Shame

Shame (1968) was the first film I've seen in SAM's first two years of weekly Ingmar Bergman film showings that didn't elicit spontaneous applause at its conclusion.  The audience arose and left in almost total silence, eerie silence. 

Maybe we felt we were viewing our future as a nation, or the sort of people we were becoming.  That we might soon become.

Once more, the scene is set on a small Swedish island.  Jan and Eva (played by the usual Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman) are a young couple living in a small cottage, growing vegetables in a green house, raising chickens.  Eva is strong, happy, and self assured.  Eva has to drag Jan out of bed in the morning.  Jan appears weak, easily distracted, daydreaming.  They are about to drive into town, a trip that takes forever to get under way because Jan keeps forgetting items -- goes back into the house, becomes distracted, and forgets that Eva is waiting in the car for him.  "Passive aggressive" comes to mind, but I'm not sure that fully explains his personality.

Both Jan and Eva are violinists.  Eva, about 30, is eager for children before she becomes much older.

Both music and childbearing are on hold, partly because of the war.  The war.  From the outset, armed vehicles move past the house down the road.  Jets fly overhead.  The war apparently is a civil war.  (A Swedish civil war!)  We never learn the cause of the war, or the competing ideologies or personalities.  The reasons for the dispute, if there are any rational reasons, are unimportant to Jan and Eva.  What is important is the effect on their lives.

Things go from bad to worse.  Shame contrasts with the usual stillness and introspection of Bergman's other films.  It's an action film, with much noise, fire, senseless destruction, violence, and death.  Two of the couple's closest friends -- the town's mayor who has played with them in the same orchestra, and a neighbor who sells them fish -- end up as local leaders of the opposing factions. 

Eva accepts all the mayor's savings -- and tacit continued protection from arrest -- in exchange for one short sexual episode.  Jan is devastated when he learns of it.  The fisherman neighbor arrives with troops and agrees to let the mayor live in exchange for his savings.  Jan has found the money, but denies knowing where it is.  The fisherman hands him a pistol and orders him to kill the mayor.  Jan does so with little hesitation.  The fisherman's troops -- presumably out of frustration with not obtaining the money, or perhaps because Jan and Eva were friendly with the mayor -- kill all the chickens, smash the house, and burn it down.

Jan finds his violin, smashed and broken.

The couple, now homeless except for their greenhouse, run into a teenage soldier who has deserted one side or the other.  The boy is terrified, and hasn't slept for days.  Eva tries to calm him down.  Jan grabs his gun, marches him down the road, and kills him, taking his usable clothes and supplies.

By now, Eva can hardly bear to look at her husband.  He says that he's learned of a boat off the island.  Eva doesn't want to go.  He says that's fine, it makes it easier for him.  She goes with him.

Once at sea, the boat's engine quits.  The captain -- the fisherman, now without troops -- commits suicide.  The boat becomes becalmed surrounded by floating bodies of dead soldiers.  Eva whispers that she had been dreaming a beautiful dream of nice houses and streets and parks and roses.  Roses that burst into flame, but were beautiful while they burned.

And the whole time I knew that I should remember something … something someone had said … but I had forgotten what it was.

Screen fades to black.

Shame is about more than the tragedy of war.  It is also about the tragedy of nice people, cultured people, who -- when faced with difficulty -- have no moral or philosophical beliefs strong enough to see them through.  Eva perhaps does have such a foundation, but Jan seemingly has none at all.  And, as a result, both Jan and Eva suffer not only great material losses and possible impending death, but also an awareness of moral failure and disintegration as human beings. 

A sense of "shame."