Cinema
The Best Intentions ('12', Lumiere, Gate)
The hand of the master
Mark Amory
Last week in The Player script-writers in Hollywood were portrayed as powerless supplicants, resentful when spurned. We order things differently in Europe: 'Manus — Ingmar Bergman'. Never can a writer have cast such a shad- ow over a film. It is not just that Bergman remains an indisputably great director of art films (horrid but useful phrase) at a time when art films are in retreat. He holds a position in the cinema somewhat akin to Ibsen's on the stage: people may say that they find his Nordic gloom depressing but they still say it in defiant, defensive tones. There is a seriousness, an integrity, above all a body of work, that cannot be twittered aside. As the guide rebuked a tourist who passed from room to room of the Doge's `Palace complaining of the Tintorettos, Madam, it is not the pictures that are being judged.' But it is not just the extent to which the resonance of his name makes The Best Intentions seem like a last Bergman film, added to by the familiar presence of Max von Sydow and the fact that almost every- thing most of us know about Sweden, where the film is set, was derived from Bergman in the first place. He is also the Point to which the whole film is constantly working, though he does not appear. This is the love story of his parents and at the end his mother is pregnant with little Ing- mar. As in Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Mar- tied, we know that they must be going to make it in every sense because the hero has got to be born. Bilk August, the director, won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film with Pelle the Conqueror, this film has won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and he has gone straight on to an episode of The Young Indiana Jones for George Lucas — all of which makes him a hot director, but he claims to have worked seamlessly with the master; which is to his credit.
Over ten years from 1909 to 1918 (the war does not impinge on neutral Sweden) we see young Henrik Bergman (Samuel Froler, so good you think it must be the casting), who is studying to be a clergyman, meet headstrong Anna Akerblom (Pernilla August), win her and almost lose her. After one kiss she announces, Now we are engaged'. Henrik says nothing. It is not clear to what extent Anna is a feminist or a snob — certainly she has a high sense of her own worth. Her mother also knows what is best for her and it is not poor, socially undesirable Henrik. She uses the classic technique of asking him to stay so that it will become clear that he does not `fit in'. In the idyllic summer-holiday atmo- sphere of wild strawberries, bicycling and picnics, he does indeed cut a sour figure, but the young couple obstinately hang in there. Mother, however, has a further trick: she knows that he is still living with a wait- ress. That does it.
All this is gripping on the level of plot. Three extremely strong characters, rarely raising their voices or smiling, fixing each other with stony stares, struggle to inflict their will. The camera watches intently. The next stage is less intense. The lovers are apart, letters go astray, there is a sud- den death; the trappings of melodrama are only given force by what has gone before. The film is coasting, possibly because truth intrudes. Perhaps Anna did get TB and go to Switzerland and then on a holiday to Italy. It is there that there is a return to the earlier atmosphere: the mother confesses to duplicity and adds, 'I cannot ask you for forgiveness', to which the daughter assents relentlessly, 'No, I don't think you can.'
The third act is their life together and, though it is full of fine things, the film goes to pieces, too many pieces. Their hard life in the provincial north, a bitter row over where the wedding should be held, their success with the local people are dissipated by a strike, a suicide, a visit to Queen Vic- toria (theirs not ours), a waif who adopts them and tries to drown their son. The boy is called Dag, but he should have been Ing- mar and the film over. It is all too much, too late and too long. Incidents lead nowhere. There is a six-hour version made for television where presumably a more measured pace obtains. What we are see- ing, though not simply carved out, as it was always intended as a film as well, tries to cover too much of the same ground. It shows. All the same, what we see is as hard and bright as the northern landscape.
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