Bergman Island
IFCIngmar Bergman is one of the most important filmmakers to have ever lived, a statement that no one would deny. He has inspired countless generations of directors through his dramatic, theatrical, and experimental projects – questioning matters of life, death, religion, and love in very mature and philosophical ways. While many actors that he collaborated with are forever tied to him, there is one place that has become synonymous with Bergman: Fårö. A small island of Gotland, on the southeastern coast of Sweden, with a population of less than 500 souls. Many of the director’s films were shot there, starting with Through a Glass Darkly, and the man himself exhaled his last breath in his small house on the island.
Every year, creatives from all over the world visit Fårö to recapture Bergman’s essence and take part in tours and private screenings of his work. Bergman Island by Mia Hansen-Løve follows a filmmaking couple, Chris and Tony (Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth), as they spend a short period of time there to screen one of Tony’s films, while Chris works on the idea for a new screenplay.
One of the strongest skills of Hansen-Løve is to create very real and believable characters, full of all the flaws and contradictions of human life, without sacrificing lyrical moments of beauty and grace. The relationship between Chris and Tony is fully formed and never explained, leaving much of their history to the audience’s imagination. What is clear is that the two approach filmmaking in very different ways: Tony has an easy time writing scripts that often star female characters – a way to detach himself from the narrative, to avoid feeling vulnerable – while Chris puts much of herself into her work, which makes her creative process tiring and time-consuming.
Another difference between the two lies in their relationship with Bergman: Tony loves him unabashedly, while Chris holds many reservations based on his private life. She puts into question whether Bergman would have been able to be the legendary filmmaker/writer/playwright that he was, had not his ex-wives taken care of raising his nine children all on their own. The double standards applied to male and female artists are at the core of Bergman Island, and, through Chris, Hansen-Løve is challenging the belief that it is coherent to love art and not its artist, and that it should be possible to be a good human being and a great artist.
This tension is felt not only between the couple, but with the people of Fårö. What was once a calm, quiet, and almost uninhabited island became the centre of attention for cinephiles all around the world. Only few of the locals were supportive of Bergman and his work, while many others were very much against his exploitation of the island, as if its new-found popularity would taint the slice of heaven that it was. The love-hate relationship between the Swedish director and the islanders, plus her own self-doubts, inspire Chris to start working on a new idea for a film.
If the first half of Bergman Island is a grounded, quiet drama where the characters’ emotions are hidden away and reserved, the second half shows Chris’ visualisation of her screenplay, a more cinematic, moving, and impassioned sequence of events. Chris’ frustration and romantic regrets come to life through the characters of Amy and Joseph (Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie), life-long lovers where she is the more open, desirous and romantic of the two. The more static cinematography of “real life” becomes vibrant, energetic, in constant movement, and the melodic Celtic music is changed for pop songs like a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s Summer Wine or ABBA’s The Winner Takes It All, leading to classic Hansen-Løve scenes of cathartic dancing.
Bergman Island may seem reserved only for die-hard fans of the works of the Swedish director, but the strength of Mia Hansen-Løve is being able to make this tale of romantic love, creative differences, and art as therapy, incredibly universal and accessible. Brilliantly acted, gorgeously photographed, deeply moving, and surprisingly meta in its final moments, it is one of the finest films to be released in 2021. A reminder that sometimes the smaller stories are the ones that can touch people the most, and that Hansen-Løve is an immensely talented filmmaker with plenty to say about being a woman working in a male-dominated industry.