“Come what may, this is happiness. I cannot wish for anything better. Now, for a few minutes, I can experience perfection and I feel profoundly grateful to my life, which gives me so much.”
In Cries and Whispers, Bergman deals with familiar themes, but this time he also places specific emphasis on the use of colour. The colours red, white and black must therefore be discussed in particular. Inevitably, the actors must also be emphasised, all of whom give outstanding performances. Bergman’s films live from the actors and these ‘regular actors’ should receive their deserved recognition by now at the latest. Bergman manages to regain his old strength with this work, because this film is an emotional force, not only is it acted to perfection, but the stunning images from Sven Nykvist are also superb from beginning to end. Bergman finally makes full use of the new possibilities of colour film and the result is a wonderfully painful and agonising film about transience, pretence, worry, desire and the inability to give oneself to others, even if it is one’s own sister.
The film tells the life of three sisters and their maid. Since Agnes (Harriet Andersson) has been suffering from a serious illness for a long time and is now slowly dying, they live together in a large aristocratic mansion. Through flashbacks of the individual characters, who remember various incidents in their lives, one gets to know their feelings, desires and suffering.
The seriously ill Agnes, that remembers her mother and with that simultaneously provides a portrait of her. The mother is interestingly played by Liv Ullman, who also plays her younger sister. The mother seemed to be very reserved and could apparently only form a closer bond with Maria (Liv Ullman). That’s why Bergman has Liv Ullman play the characters, the sisters always felt a kind of injustice, and this continues to this day, due to this childhood trauma it is apparently not possible for the characters to form a closer emotional bond with each other, as will be seen later.
Maria (Liv Ullman) doesn’t have this trauma; she has the desire for an affair to break out of her unhappy marriage. Doctor David, played by Erland Josephson, arrives just in time. They already have a past and after David has examined Anna’s young daughter, the flame of desire is rekindled. Her husband realises the lies clearly and tries to kill himself. In the face of his wife, he gets away alive.
Karin’s (Ingrid Thulin) recollection is similar; she too lives in an unhappy marriage, full of distance and duties. The conversations at the dinner table seem more like a strict professional meeting than a loving couple. But love is out of the question, Karin is too reserved, and the perpetual cold has made her cold and withdrawn herself; even the slightest touch from her sister feels like a burn on her skin. In contrast to Maria, Karin hurts herself and lies down in bed with her husband to show him all her hatred and aversion.
So, the sisters live together in the enormous manor and, as we learn, they take turns looking after and caring for Agnes. Although they do this task and pretend to have affection and compassion for the terminally ill, they have secretly been wishing for their sister to die soon so that they no longer have to carry the unpleasant task and can devote themselves to their own lives again, however bitter it is. Only the servant Anna, who lost her little daughter some time ago, seems to really care for Agnes and look after her with affection and sensitivity.
Now it’s time to talk about the colours of the film, there’s no getting around the colour red. It is so present that you are inevitably captivated and mesmerised by it. The colour red stands for love, passion, energy, but also for anger and aggression. The house is coloured red, but Maria also wears a red dress when she enters into another affair with David. Not only do red and white form a wonderful contrast. White, which soaks the sisters’ dresses almost throughout the film, stands for purity, innocence, peace, harmony and new beginnings, but nothing is harmonious in this house, it is only the appearance that is preserved for Agnes. At one point in the film, Karin wears a dark grey to black dress, which may stand for her reclusiveness and insensitivity.
The film progresses, now it’s Anna’s turn, but instead of a memory, something more like a dream is shown. This dream once again shows the sisters’ inability to care for Agnes honestly and devotedly. This is followed by an attempt at rapprochement between the two sisters, but in vain, they are too emotionally distanced by the past to be able to devote themselves to the other and enter into a healthy relationship and closeness.
The film continues until ultimately everyone is wearing black.
