Musicians are celebrated for pouring their emotions into their music. Saraband, directed by eighty-six-year-old Ingmar Bergmann, goes behind the orchestra pit to view those emotions. The film has subtitled acts and could just as easily be performed on stage as on screen, though the actual origin of the film is a broadcast on Swedish television. In the Prolog, Marianne (played by Liv Ulmann), a lawyer aged 63, sits in front of a table of photographs and talks to the camera about various persons whom filmviewers are to meet later. The remaining film is divided into acts: (1) Marianne puts her plan into action, (2) Almost a week has gone by, (3) About Anna, (4) A week or so later, (5) Bach, (6) An offer, (7) The letter from Anna, (8) Saraband, (9) Crucial moment, (10) The hour before dawn. Then there is an Epilog in which Marianne, in front of the same table of photographs, explains what happened next. The acts takes place in the summerhouse of her first husband, Johan (played by Erland Josephson), a retired music professor aged 86 as well as at a guesthouse on the property where his sixty-two-year-old son Henrik (played by Börje Ahlstedt), a cellist who has taken up residence with his sixteen-year-old daughter Karin (played by Julia Dufvenius). Henrik is tutoring Karin to play the cello for a forthcoming audition. Each pair of characters has a chance to interact separately during the film. Marianne and Johan divorced some thirty-two years earlier when she could not accept his compulsive infidelity, but he retired after coming into a sizeable inheritance in the meantime, and she is evidently curious to see him in case he is near death. Although she learns that he is aging gracefully and may have more time left that she thought, she remains for the summer. Two years earlier, Henrik's spouse Anna died, and neither he nor Karin have entirely recovered from her absence; her photo haunts them. Johan never liked his weak son, and the two have not been on good terms since his youth; the most pathetic encounter is one in which Johan shows contempt for his son. Heart-to-heart dialog drives the film, and filmviewers learn of their clumsy interpersonal skills, which brought on traumas over the years. Marianne evidently is motivated by curiosity and enjoys a summer with Johan and vice versa. Karin, who is talented, is contemplating a career in music, but Henrik fears that he will be spend the rest of his life alone, first losing his spouse to ill health and soon his daughter who is pursuing a career in music. At one point, Henrik asks his father for 890,000 kroner to buy her a special cello, perhaps knowing that his father will turn him down, as he already owes him 200,000. Meanwhile, a famous Russian conductor has invited Karin to enroll in a conservatory in Finland; Henrik has refused to respond to the invitation, so the conductor has written Johan, who in turn reveals the offer to Karin. A letter from Anna, written on her deathbed, predicts that Henrik will be unable to cope with life after her death unless he can live with Karin. In Act 8, Karin reveals her decision about a career, and she agrees to his invitation to play a Bach saraband. The rest is perhaps predictable. If Bergmann is trying to convey the unnecessary tragedies wrought by the austerity of Swedish culture, he has succeeded. MH
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