Saraband
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Saraband Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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Essential film genius: Bergman's 'Saraband.'
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"The sarabands . . . it takes a lifetime to master them."
The world lost one of its greatest film directors last week. In his "celluloid poems" (as Woody Allen calls them), film genius Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) examined the human condition in all of its bleakness, despair, humor, and hope, expanding our sense of what it means to be human. He favored intuition over intellect, and his films typically pondered the deepest concerns of humanity: mortality, loneliness, faith, and love (as in difficult, thwarted, repressed, and unexpressed love). Saraband (2003) is Bergman's final film release. The Swedish television movie is a sequel to Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (1973), reuniting the characters of Johan (Erland Josephson) and Marianne (Liv Ullmann ). Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett A ktenskap) followed the disintegration of Marianne and Johan's "perfect marriage," from the mutual misery that brought them together, to their inevitable divorce. Showing that the course of love never does run smooth, the film followed the turmoil of their ten-year relationship, a relationship that endured their divorce and subsequent marriages. Like Bergman's earlier film, Saraband probes the difficulties of human relationships, failed marriage, and the inability to communicate.
A "saraband" is a fast, erotic dance of the 16th century of Mexico and Spain; or a stately court dance of the 17th and 18th centuries, in slow triple time; or the music for either of these dances. Bergman's film opens and closes with Marianne (now 63) addressing the camera while she looks through old photographs scattered on a table. She summarizes the changes that have occurred in the thirty years since Scenes From a Marriage. A photograph of Johan reminds her of their life together, and how his subsequent marriage failed. She thinks that it would be nice to see him again, which prompts her to return to Johan's isolated country cabin. Upon her arrival, she awakens him from a nap with a kiss. Johan is now 86, and in the thick of a family crisis with his financially irresponsible and depressed son, Henrik (BA rje Ahlstedt) and emotionally-distraught granddaughter, Karin (beautiful Julia Dufvenius), both accomplished cellists who are sharing a small nearby cottage. Although it heen two years, they are still haunted by the death of Henrik's wife, Anna. In the ten scenes of Saraband, Bergman probes the family's raw emotions (fear, disappointments, and regrets) resulting from Anna's death, preventing them from mastering their own lives.
Criterion released Scenes from a Marriage (ISBN: 0-78002-802-3) in a remastered three-disc set. Ideally, Saraband should have been included in that set to complete the Marianne-Johan series. Highly recommended.
G. Merritt
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Saraband dvd movie.