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Cries & Whispers
The Criterion Collection
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Product Description
Product Description
Legendary director Ingmar Bergman creates a testament to the strength of the soul-and a film of absolute power. Karin and Maria come to the aid of their dying sister, Agnes, but jealousy, manipulation, and selfishness come before empathy. Agnes, tortured by cancer, transcends the pettiness of her sisters' concerns to remember moments of being-moments that Bergman, with the help of Academy Award®-winning cinematographer Sven Nykvist, translates into pictures of staggering beauty and unfathomable horror.
Additional Features
Criterion's anamorphic release of Cries & Whispers, presented in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio, truly expresses this film's chromatic power. There are a few specks and scratches, but by and large it looks very sharp. The original Swedish Mono audio track has been re-mastered and sounds very clean. It is worth noting that since the audio is mostly dialog, the mono is not that detrimental. The English dubbed soundtrack is a close translation and a plus for those who want to fully concentrate on the visual beauty of this film. A nice extra is the rare 52 minute interview Bergman recorded in 1999. Bergman candidly discusses life, death, love, career paths and film techniques. You may be surprised to learn that Bergman is not as dark and introverted as often perceived. --Robert Bracco
Product details
- Aspect Ratio : 1.66:1
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : R (Restricted)
- Product Dimensions : 7.5 x 5.25 x 0.5 inches; 2.4 Ounces
- Director : Ingmar Bergman
- Media Format : Multiple Formats, Anamorphic, NTSC, Color, Subtitled, Widescreen
- Run time : 1 hour and 31 minutes
- Release date : June 19, 2001
- Actors : Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Kari Sylwan, Ingrid Thulin, Anders Ek
- Subtitles: : English
- Language : Swedish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), Unqualified
- Studio : Criterion
- ASIN : B00005EBSF
- Writers : Ingmar Bergman
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #186,840 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #3,224 in Foreign Films (Movies & TV)
- #7,309 in Horror (Movies & TV)
- #29,785 in Drama DVDs
- Customer Reviews:
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A Masterpiece.
But, finally, it is the dreamlike authority and insinuation of Bergman's camera that stays with us, scenes so initmate and personal we begin to feel voyeuristic, almost apologetic for watching. Two scenes are most memorable for me: the dying Agnes lying against the maternal breast of housekeeper Anna in a Pieta-like pose of unbearable sadness and the final dream/memory sequence of Agnes remembering a time when she and her sisters were happy and at peace in their mother's garden. The camera lingers on the luminous Harriet Andersson as she wistfully gives grace to her life, "which gives me so much". If those words and the expression on that actress's face don't inspire the deepest, most profound gratitude for the medium of film (and Bergman the Master), I don't know what will. Most highly recommended.
The predominant colours are red and black and white and this makes a statement in itself. It shows the torment and the darkness of the story.
It isn't a film for squeamish people and deals mainly with the agonized death of a woman and the effect that has on her other family members. It brings out the family feuds and passions as well as their psychological baggage.
From the psychological perspective, there is a kind of realism in this film because, in some microcosmic way, every family death arouses similar feelings - memories, anger, quarrels mix with guilt and frustration. As a doctor, I've seen it many times. As an orphan (now) I've experienced the dichotomizing effect of grief too.
My only suspension of belief was that even though it is set in the 19th century, the poor woman who is the centerpiece and perhaps the main character, isn't given any opium or laudanum which is what would have happened for anyone is severe pain, even in those days.
The acting as one would expect is stunning and Liv Ullmann is brilliant as the sister of the dying woman.
I think this is one of Bergman's best films - that I have seen anyway.
I should also say that although the sub-titles are well translated, on occasion I don't agree with the translation, but it's always so I guess for anyone who is bilingual!.
On the whole a classic, brilliant film!
Top reviews from other countries
Although set at the end of the 19th century, the film deals with themes that give the work a trans-historical relevance, though like any great work of art, it requires the full investment of one's faculties if one is to prize out its insights into human suffering. Some may find it pretentious, but then again, some people find anything beyond their powers of comprehension to be either mad or pretentious, consistent with the truth that the smaller the mind, the greater the assumption of infallibility and omniscience on the part of its possessor. Such reactions, which are common amongst viewers of Bergman's films, are little more than ego-saving devices that allow the viewer to rationalize away his own incompetence. As Blake said, "that which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care."
One of the things that really resonated with my own experience was the depiction of the loneliness of terminal illness, although I'm in remission. In terms of insight into this experience, the film has perhaps only been paralleled by Pialat's "La Gueule Ouverte". Dealing with such an illness represents an extremity of experience which inevitably leads to estrangement, because the company of the dying conjures up in fuller relief our own preoccupations with our mortality, and there is always the possibility of vicariously experiencing the fear which inevitably besets such people through contact with them, which is why society, underneath all the self-elevating, sanctimonious rhetoric, treats people experiencing extreme suffering as so many emotional contaminants, around whom a sort of cordon sanitaire must be drawn, to stop others from being contaminated with their suffering by suggestion. Bergman unflinchingly portrays the selfish attitudes of people in relation to the terminally-ill, though you could easily substitute for this anyone undergoing the extreme distress of, say, "schizophrenics" and people suffering from the supposed illness, depression.
One of the recurrent thematic concerns of Bergman is the withdrawal into cynicism and egotism of his characters, and this film is no different. In his earlier films, such as "Wild Strawberries", and "Summer Interlude", hope of reconciliation with humanity was possible, but "Winter Light" (correct me if I'm wrong) inaugurated a series of films portraying characters whose withdrawal into the cynicism and egotism of which I speak seemingly consigns them to a slow death by emotional privation, something which speaks to something fundamental about the condition of modern man.
Bergman, in films like this, dramatizes the internal struggle of people, pulled one moment towards, and the next away, from each other by the centripetal forces that bring people closer to each other, and the centrifugal forces that pull us apart; in the former case, our need for human contact, love and tenderness, and anchorage in a network of social support that cushion the blows of treacherous fortune and renders more bearable the bitter pill of conflict with others; and on the other, our experience of man's spitefulness, treachery, hypocrisy, cruelty, of how little people are to be trusted, and the predominance of purely mercenary and prudential considerations in human relations, all of which tutors a man not to get too close to others.
Most men at some critical juncture in their existence, as Bergman dramatizes in his films, set amidst the fragments of their shattered ideals and illusions, undergo an epiphany into the cynicism of the world, thereupon resolving to keep people at (what seems to them) a healthy remove from themselves, lest they expose themselves to any unnecessary suffering through close contact with others. Having had a mockery made of the sacred image of man they cherish in their bosom (based on the not unreasonable fear that to do so is to deliver it over to the bellies of cannibals, figuratively speaking of course), men withdraw into cynicism and egotism, hoping to protect themselves thereby, but as Bergman illustrates, they end up held captive by that which they originally sought protection from, as their need for human contact asserts itself.
Reality, as Bergman shows in his films, rides roughshod over our ideals, clips the wings of imagination in flight, while fate takes sinister pleasure in showing our every hope and dream to be delusive, so that by the end of life, any man in his right mind will go to his grave, seized of the fact that he has been duped by hope, and that life is a pointless Sisyphean slog signifying sod-all, as contentedly as a man goes to his bed after an exhausting day's work.
Sartre once said that hell is other people. To live is to find oneself poised precariously on the edge of a promontory, jutting out over an abyss into which, consciously or not, other people, or life itself, in all its vicissitudes, pushes you, making it a thing surely to be remarked that more people don't top themselves.
Yet as Bergman shows, hell is also no people at all. When we withdraw into cynicism and egotism as a protective measure to forestall the eventuality of being exposed to more hurt, we shut ourselves off from the things that sustain life, but which as Bergman shows, expose also to more suffering. In life, there are no simple binary choices between good and bad, between that which preserves and harms us. Instead, a man must choose between the rack and the wheel, between different torture mechanisms, and human suffering is inescapable.
The best man can do is try as best he can to navigate the tempestuous waters separating Scylla and Charybdis. Avoidance of one danger exposes man to another. The cynicism we withdraw into for protection from a world that repels and disillusions us, as is the case with so many characters in Bergman's films, exposes us to the dangers inherent in estrangement from one's fellows, whereas getting close to others likewise entails much suffering.
The fable of the porcupines beautifully illustrates this dilemma, and so do this and many other films in Bergman's oeuvre.