sweden, 1979, swedishEvery director who has ever been called an auteur should have to make a film like this about somewhere they lived.
INGMAR BERGMAN
Fårö Document 1979
This is the film I remember having seen many years ago and really appreciating. It didn’t diminish at all in a second viewing. If anything, my journey through Bergman’s filmography has only deepened my appreciation of what a relative oddity this is. Like most people I’m sad that we never got the promised Fårö Document 1989, but this will just have to suffice.
One of the unexpected benefits of watching this now was seeing the clips from the first film that he integrated, and the catch-up interviews with folks he had previously spoken with. Unsurprisingly, most of the kids lives had not gone how they expected them too. Some for the better, some for the worse, but I am reminded of that old Heraclitus quote “call no man happy until he’s dead”.
Every auteur, every artist really, should make something like this at some point in their career. It’s such a great look into the liminal space that they occupy. Torn between the world and their art. Additionally it kind of breathes some life into where they are coming from, more than Bergman probably intended really, and helps provide a solid foundation.
More than that, this is just a really lovely film. The sardonic Bergman is almost nowhere to be found here. In that sense it feels almost intimate, like we’re being let into the one happy part of his soul. For a director known for wrestling with demons that’s not a small thing. Can you imagine what an Antonioni might have done with the same brief?