Wild Strawberries

Who doesn't wish he could revisit his childhood home, seeing it not as it is now in the 21st century but as it was then -- watching himself and his family living their daily lives as they once did?  Or at least wishes that in his youth he had taken more home movies of himself and his family?

Or would it simply be too sad to do so?  To see yourself and your family as you once were -- all still living and still young, arguing, teasing, fighting, but also showing, without self-consciousness, your affection for each other?  To see yourself as a kid, filled with eagerness to be older, to be free?  Alive with the belief that not only your life but your energy would last forever?

In Wild Strawberries, the fourth Bergman film in the current Seattle Art Museum series, Isak Borg -- a 78-year-old physician and university professor -- finds himself forced to contemplate his past life.  A grouchy, somewhat pompous and pedantic old man in failing health, he is being honored by his alma mater in Lund, Sweden, on the fiftieth anniversary of having received his doctorate.  Most of the film takes place during the 375-mile drive from his home in Stockholm south to the ceremony in Lund.

Isak has only one surviving child, his son Evald, whose marriage is on the rocks.  The wife is pregnant; Evald demands an abortion; his wife refuses. Evald's wife -- who tells Isak quite candidly, but not harshly, that she finds him, Isak, unlikeable -- drives his car while Isak sits beside her, sleeping and daydreaming.

In his first dream, he finds himself in a deserted city.  He discovers that none of the clocks, including his own watch, has hands.  He approaches the one and only visible person from the back, who turns toward him, revealing a faceless face, collapsing and liquefying at Isak's touch.  The dream clearly suggests to Isak that death approaches.

Another dream sequence finds him returning to his childhood home, where he sees his parents and his siblings, most of whom have since died.  He watches as his girlfriend Sara flirts with one of his brothers.  Sara laments later, while he observes but is unobservable, that she feels terrible about betraying Isak who is totally admirable -- brilliant, highly moral, devoted to uplifting conversations about philosophy and theology.  Isak is far above her in his intelligence, in character, in everything.  But the brother -- coarse and aggressive as he is -- is more ... well,  fun.  (I recall Eliza Doolittle's lament in My Fair Lady --- "Words!  Words!  Words!  I'm so sick of words!  ...  Is that all you blighters can do?")

Ultimately, we learn, Sara did marry the brother, and Isak ended up in an unhappy marriage with a different woman. 

As they drive south, they stop and visit Isak's mother, now a very well preserved 97.  She proves as aloof, demanding, self-centered, and formal in her speech as is her only surviving son.  But they understand each other, say little of consequence to each other, and bid each other a friendly goodbye. 

Evald's wife observes, in so many words, that the apple didn't fall very far from the tree.

They pick up a group of three college-age kids, two boys and a girl, who manage to transcend all gloomy Swedish stereotypes.  They are lively, funny, outgoing, and kind to Isak -- even as they squabble constantly among themselves.  The girl's name is Sara, and she strongly reminds Isak of his own Sara from long ago.  

They almost collide with a car occupied by a middle-aged couple, driving it into a ditch, and offer them a ride to get help.   The couple are engaged in a continuing battle between themselves, and become so disagreeable that they are finally asked to leave the car.  Isak is sadly reminded of his own unhappy marriage.

The celebration in Lund is extremely formal.  (They didn't fire cannons or pin medals when I retired!)  The ceremony  may have been meaningful to many of those in attendance --  Isak's housekeeper tells him it was the greatest day of her life -- but Isak himself appears tired and bored by the lengthy ceremony. 

By this point, I was ready to judge Isak a professional success, with a personal life that was an unmitigated disaster.

But Isak and his daughter-in-law get along well with their three young passengers, and Isak amuses them at dinner with various anecdotes from his life.  The trio hold a private celebration of their own for Isak.  And when they part company -- traveling on to Italy -- they shower him with affection  Especially affectionate is Sara, who begs him to remember her.  Isak smiles and looks after her -- so much like his own Sara, the one who got away.

Also, as they stop for gas at a filling station in the rural area in which Isak had first practiced medicine as a general practitioner, just out of medical school, the attendant still recognizes him, decades later, as his family's own doctor.  He and his wife refuse to allow Isak to pay for gas, their eyes practically brimming with tears as they remind him of the help he had given them as a young doctor.

At home, finally, Isak goes to bed, looking old, weary, but with a slight smile.  His life hasn't been perfect, but no one's is.  He did what he could with the personality that he had inherited.  He has gone out of his way to be kind to Evald and his wife, enabling the haughty son to admit that he desperately loves his wife.  He realizes that he has gone through life surrounded by an aura of aloofness, but that he has also managed, in his own quiet way, when he could, to be of help to others.

He is content.  At least, as content as any Scandinavian can expect to be.