Cries and Whispers

"The first image kept coming back, over and over:  the room draped all in red and women clad in white.  Four women dressed in white in a big red room.  They came and went, whispered to one another, and were utterly secretive."
--Ingmar Bergman

Bergman's recurring dream was what prompted, he claimed, the basic setting for his Oscar-nominated film, Cries and Whispers (1971). The story is filmed almost exclusively within an upper-class nineteenth century home; the color emphasized throughout -- from the background of the opening credits, to the decorations of the apartment, to the wine drunk at table and the blood spilled from a woman's body -- is crimson, crimson accented by white.

Three sisters -- Agnes, Karin, and Maria -- and Agnes's maid Anna, are confined in a fairly large, but still somewhat claustrophobic house.  Agnes is slowly dying of cancer.  Her sisters stand about.  They're doing their duty by their sister, waiting for the end.  Karin is aloof, dignified, business-like, unemotional.  Maria is more open, more outgoing, more smiling -- although her former lover, Agnes's doctor, warns her that the very lines of her face show that she is becoming more insincere, more secretive, more selfish, as she grows older.

Only the maid Anna appears open and unguarded in her affection for the dying Agnes, even cradling Agnes, repeatedly during her dying agonies, against her own body for comfort.

The film contains flashbacks to earlier events in the lives of Karin and Maria, showing traumatic episodes that either resulted from their difficult personalities or were the cause of the women we see today.  Maria makes insincere attempts to regain an earlier closeness with Karin -- Karin rebuffs her sharply. 

Like so many of Bergman's films, this is a film filled with silence.  Conversations do occur, but more striking are the sounds that echo in the silence -- the ticking of a clock, ticking Agnes's final hours away; muffled cries of agony; the sounds of nature from outside the building.  The women have their memories.  They have their individual fears and dread.  They have little to say to each other, and when either does attempt to share thoughts with the other, the attempt usually elicits hostility.

Agnes finally dies.  The sisters prepare the body, as one did a century ago.  The doctor comes by.  Their pastor shows up, and, while praying, confesses his own religious doubts.  The sisters receive little comfort from anyone, but then they seek none.

Anna hears a sound from the room where Agnes's body lies, awaiting the funeral.  She looks in, and Agnes speaks.  Agnes begs to speak to her sisters.  Each terrified sister enters the room separately.  Karin is horrified and disgusted to hear the dead speak; she quickly exits.  Maria shows more compassion, but when Agnes wants to hug her, moves toward her, tries to drag her into death, as Maria views it, Maria tearfully apologizes and also escapes.  Agnes tells Anna that she is dead, but can't leave her body.  She needs human comfort.  Anna unhesitatingly wraps her arms around Agnes, and holds her body close. 

Was it all dream?  Agnes tells Anna it may be Anna's dream, but it is not a dream for Agnes.  In any event, the funeral takes place on schedule.

The death and funeral were a relief to all but Anna.  The two sisters and their husbands talk over the legal matters involving the estate.  The two sisters will split everything.  Karin and her husband feel that Anna has been paid for her services, and should receive nothing more.  Maria and her husband are less harsh, understand the closeness between Agnes and Anna, and slip some cash to Anna as they leave. 

Alone in the house, Anna reads Agnes's diary.  Months before, when Agnes was not so ill, the three sisters had gone for a walk through the park.  They had laughed and reminisced.  Agnes wrote that she had rarely been so happy, so filled with joy; she had realized that her closeness with her sisters was what made her life worthwhile.

She may have been happy, but she may have been deceived.

This movie has been analyzed from every angle.  Feminism, female sexuality, psychiatry, Marxism, concepts of death, suffering, isolation and inability to communicate, Biblical references and mythical references, allusions to great works of art.  See Wikipedia for a compilation of themes that various critics have found worth discussing in this film.  It certainly is a film of sufficient complexity to support a number of Ph.D. theses. 

My overall reaction was one of compassion for the sister who, even on her death bed, received little love or support from her own sisters, those who knew her best, but was rocked to her final rest in the arms of her employed maid.  Like so many of Bergman's films, Cries and Whispers portrays a world whose silence, all-encompassing silence, does not represent peace, but an absence of human love and communication, and an inability of sisters, even sisters who had enjoyed each other's company in happier times, to empathize with and reach out to each other when times were less happy.