Which BERGMAN FILM do you love the most?

Girish Kasaravalli
Though I saw Wild Strawberries as a student at FTII, Pune, in the early 70s, the film has stayed with me ever since. One of the consistent elements in all of Bergman’s films is an outward and an inward journey. The journey is a central metaphor that occurs in all his films. In Wild Strawberries too, while the protagonist Isaac Borg undertakes an outward journey to his university to receive an honorary doctorate, simultaneously he’s also shown undertaking an inward journey, which is a psychological reassessment of his success. Bergman beautifully juxtaposes Borg’s personal vision with his vision of the world, that is his failure in life vis-à-vis his success as a doctor. That kind of craftsmanship was typical to Bergman. While the flashback is used by many as a narrative technique to separate the past from the present, Bergman beautifully embeds the past in the present by conveying that the person undergoing the flashback is still in the present.

Goutam Ghose
There are so many scenes that come rushing back into the mind as one talks about Bergman that it is always going to be difficult to single out one sequence or film from his formidable oeuvre. For me, the dream sequence in Wild Strawberries ranks among the finest. The old professor remembers his relatives one by one. Bergman used time and space in such a manner that past and present could co-exist in the same frame. The ‘dance of death’ sequence featuring by silhouetted figures in The Seventh Seal is another of my favourites. That sequence influenced many filmmakers, including Satyajit Ray, who used the same effect in Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. Fanny and Alexander was fascinating because of the way in which Bergman brought back many of the elements that went into his earlier films, as if he were summing up his worldview in one grand swan song.

Kalpana Lajmi
I was introduced to Bergman’s films as a teenager through Alliance Française’s festivals as his films were rarely released in India. My favourites are The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Autumn Sonata and Fanny and Alexander. These films left a very deep impression on me.
What appealed to me in Wild Strawberries was his ability to narrate a story with mysticism. You see the protagonist, an old man, who goes back into time physically, by being actually in the present while undertaking a journey from his childhood and youth to old age. Gulzarsaab borrowed that structure in Mausam as seen with Sanjeev Kumar’s character. The technique in a way is contrasted in his last film Fanny and Alexander where you see the entire film through the eyes of a child.
The film also stands out because of its cinematography; it was the first time I was seeing a film shot entirely in candlelight. You can feel Bergman’s longing for familial togetherness and happiness in his films. Beneath that fabric of darkness, he tackled issues that exist in families but is never talked about like in Autumn Sonata, where you see a successful mother, who has achieved everything but not her daughter’s love and respect. Bergman belongs to that rare breed of filmmakers who created a school of cinema of their own without going through any trained experience.

Aditya Bhattacharya
You tend to appreciate Bergman better when you reach the autumn of your life. I have a long way to go before I get there and be inspired by his works, but he was an absolute favourite of my father (Basu Bhattacharya). Bergman’s influences can be seen in the way he tackled his relationship trilogy of Anubhav, Aavishkar and Grihapravesh. Personally, even more than The Seventh Seal the Bergman movie that’s impressed me the most was one of his later 1980s film From the Life of the Marionettes. I saw it at a time when my father and mother were going through a very critical period in their relationship and I was amazed that in spite of being set in another country and another culture how perfectly it reflected something that was going on in my family. I remember watching the film with a sense of wonderment at the way it read into the situations that make people drift apart. His treatment of relationships in the film was clean, dry and fat-free—Bergman never said a word more than what was necessary.