There is a chasm between emotion and sentimentality.

Autumn Sonata
Ingmar Bergman 1978 Sweden
Starring: Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Bergman, Lena Nyman, Halvar Björk, Erland Josephson, Gunnar Björnstrand


For many years Ingmar Bergman has been considered one of the best and most accomplished directors of all time but I have to admit that when I first saw one or two of what I now know to be his lesser works I wasn't that impressed. It was only later when I saw Autumn Sonata that I thought "Ah, so this is why he's so well respected". I'd even go so far as to say that this is his best film - or at least the best I've seen, his back catalogue is after all massive - and, as with a lot of Bergman, it's a simple set-up, albeit one handled with panache and creativity. Even the opening moments with Halvar Björk's devoted husband immediately breaking the fourth wall and introducing us to his wife as she moves about in the background are inspired as he informs us that he sometimes watches his wife without her knowledge setting the tone for numerous scenes where it almost feels that we're intruding. Bergman further extends this idea by repeatedly using fast cuts, often into the middle of scenes as if interrupting them silently. The narrative is pretty basic too - Ingrid Bergman's self-obsessed concert pianist Charlotte going to stay with her outwardly gentle and nervy but inwardly stricken daughter Eva (played with such astonishing rawness by Liv Ullman that the word barely seems appropriate) after an estrangement of seven years. It's an apt concept seeing as this was Ingrid's first film back in her native Sweden after a period of estrangement from (and later a return to) Hollywood following her affair with the director Roberto Rossellini. She's brilliant here by the way, her Charlotte chain-smoking, feasting on sleeping pills, talking to herself and anguished over the news that the sick daughter she had institutionalised is now living with and being cared for by Eva. In one scene she watches Eva play the piano and is almost in tears, every note affecting her like her skin being sliced open. She then takes over, showing Eva how it should be played as Eva stares at her for a little too long, full of disgust and loathing, the stare never being met. It's an idea that's built with a sense of foreboding until the mind-blowing central 30+ minute discussion between the two, again viewed clandestinely by Björk's Viktor and psychologically affecting Lena Nyman's breathtakingly played other daughter Helena. It's terrifyingly stark and emotional, Eva's rage at her mother's abandonment and mistreatment of both her and her sister finally fully unbridled. Indeed, it's as if she can hold it back no longer. There are flashes of it throughout the film with Eva sniping and describing Charlotte's insomnia as "nature's way of making her bearable" but never to this level. It's a crescendo worthy of the preludes both play at different points and one that renders the film incomparable. Honestly, I don't know if all that I've said can even begin to describe how exceptional it really is, it's just something you have to see and experience.