PARTISAN .REVIEW
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ence. The episode in the present is used as an associational device
to set off the flashback, or such is the impression the film gives in
that both scenes seem gratuitous.
The oldest sister, Karin (Ingrid Thulin), her nature represented
by grays and blacks - a bizarre and audaciously literal color sym–
bolism adumbrates the experience of the film - is a woman
im–
pacted by hate. Her gruesome reminiscence, in which she inserts a
piece of broken glass into her vagina then spreads the blood like
feces across her face, is without justifying context and so vulgar and
egregiously false. Rather than evoke a past for the women, the flash–
backs have the effect of denying the characters a life outside the pres–
ent action. This may have been what Bergman had in mind - in a
dream past and present are one - though like much in the movie
the intention survives as unassimilated idea.
The last memory scene, conjured after Agnes's death from her
diary, of the four women dressed in white walking in the park ad–
joining the manor house, is undeniably affecting.
Cries and Whispers
ends with a joyous moment in Agnes's life - the grace within and
beyond suffering - surrounded, as she puts it, by all the people she
loves. And yet, beautiful as it is in its way, the scene seems insufficient–
ly earned, hollow and schematic, a too easy resolution.
Cries and
Whispers
moves between an attractive audacity and a monumental
self-indulgence.
It has been said of Bergman with some justification that he is
the favorite filmmaker of those who don't like movies. His films have
more in common
with
"fine" literature, are more recognizable as art,
than the cinema of
his
major contemporaries, which is not to say
that he is not an artist. The problem is that Bergman has become a
cultural event and his films occasions for churchgoing deference.
Cries and Whispers
is the kind of film that audiences in pursuit of
culture can admire with their eyes closed, and maybe only that way.
It offers a kind of masochistic pleasure for those who wish to confuse
anguish with profundity. Robert Bresson, who also deals with matters
of grace, who is the more profound and distinctive filmmaker, has
never had an American audience queued around the block to see his
films. There's no market in our culture for the real thing. When
Bergman's masterpiece
Persona
opened here several years ago
it
got
nothing like the admiring attention of the inferior
Cries and Whispers.
