Saturday, January 23, 2010

A Written Review: Wild Strawberries


I was very surprised that I had never seen, or even heard of the film Wild Strawberries. While I can’t say I’ve seen much of Bergman’s work outside of The Seventh Seal I have always been meaning to dig further into his work, so to speak. Bergman’s dreamlike style and absolute grasp of complex human emotions is something that’s always fascinated me. This is especially true in his film Wild Strawberries.
Wild Strawberries is one of the better looking black and white films I’ve seen. Bergman’s incredible use of subtle shadows was something I loved. He used them to texture the scene as opposed to making them take over the scene as is more commonly done in the German expressionistic work such as Nosferatu and M. I love the way the shadows were used to specifically when the character of Isak was feeling distraught (especially during the dream sequences).
Also, Bergman’s themes and story pieces were extremely complicated. Whether it was the way Bergman used the journey of the three young friends starting out life without a care in the world to show Isak’s coming to a close or seeing the disintegration of his child’s marriage, Bergman knew how to make his audiences think and think hard.
All-in-all, I think Bergman’s film is absolutely beautiful. From his bizarre dream and flashback scenes to his fantastic road-trip type story Wild Strawberries is a film that anyone who loves film should see.

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