Friday, February 21, 1997
BOOK:
Screenwriter-director Ingmar Bergman releases his fifth novelBy
Brandon Wilson
Daily Bruin Staff
When he announced his retirement from film making more than 10
years ago, it may have appeared to the world that Ingmar Bergman
was slowing down. Not likely. The Swedish screenwriter-director and
novelist has just released his fifth book, yet another delve into
the deteriorating relationship of his parents, entitled "Private
Confessions."
No one could have blamed him if his plan was to take it easy,
because the body of work Bergman has put on film alone is an
enduring monument to his brilliance as a writer and director. His
final big screen effort "Fanny and Alexander," (1982) a
semiautobiographical bittersweet look at childhood, crowned most
critics’ top 10 of the decade list, and was seen as the perfect
summation to his long and brilliant career.
But Bergman has more in mind for his retirement than sitting
around sipping cognac and reading Kierkegaard. He has continued his
career as a world-class stage director, and now, as he closes in on
his 79th birthday this summer, Bergman can also add novelist to his
already overloaded resume.
The director’s literary oeuvre began with two autobiographical
volumes, "The Magic Lantern," about his early years, and "Images:
My Life in Film." After exhausting his own exploits, the director
has turned his sights backward to chronicle the tumultuous
relationship of his parents. Starting with "The Best Intentions"
and continuing with "Sunday’s Children" the filmmaker/man of the
theater turned to a new medium to tell the story of his parents,
Henrik Bergman and Anna Akerblom. Their tempestuous and
obstacle-laden courtship made up "The Best Intentions" and as their
marriage began to get rocky, Bergman writes of them and of his own
relationship with his father then (with Ingmar as an 8-year-old
called Pu) and now (as his father lays dying in 1960’s) in
"Sunday’s Children."
Both novels were later turned into screenplays by Bergman which
were then taken up by fearless directors whose unenviable task was
to take the work of a master and realize it without disappointing
his legion of admirers (or losing their own artistic voice) in the
process. Director Bille August rose to the challenge and earned a
Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for "The Best Intentions," and
Bergman’s son Daniel sought to fill his father’s immense place in
directing "Sunday Children."
Set mostly in the 1920s, "Private Confessions" is something of a
tribute by Bergman to his headstrong and independent mother, the
parent Bergman clearly has more unambivalent ardor for. Whereas
"Sunday’s Children" was Henrik’s book, Anna is the focus this time
as she finds refuge from the nearly unendurable misery her loveless
marriage to clergyman Henrik has become. For those who have been
following Bergman’s Parental Chronicles, the piteous loathing Anna
comes to feel for her stern martinet of a husband stands in stark
contrast to the couple as seen in "The Best Intentions," where
everyone, especially Anna’s mother, tried to keep them apart. In
"Intentions," they battled fiercely for each other, but sadly the
sweet success in winning one another has long since been forgotten
by the time "Private Confessions" takes place.
Like many literary heroines before her, (starting with Emma
Bovary) Anna seeks refuge from her marriage in the arms of another;
in this case the arms of a young seminary student and friend of her
husband’s, named Tomas. Anna experiences a liberation (albeit
temporary) of the spirit and sexual satisfaction unknown to her
before, but guilt and the social forces around her that demand
propriety and loyalty close in on the lovers and put Anna’s resolve
to the test.
Over 20 years ago, Bergman proved that the domestic melodrama
created by people trapped in a loveless or troubled marriage was an
arena in which he was master. His "Scenes From A Marriage" (1974)
solidified his reputation. He brings those considerable powers to
bear on his own parents and excavates all the nooks of their
complex relationship with the correct balance of distance,
objectivity and compassion.
Structured into five conversations plus one epilogue/prologue,
"Private Confessions" opens with Anna’s confession to her childhood
clergyman of her affair, which leads to her telling her husband and
the aftermath of that disclosure. Jumping back through time, we
then see the lovers stealing away with a little help from a friend
of Anna’s. The book makes two more jumps: one 10 years ahead to the
1930s and another back to 1907, creating a continuum in which Anna
endures her indiscretion and gleans a bit of wisdom from it
all.
As a novelist, Bergman still comes across as what he truly is: a
consummate director. Whereas most would simply say "Anna looks at
him," Bergman writes "Anna is looking at him" as though she were
watching actors in a rehearsal and the novel is simply
transcription in his director’s handbook.
The visual sense remains and he describes every new setting with
the eye that served him so well during his legendary collaborations
with cinematographer Sven Nykvist. One of the more interesting
features of Bergman the Novelist is how he retains that visual
quality on his own in an inherently less visual medium.
Bergman rarely takes advantage of his ability in literature to
penetrate the exteriors of his characters and write their internal
monologue. Perhaps a lifetime of trying to bring out the internal
through the external is a lesson hard to forget for Bergman, but he
does use it to chart the emotional paralysis that cripples both
Anna and her mother from truly reaching out to one another (a
particularly Scandinavian trait which along with guilt and angst,
Bergman has built his career on).
It’s doubtful that Bergman’s literary work will be as
groundbreaking in the world of letters as his films have been in
the world of cinema, but to see a man who has mastered one art form
take up another at so late an age is remarkable. For Bergman fans,
"Private Confessions" is yet another exploration by Bergman of his
own obsessions and how they may have been born, like himself, from
his own parents. For non-Bergmanians, "Private Confessions" is
another fine addition to the gallery of literary women torn between
their heart’s desire, and the place in which society has trapped
them.