Wild Strawberries

In Brief: Ingmar Bergman was just 40 when he made Wild Strawberries, but he shows much of himself in the character of 78-year-old Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström). The very fact that he cast filmmaker Sjöström — a pioneer in Swedish film who had an impressive career in Hollywood silent film as Victor Seastrom — is telling, as is the framing story about Borg traveling to receive an honorary degree (Bergman, himself, was just then becoming truly lionized on an international level). All Bergman films are personal, but this one seems especially so. Bergman has here crafted a supremely reflective work in which an old man searches for self-realization through the present, the past and even the tenuous future. It’s poetic and richly elegant — and sometimes playful (but don’t tell anyone, because lots of people think of Bergman as stupefyingly serious). It also manages to be all these things in the space of 91 minutes. Think about that the next time you sit down to the bloated pretentiousness that all too often passes for profundity these days. This excerpt was taken from a review by Ken Hanke published on Aug. 8, 2007.