The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman, 1969)

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Mr Sausage
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The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman, 1969)

#1 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon May 24, 2021 9:08 pm

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman, 1969)

#2 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon May 24, 2021 9:35 pm

I'll never be able to state my thoughts better than I did last year:
therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Nov 25, 2020 12:42 am
Rayon Vert wrote:
Sun Apr 02, 2017 3:36 pm
A Passion (The Passion of Anna). (The accurate translation is A Passion – and the exploitative American title The Passion of Anna doesn’t even make sense, as this is really about Andreas more than any other single character.) I really like this one, even if it feels a little thrown together without perhaps the same level of accomplishment as the previous films in the Fârö quadrilogy.

Certainly this is Bergman at his most despairing – there’s literally no glimmer of hope here. (In a 1971 article about Bunuel, Truffaut situated Bunuel between Renoir and Bergman of the previous 10 years on the optimism/pessimism scale – i.e. Bunuel finds that people are imbeciles but life is nevertheless amusing – and memorably remarked that Bergman “doesn’t help us live”. That's definitely true of this film.)

The seemingly arbitrary abuse of animals presents the world as uncaring and even cruel in its metaphysical essence (yes there’s someone slaughtering and torturing the animals – but there’s also that scene of a bird hitting the window and Andreas killing it). And Andreas is really like one of those tortured creatures – he’s so completely isolated and psychologically vulnerable. As he reveals to Anna in the end, he’s completely “humiliated” - he literally has no self-esteem or positive sense of self. From the beginning he’s desperate to latch on to anyone, with predictably disastrous results. I noticed for the first time that when at the end he grabs the wheel of the car that Anna’s driving and causes a near accident, one of the quick cuts is to a mirror ornament, a teddy bear twisting and being “strangled” by the string around its neck, that links to the earlier twisting and strangled dog in the film (which, painfully, to me anyway, Andreas eventually gives away to Eva - that dog that gives him all that free affection - in the desperate hope that somehow this will win him some female favor).

But despite being so dire, there’s something about the atmosphere of this film, the desolate and wintry environment in which it’s filmed, as well as how touching Andreas is, that I find really appealing. I don’t know what to make of the actor interviews, they’re part of Bergman’s meta experiments in the latter half of that decade, but they’re few enough to not distract from the film’s power.
I revisited this tonight, and it remains one of my personal favorite Bergmans. I think the English-translation title is quite apt though, because while Andreas is the 'lead' character, he doesn't have enthusiasm for life. His depression has given way to apathy, and even though she's far from "happy," Anna is supremely passionate (take that early dinner speech about how we should always strive for our spiritual ideal, only do what we deeply believe in, settling for nothing but absolute authenticity). The passion of Anna is a desire for truth, as Ullman explains in her interview, and even though it's unsustainable within her sterile milieu, it is an honest expression (ironically competing with self-delusion) that directly clashes with Andreas' apathy. Both characters can't navigate their surroundings with contentment, but one expresses unyieldingly while the other hides from the opportunities to express, perhaps both out of overwhelming shame.

One could see 'the passion of Anna' as Andreas' higher power, her allure magnetizing him away from his cave, becoming his God that briefly lifts him from his spell and entices him with hope through her presence disrupting his self-destructive slumber. "Hope" in this film isn't optimism but a provocation to shake one from complacency toward further observation of what exists outside of our solipsistic mental quicksand. Bergman makes this process out to be the rigorous challenge that it is- the act of making oneself vulnerable begetting further turmoil, like opening a wound without a bandage to see what happens when it breathes. Each character sees a mirage of refuge from their character defects in the other- Anna can see a man who is able to compromise as she manically stresses over her continual letdowns, but in a very anti-romantic fashion, neither's polar quality is actually attractive or capable of providing the other with balance in corporeal terms. This is Bergman occupying a unique space of realist quasi-spirituality whereby we find existential promise in viewing another human being's qualities without being able to puncture or possess the qualities themselves.

So even if the 'passion of Anna' is Andreas' God, we must assume that he has a complicated relationship- not exactly positive- with any higher power, in order to retreat as strongly as he has. Bergman's own relationship with God is there, but it's not based on an interventionist God (hence: the animal killer heightening an apatheist illogical atmosphere), and so the idea of familiar people as Gods that trigger us just as much as they offer brief reprieves from unbearable existences fits as they lift the bar slightly but don't grant a solution.

At one point, Bibi Andersson says that realizing that 'she' is completely meaningless has destroyed her, that trauma from failing to become an active agent in the unsupportive environment that conquers such attempts. Bergman seems to understand that feeling, but doesn't endorse that a person is completely meaningless when in the presence of others- sharing, noticing, and believing in something greater than them and their problems. Andreas gives her his dog, all he has that bring him happiness, to help her sleep. Their connection is brewed from mutual misery, and yet that consolation from commonality is sublime in its own language- much like her recanting of how the death of her child brought her and her husband closer together for a fleeting moment. This may not be an upbeat movie, but there's something very liberating about that offer for 'a way out', even if it's impermanent and doesn't alter the dysphoria.

I think the "actor interviews" are pretty clearly placed there as a narrative device, to overstate the characters' psychologies for us so that we can pay attention to the 'expressions'. Max von Sydow's early diagnostic speech tells us more than we need to know, and so we spend the rest of the film knowing exactly what we'd otherwise spend an hour musing over, and in the process likely miss the specific sensitivities and minute character developments within these superficially established pathologies. Who these characters are isn't the point of the film, but how they respond to others to make digestible strains of meaning for themselves very much is.. grappling with risky social poison as an antidote to the dependably lethal poison of solitude.

This may be Bergman's most mature work, a film that refuses to pretend that we can reach a state of meeting life on life's terms and truly connecting in any permanent way, but when setting the bar at 'accepting that we cannot accept life as-is, on occasion', well, in those invisible crevices and faraway gestures, we can find pockets of grace. Anna's final words are the passion that lights the small fire in this wintry world before it goes out: that of asking for forgiveness. It's not a false embodiment of static self-actualization or a promise of happiness, but a tangible request for rehabilitation to show another human being that they are seen, and a gesture to give all that is in her power to authentically give: Another chance to take a ride, to accrue more rapport and more harm, or go it alone. That's the game.

Bergman doesn't blame the characters for behaving as they do though or for choosing their own needs in the end, and that's where the real empathy lies. He's an understanding God, but like the characters and his understanding of his own God, he won't intervene either. He has too much respect for the pain. And that's what this film really is: a ball of emotion flailing around with its head cut off; a tortured animal trying to get a few last breaths, and looking at those breaths with equal parts celebration and horror.
Discussion questions of interest:

1. How does the concept of "hope" fit into this film? Do others see Bergman pivoting his spiritual relationship continuously with the characters into corporeal compromises to redefine value in this world?
2. Has Bergman ever more potently and vulnerably empathized with psychological and existential pain like this, and whether or not you think so, how does this compare to those other works in his methodology and own worldview, or hope (or, rather, recontextualized meaning for continuing on living) for his characters?

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Sloper
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Re: The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman, 1969)

#3 Post by Sloper » Sun May 30, 2021 10:35 am

I agree about the actors’ interviews being narrative devices, especially the first two, and I think these moments also feed into your questions about hope and empathy.

We start with Max von Sydow discussing the difficulty of empathising with (and therefore inhabiting and ‘playing’) a character who deliberately conceals his emotions, but by explaining this von Sydow also makes his character more accessible to us, the audience. Andreas is so closed off that we might otherwise have assumed he is simply a blank, under-written character, and we need to have some kind of a handle on his emotional state in order to follow the (minimal, character-driven) plot.

Later on, Liv Ullmann expresses sympathy for Anna’s belief system, and for her tendency to retreat into lies when reality doesn’t accord with her faith. We have sort of been told this about Anna already, by the juxtaposition of the letter from her husband with her overly impassioned outburst at the dinner table, but the film goes out of its way to underline this crucial fact about her character – perhaps especially because Anna is about to disappear from the film for a while, during the brief affair between Eva and Andreas. We’ll need to remember this flaw, or conflict, that defines Anna’s behaviour, if we’re going to understand what happens at the end.

Similarly, the interviews with Bibi Andersson and Erland Josephson occur once the film has finished with their characters: there’s no longer any room for them in the actual story, but the interviews ask us to bear them in mind all the same, and to consider their role and significance.

There is a kind of narrative arc in these interviews, that moves from alienation, through empathy and hope, and back to alienation. Andreas is an emotional recluse who may or may not be able to open himself to another person; Anna is searching for something (i.e. someone) on which to anchor her faith, and may resort to destructive lies in order to fulfil this quest; Eva is trapped in the identities others project on her, and to understand her ‘true self’ we would have to speculate beyond the confines of this film; Elis has retreated in disgust from the world around him, indifferent to other people and assuming they are indifferent to him.

The interviews mark this whole film as a pessimistic space, in which Bergman and his collaborators ‘argue the case’ for loneliness as an inevitable and cyclical state. People are too flawed, deluded, weak, crazy, and/or callous to be able to sustain meaningful relationships with each other or themselves; they are always haunted by their past mistakes and fated to repeat them, staggering back and forth along the same miserable stretch of road until they do the rational thing and break down in despair. ‘This time his name was Andreas Winkelmann’, says Bergman over the final shot, as Andreas disintegrates into the grainy static of the excessively blown-up image. Like the photographer in Blow Up, these people are empty fictions invented to illustrate the fundamental emptiness of existence, and having served this function they vanish into the ether, along with the film itself.

These moments that emphasise the artificiality of what we’re seeing do invite empathy, and imply that empathy is essential for those telling the story and for the audience. But I think they also negate empathy, not just because the story they are helping us to navigate is one about the futility of real empathy (cf. Elis’ photographs, recording an ‘interplay of forces’ but never accessing any deeper emotional truths), but also because they violate our suspension of disbelief and make us reflect on these characters as artificial constructs.

I don’t want to overstate that point: our suspension of disbelief is always ‘willing’, and conscious, and we always know that fictional characters are not real; that doesn’t mean we don’t feel anything for them. On balance, in the course of my life I’ve probably felt more (and sometimes deeper) emotions in relation to fictional people than I have for real ones. (No, I don’t get out much.)

But still, there is something jarring and cold-blooded about these meta-cinematic flourishes in Bergman’s films, especially when the clapper announces that this is ‘Take 4’ (for von Sydow’s interview) or ‘Take 7’ (for Ullmann’s). Not only is the ‘film’ a fiction, but even the documentary about the film is a fiction, painstakingly directed, rehearsed, and re-taken until it’s ready to serve its designated function; and by the same token, those parts of the fictional story that are shot like a documentary come to seem less ‘real’ and authentic than they are ostensibly trying to seem.

This makes us more conscious of what the film is selling us, and what methods it is using to do so. We can reject its pessimism about humanity and, like Ullmann or Andersson, choose to feel sympathy for these flawed characters or imagine happier endings for them once they escape Bergman’s clutches. On the other hand, we can also see a layer of irony compromising any moments of hope. When Andersson talks about Eva being redeemed and ‘blessed’ after her (imagined) attempted suicide, she is suddenly bathed in celestial sunlight, and the moment plays out like a happy accident that was ‘left in’… But we know it wasn’t an accident, partly because of the clues that mark these as scripted moments, but also because we then see the same redeeming sunlight bathing Johan following his suicide. Again, we don’t have to react cynically to these effects just because they are pointedly artificial – but personally I do get a cynical vibe from them.

All of which is to say that, no, I don’t see this as a very empathic or hopeful film, and I read it in the same despairing way as Rayon Vert (in the post quoted above). The people – characters and actors – are just like any of the other objects, tools, and tricks being toyed with by the film-maker, all in service of a defiantly unedifying tale. At times it appears as though we are being asked to feel for the characters and invest in their relationships, like in a ‘normal’ piece of fiction, but these connections are always scuppered. Why don’t we see the start of Andreas and Anna’s relationship, instead hearing about it second-hand from Eva, and then in a re-cap from the narrator? Why, having been thrust abruptly into the midst of this relationship, does it suddenly disintegrate for reasons that we can sort of infer but that haven’t really been made clear?

This is the main reason I don’t like this film very much, and why I like the previous films in the ‘island trilogy’ only slightly more. Bergman seems to be experimenting with a way of telling relationship-focused stories that perversely denies the audience any clear sense of progression or development, by leaving out significant moments or refusing to explain causes and motivations. I guess that’s an interesting thing to try and do, and I like that Bergman is always stretching himself, but overall I just feel like these three films are half-baked and unsuccessful experiments, albeit with lots of powerful and beautiful moments. I also feel like these are all things he did much better in other films, and on most days I would rather watch Persona or Scenes from a Marriage again.

A couple of other notes:

TWBB, in regard to the title, I think ‘passion’ is being used here more in the ‘Passion of the Christ’ sense, i.e. meaning ‘suffering’, a painful state or experience that is imposed on someone and which they have to endure. It may also mean ‘passion’ in the more conventional modern sense: when the narrator describes the relationship between Andreas and Anna, he says it is without quarrels or ‘passions’ (and it sounds like the Swedish word here is ‘passions’). In that context I would think the point is that their feelings for each other are not intense enough to prompt any strong outbursts of emotion: Andreas is too afraid of humiliation, and Anna too afraid of disillusionment, to expose themselves, until something snaps in those last few minutes… Anyway, I read the title as referring to all five of the main characters (including Johan), to the condition of lonely despair that reality has imposed on them, and to the various ways in which they all try and deal with this. I think that’s what the film is about, just as Shame is about how we respond to the conflict and brutality that prevails in the world around us.

I love some of the things Bergman does with colour in this film. In general the colours are very muted and subtle, to the point that it doesn’t feel like a drastic change when we transition to Anna’s black-and-white dream. But the transition out of the dream is very striking, from the bloodied but black-and-white corpses to the shattered red tiles. Liv Ullmann’s eyes seem impossibly blue in some shots, reflecting her heightened and self-deceiving perception of the world. Andreas’ stained-glass windows create dramatic lighting effects, as though his house were designed to express the emotions that he cannot.

And finally to respond to something Rayon Vert said about the ending:
Rayon Vert wrote:I noticed for the first time that when at the end he grabs the wheel of the car that Anna’s driving and causes a near accident, one of the quick cuts is to a mirror ornament, a teddy bear twisting and being “strangled” by the string around its neck, that links to the earlier twisting and strangled dog in the film
I think Anna tries to drive the car off the road, and Andreas grabs the wheel (just as his namesake did before him) to stop her. The implication (I think...) is that she killed her husband and son to avoid ‘losing’ them, and has now tried to do the same to Andreas, and (I think) that this is why she came to pick him up from the burning stable.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman, 1969)

#4 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun May 30, 2021 2:17 pm

Sloper wrote:
Sun May 30, 2021 10:35 am
We can reject its pessimism about humanity and, like Ullmann or Andersson, choose to feel sympathy for these flawed characters or imagine happier endings for them once they escape Bergman’s clutches. On the other hand, we can also see a layer of irony compromising any moments of hope. When Andersson talks about Eva being redeemed and ‘blessed’ after her (imagined) attempted suicide, she is suddenly bathed in celestial sunlight, and the moment plays out like a happy accident that was ‘left in’… But we know it wasn’t an accident, partly because of the clues that mark these as scripted moments, but also because we then see the same redeeming sunlight bathing Johan following his suicide. Again, we don’t have to react cynically to these effects just because they are pointedly artificial – but personally I do get a cynical vibe from them.

All of which is to say that, no, I don’t see this as a very empathic or hopeful film, and I read it in the same despairing way as Rayon Vert (in the post quoted above). The people – characters and actors – are just like any of the other objects, tools, and tricks being toyed with by the film-maker, all in service of a defiantly unedifying tale. At times it appears as though we are being asked to feel for the characters and invest in their relationships, like in a ‘normal’ piece of fiction, but these connections are always scuppered. Why don’t we see the start of Andreas and Anna’s relationship, instead hearing about it second-hand from Eva, and then in a re-cap from the narrator? Why, having been thrust abruptly into the midst of this relationship, does it suddenly disintegrate for reasons that we can sort of infer but that haven’t really been made clear?

This is the main reason I don’t like this film very much, and why I like the previous films in the ‘island trilogy’ only slightly more. Bergman seems to be experimenting with a way of telling relationship-focused stories that perversely denies the audience any clear sense of progression or development, by leaving out significant moments or refusing to explain causes and motivations. I guess that’s an interesting thing to try and do, and I like that Bergman is always stretching himself, but overall I just feel like these three films are half-baked and unsuccessful experiments, albeit with lots of powerful and beautiful moments. I also feel like these are all things he did much better in other films, and on most days I would rather watch Persona or Scenes from a Marriage again.
I can appreciate that perspective, and I firmly admit that my use of the word "hope" was misplaced. Where this works for me against those other examples you mention, is that I see the fragmented Godardian edits and elisions of information to reflect the psychological chaos and overwhelming depression related to self-focus; that there's both a distracted hysteria and surrendered apathy blocking meditation on these moments. The characters are too wrapped up in trying and failing and becoming exhausted, angry, and despondent while addressing their own problems, that they miss these other opportunities to attend to another person or their relationship with them. I see the film as deeply- but challengingly- empathetic because, unlike many of Bergman's other works, he is not empathizing with a problem that has some tangible specific variable standing out (i.e. wrestling with the notion of God, marriage, identity through memory) but the scattered editing creates a whirlpool by which these characters cannot grasp onto any one of these signifiers to confront and engage with- yet all are affecting them.

The hope I refer to reminds me of a reframing of Dukkha, in that once we accept that life is full of suffering, we can find meaning starting from that point of zero. The shift is that these characters aren't able to accept their circumstances, but what Bergman so rightly understands for melancholic people is that we deviate between acceptance and despair fluidly. That we get to see any moments of contentment at all between two human beings in this film - and we do! - is a success scaled against the more glaring pain. Just because the connections are impermanent and cannot be maintained does not reflect absolute cynicism- that is, I don't think Bergman sees this as a determinist dichotomy, but a spectrum between the dark and the light. He also self-reflexively understands that we deviate to black-and-white thinking when things are bad or good, our scope narrows and we can't see beyond the myopic anguish pulsating our minds and hearts, and he infuses that too into this film. It's, in short, a cocktail of hope and hopelessness- hopelessness will inevitably win if we view this as a linear tale, or expect sustained progression, or see life as composed of only binary sets of meaning; but if we recognize psychological and philosophical fluidity, we can measure meaning to life as transcendent from palpable outcomes. If Johan and Anna repeat their dysfunctional behaviors for all eternity and never fully compromise their 'selves' to join in a union with another person that lasts in permanence, is that sad? Yeah, but it doesn't mean there's no room for small fleeting moments of hope in between. And that may just be the point- that "hope" for Bergman is a meaningful feeling, that is mutually exclusive in its value from the outcome of said hope.
Sloper wrote:
Sun May 30, 2021 10:35 am
Anyway, I read the title as referring to all five of the main characters (including Johan), to the condition of lonely despair that reality has imposed on them, and to the various ways in which they all try and deal with this. I think that’s what the film is about, just as Shame is about how we respond to the conflict and brutality that prevails in the world around us.
I agree with this, though the twist in this film- and why I believe it's such an uncomfortable experience- is that Bergman is choosing not to focus on how we channel pragmatic action into the 'response' to the problems, and rather how non-actions due to dysregulation haunt us, impeding our ability to produce- let alone conceive- of tangible steps to cope. This naturally encourages our projections as an audience to be frustrated by omitting what we expect from these studies, but by eliding growth and distinct corporeal objectives to relate to, Bergman exhibits perhaps his most boldly authentic portrait of what clinical depression really looks like, mirroring the abstract enigma of defining spirituality as well (which, perhaps, is why Anna must become Andreas' higher power, and why she elusively slips from this role so easily).
Sloper wrote:
Sun May 30, 2021 10:35 am
The interviews mark this whole film as a pessimistic space, in which Bergman and his collaborators ‘argue the case’ for loneliness as an inevitable and cyclical state. People are too flawed, deluded, weak, crazy, and/or callous to be able to sustain meaningful relationships with each other or themselves; they are always haunted by their past mistakes and fated to repeat them, staggering back and forth along the same miserable stretch of road until they do the rational thing and break down in despair. ‘This time his name was Andreas Winkelmann’, says Bergman over the final shot, as Andreas disintegrates into the grainy static of the excessively blown-up image. Like the photographer in Blow Up, these people are empty fictions invented to illustrate the fundamental emptiness of existence, and having served this function they vanish into the ether, along with the film itself.
This seems to be an intentional ambiguity- it's certainly pessimistic in the macro-panned exploitation of the sisyphean fatalism of mankind to remain on a hamster wheel that involves predominant hardship. Yet it's also validating that state with empathy. I read the ‘This time his name was Andreas Winkelmann’ to be both a reminder of his insignificance in the scheme of things, which can also be interpreted as a self-fulfilling prognosis of inevitable depersonalization, and a supreme authentication of his experience as intrinsically meaningful. Emphasizing his full name pronounces his worth (the first point of comparison that comes to mind is "His name was Robert Paulson" from Fight Club, where the use of a full name gives power to the person's importance rather than blending into the yellow pages of L.A.'s 'Pauls'). I think if Bergman really meant to only undercut his value, he would have stopped with 'Andreas'- a simple first name that holds no originality, unlike a full name, and is thus just another brick in the wall. Instead, Bergman is objectively providing that compassion to Andreas Winkelmann's struggle where he cannot do it himself.

Andreas Winkelmann is not a stand-in for all men, as "Andreas" may be, but he is a stand-in for Ingmar Bergman, you, me, all of us individually relating to these psychological barriers blocking our path to existential equilibrium. Bergman may be limited in his capacity for changing this state in fatal terms, but with the medium he can both concede the powerlessness he and we have, and that we all feel, to change- and recognize our inherent worth and experience as significant to us. We all need others to be objective parties, to 'be our eyes' sometimes, and Bergman does that here for Andreas Winkelmann. Andreas may not get to see it himself, but in our identification from afar- that final shot that frames him objectively from a distance after mostly intimate camerawork that brought us into his subjectivity, blended with his distress, before this moment- we can take a step back, sober ourselves to this disconnect, and be that objective party with Bergman, and for Andreas Winkelmann, and- for a brief instant before the film ends- acknowledge what we need from others and from ourselves to survive.

To me this signals a compromise of hopelessness and hopefulness, and all the possibilities in between on the scale that we may not be able to access when we see our lives in bifurcated terms, but that nonetheless exist. Just knowing that I'm not alone, or that opportunities are present to be seen if I just continue to push on, gives meaning to life when I'm depressed. This strategy of vague hope is a common mechanism for people struggling with depression to work through the pain and embrace a form of yielding existentialism, and it's the best Bergman can offer in his own self-reflective honesty. In "perversely denying the audience any clear sense of progression or development," Bergman is acknowledging that we are often refused the provisions we crave from God, but this offering of possibility for transient serenity is the nature of ‘belief’ or faith for the dejected. This humble confession that it may not be 'enough' is enough for me to feel validated for those times when I don't have the answer either.

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Re: The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman, 1969)

#5 Post by Drucker » Thu Jun 03, 2021 10:08 pm

Well posting after Sloper and TWBB is never not intimidating! I have been working my way very slowly through the Bergman set which I finally picked up last year and I've been jumping around. This film is dark and often hopeless. What's so enjoyable about the early Bergman works are that the films often find a way to bring a degree of levity even while centered on personal, emotional, and spiritual crises. No such thing here. Instead we get emotional and actual violence, attributable to nobody, but often focused on the after effect.

We don't know what Eva has Elis has done to make Eva feel like such a failure. In fact, Elis feels like he has done everything right, even forgiving an earlier affair, and checking on her when he is absent. As soon as we learn of Andreas' divorce, it was obvious that him and Anna were destined to form a relationship in the movie. As I think back about it, there's a degree to which Anna's desire to "not lose" her first husband and now Andreas (as Sloper points out above) is really an effort at control which the characters seem to rarely exercise. I found the characters to be incredibly submissive to what the environment gave them. Andreas didn't seem romantically interested in Eva, but he gives in to her advances. The friend of his who writes the suicide note claims he didn't fight back because he was too weak, but again, he didn't fight back. The film is littered with hopelessness, as the characters don't seem to actually do the work necessary to escape the hopelessness they are faced with. And what effort they do put in seems to be rearranging deck chairs, as they change their circumstances slightly or temporarily, but do not address the longing and heartbreak that is forcing them to move around.

I'm still working my way through Bergman's filmography, and while I recall that some of the later films of his I have been exposed to lack the humor and lightness of his earlier films, I was still somewhat surprised about how dark this one was. I was also a bit taken aback by some of the more experimental moments: the close-ups during the dinner party in particular, which linger on each character, I wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

Lastly: when Anna gives her monologue in close-up about her husband and the start of her relationship with Andreas, does she refer to a relationship she had with Elis? And refer to Andreas as her husband? It was super confusing but I could have sworn the names were purposely switched around during that section.

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Sloper
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Re: The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman, 1969)

#6 Post by Sloper » Sun Jun 13, 2021 7:23 am

therewillbeblus wrote:hopelessness will inevitably win if we view this as a linear tale, or expect sustained progression, or see life as composed of only binary sets of meaning; but if we recognize psychological and philosophical fluidity, we can measure meaning to life as transcendent from palpable outcomes.
That’s a very good point, and I like the more balanced perspective of your post – I often tend to read films in very linear terms, as working towards a definitive conclusion, but that’s not necessarily a good way to approach Bergman. All his films are variations on themes, with the same actors trying out different roles and attitudes just as Bergman himself does, and as you say those moments of connection and consolation are just as important as the moments of despair. Cries and Whispers makes for an interesting contrast here: it ‘tends towards’ a very bleak, alienated ending, but concludes by reminding us of the potential for connection and equilibrium. I feel like that’s the more common pattern in most of Bergman’s work.
Drucker wrote:As I think back about it, there's a degree to which Anna's desire to "not lose" her first husband and now Andreas (as Sloper points out above) is really an effort at control which the characters seem to rarely exercise. I found the characters to be incredibly submissive to what the environment gave them.
Yes, Anna’s death-drive is a rare example of decisive, positive action; and it fails in both cases, doesn’t it? The first time she succeeds in killing her family but not herself (perhaps the worst of all possible outcomes), the second she is prevented from crashing the car and then abandoned.

I think you’ve highlighted something really important about the role of action/inaction in Bergman’s films, and the extent to which passivity or vacillation drive his characters’ actions. In Shame, Liv Ullmann’s character says that she feels like they must be living in someone else’s dream, and wonders when the dreamer will ‘wake up and feel ashamed’. In a sense we are quite passive when we dream, submitting to the whims of our unconscious, which is why there is so much scope for ‘shameful’ content in dreams. And of course that character is trying to escape from any sense that she inhabits a reality in which her actions could have moral consequences – it must be a dream where things ‘just happen’, and it must be someone else’s dream. I’m not sure how to relate this to The Passion of Anna, or to Anna’s dream which seems to pick up where the ending of Shame left off, but it seems relevant in the light of your comments.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman, 1969)

#7 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jun 13, 2021 1:17 pm

Sloper wrote:
Sun Jun 13, 2021 7:23 am
Drucker wrote:As I think back about it, there's a degree to which Anna's desire to "not lose" her first husband and now Andreas (as Sloper points out above) is really an effort at control which the characters seem to rarely exercise. I found the characters to be incredibly submissive to what the environment gave them.
Yes, Anna’s death-drive is a rare example of decisive, positive action; and it fails in both cases, doesn’t it? The first time she succeeds in killing her family but not herself (perhaps the worst of all possible outcomes), the second she is prevented from crashing the car and then abandoned.

I think you’ve highlighted something really important about the role of action/inaction in Bergman’s films, and the extent to which passivity or vacillation drive his characters’ actions. In Shame, Liv Ullmann’s character says that she feels like they must be living in someone else’s dream, and wonders when the dreamer will ‘wake up and feel ashamed’. In a sense we are quite passive when we dream, submitting to the whims of our unconscious, which is why there is so much scope for ‘shameful’ content in dreams. And of course that character is trying to escape from any sense that she inhabits a reality in which her actions could have moral consequences – it must be a dream where things ‘just happen’, and it must be someone else’s dream. I’m not sure how to relate this to The Passion of Anna, or to Anna’s dream which seems to pick up where the ending of Shame left off, but it seems relevant in the light of your comments.
These are great points that I think highlight the layers of defense mechanisms- including those that we *think* are breaking free of other acknowledged defenses and/or "dreams." Bergman's characters issue or retreat from issuing control based on the vulnerability this kind of passionate agency exposes. Andreas certainly embraces a passive life of non-action out of fear, but Anna's attempts to control the situation around her are both ignorant and admirable, standing up to fear but also born from it. I often think that if a concrete meaning to life exists at all, it exists in the serenity prayer, which essentially asks us to consider where we can and cannot retain control in our lives (the answer being that we cannot control other people, places or things). This can be construed into abstract form though, because if one can control their actions, this leaves infinite possibilities.

Andreas seems to be embodying the attitude of Ullmann in Shame, surrendering to a world that's a dream where things "just happen," he cannot do anything about it, and won't try. Ullman seems to be doing the opposite- vying to exert power where she can, which Bergman acknowledges as necessary to be urgently 'alive' in a moment, but also paradoxically leads her into further blindness in the futility of her quest, especially when such a stance cannot balance with a humility in refusing to accept life on life's terms. In bringing these two opposing positions in one union, Anna and Andreas reflect one another's faults while also subscribing to the same energy, and ultimately the same fates. Going back to my previous post, Bergman's exposition on both characterizations as worthy observations for the audience allow us to first recognize, and then both challenge and validate these traits in ourselves from a safe distance, and also process how we may be able to find more balance than either character through this objective evaluation- which is all we can hope to do. Even if the outcome will be the same for us all, part of our journeys can be bettered; and it's no coincidence that Bergman is supplying this non-antidote prescription for improvement through the social experience of engaging with others (rather than retreating away like Andreas), whether that's with people in our own lives or watching these characters through a silver screen.

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