A nostalgic journey into the childhood of a 78-year-old doctor. An early masterpiece by Ingmar Bergman, which won a Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1957.
Isak Borg, a respected professor and doctor from Stockholm, is informed that he is about to be awarded a prestigious prize. The awards ceremony will take place in Lund, to where he travels with Marianne, his daughter-in-law. Their route takes them past the place where Isak was born and he recalls with affection his early years, his once large family, being in love, and the cherished dreams of his childhood. Immersed in the past, he asks his present self whether he is happy and whether he is living the life of which he dreamed in his youth.
During the trip, Marianne gets to know her father-in-law better and admits that her relationship with his son broke down some time ago because her husband is unbelievably stubborn, a quality he shares with Isak. This discussion and his conversation with his past self inspires the respected doctor to change his life and that of his son.
Wild Strawberries is in many ways a biographical work for Bergman. He persuaded his childhood hero, the Swedish actor Victor Sjöström, to play the lead role. He began to write the screenplay in 1957, during a long stay in hospital. Looking back on his memories and his relationship with his own father, a priest, and his journey to his father’s home, which took place a year before writing the film, Bergman created Borg’s story in a few months. He immersed the main character in a series of sweet and pure memories that are interspersed with Kafkaesque nightmares about the passing of time. In this way he brings Isak’s perception together with unconscious dreams and difficult thoughts about the present. His childhood is shown on the screen as scenes enveloped in a warm, twinkling haze, as if they were fairy tale events. It appears to be an event or process that is still able to influence the present of this elderly doctor.
The film will be shown in Swedish and Latin with Russian subtitles.
Wild Strawberries
Director Ingmar Bergman
Sweden, 1957, 91 min., 16+