3/18/2023 0 Comments Autumn sonataAs they say, there’s plenty of ways to skin a cat (or, in Bergman’s case, give a good figurative Protestant lashing) and, man, does he have his own approach with cinema. I would counter that the filmic ‘tricks’ he employs, such as those in Autumn Sonata –loading the screen full of emotionally devastating close-ups (narcissistic aside here – in my early filmmaking days, I often tried to replicate that effect in my own short films, but at some point had to accept with a level of grounding despair that I simply wasn’t a cinematic master – ah, perhaps I’ll get another chance to prove ‘em wrong before Mister Bones in a black hoodie and scythe shows up at my door), if not two faces crammed together at emotional and physical cross-purposes, the constant time- and space-freezing presence of the ticking grandfather clock, the in-character actors suddenly turning (theatrically) to the camera (stage audience?) to provide a momentary confession before re-engaging - without a word on the interruption - back into the narrative, the searingly confessional (and always intellectually inclined) dialogue going on for pages and pages, the sparse music interjections – reveal a deeply profound, deliberately claustrophobic, yet entirely vibrant and truthful mastery of the art form like no other (even Woody Allen’s attempts at Bergman-style chamber pieces with September and parts of Another Woman, while good films, pale in comparison). He certainly has no truck with the traditional notion of ‘physical action’ defining story and character (in fact, when he has tried to capture more standard physical scenes in his work, it often plays a bit awkwardly). I guess you could argue that Bergman’s chamber pieces are ‘anti-cinema’ or – even worse – boring.
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