Photo: Erland Josephson as Johann and Liv Ullmann as Marianne in Ingmar Bergman's Keane
If the rumblings are true and the hi-definition video sequel Saraband is indeed Ingmar Bergman's final work, then he has left on a summative high. As powerful in its own way as Carl Dreyer's Gertrud, Saraband unfolds over 10 increasingly intimate sequences that revisit two characters—Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson)—from the director's great Scenes From a Marriage, and also examine the near-incestuous relationship between Johan's son Henrik (Börje Ahlstedt) and his daughter Karin (Julia Dufvenius). Bergman consistently evokes the ghost of history in Saraband, opening on Marianne sitting before a table scattered chaotically with personal photographs: as his heroine contemplates the divides of her life, Bergman considers the gaping abyss separating film-past and video-present. The encroachments of memory continue into the next sequence as Marianne wanders through Johan's country home, where doors close forcefully with no apparent rhyme or reason—somewhere, Henrik Ibsen nods approvingly. Keith Uhlich
If the rumblings are true and the hi-definition video sequel Saraband is indeed Ingmar Bergman's final work, then he has left on a summative high. As powerful in its own way as Carl Dreyer's Gertrud, Saraband unfolds over 10 increasingly intimate sequences that revisit two characters—Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson)—from the director's great Scenes From a Marriage, and also examine the near-incestuous relationship between Johan's son Henrik (Börje Ahlstedt) and his daughter Karin (Julia Dufvenius). Bergman consistently evokes the ghost of history in Saraband, opening on Marianne sitting before a table scattered chaotically with personal photographs: as his heroine contemplates the divides of her life, Bergman considers the gaping abyss separating film-past and video-present. The encroachments of memory continue into the next sequence as Marianne wanders through Johan's country home, where doors close forcefully with no apparent rhyme or reason—somewhere, Henrik Ibsen nods approvingly. Keith Uhlich
