Austin, Texas in a mode not unlike his earlier Slacker -though here they’re all vessels for various perspectives on philosophy, consciousness, existentialism, and a number of intensely thoughtful ideas discussed with intellect or passion, and illustrated with extreme or literal imagery. The animation is entrancingly fluid in its quality and style, adding to the mystifying effect of the piece, and if you’re a fan of the Before trilogy, there’s a cameo from Jesse and Celine! One of the few truly experimental films that I’ve genuinely really liked, Waking Life is too interesting and unique not to be part of the collection.

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