“Are we going to sleep in this bed that has caused hundreds of couples to get divorced?”
Bergman Island, which made a name for itself in the festival season of the past year and competed for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered, is released all over he world after traveling almost all over the world and even being broadcast on some “pay and watch” platforms abroad. This question, which is one of the most striking lines of the film, which we can easily interpret as a “Bergman tribute” at first glance, and which we took to the spotlight, does not stay in our minds throughout the flow.
The production, which is home to the Farö Island, where Victor Sjöström and Swedish cinema’s cornerstone, the heretical and eccentric director Ingmar Bergman spent more than 40 years of his life, where he shot his most important films and where his grave is located, is the production of an American filmmaker couple on a vacation/recess. It starts like a story, invites the audience to a time warp and takes them on different journeys from there.
Although the main characters of the movie seem to be Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (Tim Roth), they seem to be adding support to the script to visualize the deep passion for Bergman’s cinema that still continues. Screenwriter and director Mia Hansen-Løve seems to be leaning the layered story of the couple on Bergman’s filmography, while following the footsteps of Bergman, whom she admires on Farö Island, using completely real locations.
To give some encyclopedic information for those who are not experts on the subject, the house that Ingmar Bergman lived and built on Farö Island, where he used the phrase “Obviously I found a real home for myself”, today serves as a museum-library and a ‘workhouse’. We can say that it is an art complex preferred by academicians and artists for concentration and productivity, where visitors are accepted on a long or short-term basis with reservation.
In addition, it is not just a single building, but a whole complex with different stone and wooden houses that spread over the island – and decorated the Bergman cinema. In addition, the Bergman Center, located in the center of the island, and the Bergman Week, a series of events held every year at the end of June and the beginning of July, ensured the transformation of Farö Island into an “intellectual tourist paradise”.
Although director Mia Hansen-Løve intends to paint a picture of a couple’s production or inability to produce art separately, she is actually very interested in the organic relationship of Bergman-Farö Island and its reflections in the background. Because it cannot be in vain that he placed Bergman Week in the middle of the story’s timing? Or writing an alternative route to Bergman Safari?
The first half of the film follows in Bergman’s footsteps as the couple tests their productivity in separate physical environments on this island that promises eternal peace. While Tony is typing, so to speak, Chris is stuck on the island searching for inspiration and not quite sure how good his writing is. It is as if their relationship with writing is parallel to their relationship with Bergman.
Tony is a disciplined fan who fits the drawn ‘Bergman frame’, Chris is like a lover who questions more than what is offered to him and is in search… In short, when Chris shares his script story with Tony during his blockage, the audience also he finds himself in a second movie! Moreover, we are watching a second relationship story, whose conflict and tension between the characters is higher than the main movie!
The lead roles in the movie, written by Chris, are shared by Amy (Mia Wasikowska) and Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie). In the second half of the film, where fiction and reality are completely hidden behind a cloud of fog, Chris plays a role from director Mia Hansen-Løve… Throughout the whole flow, it is questioned how far an intellectual woman can move away from traditional ties, and that men still have a certain comfort in this area. Let’s add that it is clearly emphasized that he has.
Although the names of Tim Roth or Mia Wasikowska are more prominent in the acting, I think the mature acting of Vicky Krieps is the main burden of the film due to the main problem of the script. Because at the very beginning of the movie, we understand that the writer’s problem is about the female character and that she will focus on her emotional world. (Just as Chris puts Amy’s world at the center…)
Chris, who tries to loosen his patterns a little bit when he comes to his ‘summer vacation’, brings Vicky Krieps to life mostly with his facial expressions, pensive gaze and evasive smiles. On the other hand, although Mia Wasikowska seems to be playing the melodramatic character of Amy from memory, it is obvious that she has upgraded the film from the second half with her presence.
The whole atmosphere of cinematography and art direction is fictionalized according to the melodrama structure that we have tried to summarize above. So much so that even the wedding scenes that Chris constructs in his own narrative are not enough to spoil this atmosphere. And of course, if we consider that we are following Bergman’s iconic frames, more would be luxurious… I think that whatever they do, the dramatic atmosphere in Scandinavian countries can be colored as much as the geography allows.
Long story short, Bergman Island is screened in the category of festival films of the week as a ‘cinephile movie’. It is entirely up to you whether you will watch selected films from Bergman’s corpus before or after this production! It is obvious that it will arouse a certain degree of curiosity even for those who have never heard of Bergman cinema.
Bergman Island (2021)
Directed by: Mia Hansen-Løve
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Vicky Krieps, Tim Roth, Anders Danielsen Lie, Hampus Nordenson, Anki Larsson, Kerstin Brunnberg, Melinda Kinnaman, Stig Björkman, Joel Spira, Clara Strauch
Screenplay by: Mia Hansen-Løve
Production Design by: Mikael Varhelyi
Cinematography by: Denis Lenoir
Film Editing by: Marion Monnier
Costume Design by: Judith de Luze, Julia Tegström
Set Decoration by: Lisanne Fransen
Art Direction by: Eva Lendorph, Beatrice Strand
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Les films du losange (France), IFC Films (United States)
Release Date: July 11, 2021 (Cannes), July 14, 2021 (France), October 15, 2021 (United States)
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