In 1982 after the completion of Bergman’s Magnus Opus Fanny and Alexander, the great Swedish film maker retired from the world of cinema never to return to the medium as a director. The reality is that “retirement” did not mean the same thing to Bergman that it does to you or I, as he went on to direct a number of TV Movies and short films beginning less than a year after the release of Fanny and Alexander. The most famous of which are After the Rehearsal (1984), The Image Makers (2000) and his final production as director Saraband (2003); so over the next twenty-one years of Bergman’s life he was still working. As a writer however Bergman was even more prolific, not only scribing the TV Movies and short films that he was directing, but also other projects for other directors, including his former collaborator Liv Ulllman who directed Faithless (2000) and his son Daniel Bergman who directed Sunday’s Children (1992) which acts as an unofficial follow-up to The Best Intentions directed by Billie August and released in the same year. Faithless, Sunday’s Children and The Best Intentions are directly autobiographical projects about Bergman and his family; although much of Bergman’s work is semi-autobiographical it is a curious choice for Bergman to leave three of his most personal films to other directors, perhaps a deliberate decision with the hopes of imparting some objectivity on the proceedings which he might have been unable to provide himself. Sunday’s Children (which is currently unavailable on DVD) centres on childhood memories of his parents (specifically his father) from when Bergman was just eight years old. The Best Intentions however takes place significantly earlier and examines the first ten years of his mother and father’s relationship, starting at their first meeting and concluding as Bergman rests unborn in his mother’s womb. Much of what is shown on screen is what Bergman had learnt from his parents about the early years of their relationship and whilst this maybe a depiction of two individuals that Bergman knew extremely well, it is from a time when Bergman had no direct experience of their personalities. The Best Intentions is a manifestation of the individuals desires to understand where they came from, as children we rarely comprehend the complexities of romantic relationships and certainly do not consider how our parents met or how their courtship began, as we get older and experience love, partnership and parenthood, we mature enough to realise that our own parents once faced the same joys and sorrows years earlier. To understand our parents is to some extent to understand ourselves, what motivated our own conception, what obstacles were overcome and how we arrived at the place we are today. Every individual’s existence is something of a small miracle when we consider how many decisions and random events were waiting to prevent our parents ever coming together. Every choice and every mistake your parents made lead to your conception, beyond this there are outside factors that play a part, an offer from a friend, a job in a new town, a random collision of events all conspired to make your life possible. To use a personal anecdote: just after World War II my Grandfather Eric Dawson was conscripted into the army at the age of eighteen, he drove a medical truck in Palestine, one day a group of soldiers riding in a jeep decided my Grandfather was driving too slow and decided to over take him, a short distance up the road their vehicle was struck by a landmine and all of the men traveling in the jeep died in the explosion. Had the driver of that jeep not overtaken my Grandfathers truck, he would in all probability have been killed in the blast, as a consequence my father would not have been born and thus I would not have been born, and you wouldn’t be reading this article. This is of course an extreme example to illustrate my point, but as The Best Intentions concludes with Bergman’s conception we can then see that the logical strain of the film is a cataloging of events which lead to his birth. The film prompts a questioning of causality, had the events of this film not taken place than Bergman would not exist, the film The Best Intentions would not exist and once again you would not be reading this article as there would be nothing for me to write about. To paraphrase Monty Python’s Meaning of Life: “remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure, how amazingly unlikely it is that you were ever born”.
The Best Intentions was originally written and produced as a Mini-series which ran for six hours; this was subsequently cut down to three hours for the theatrical release. It must be stressed than the film functions perfectly with half the length and it does so because of the story’s structure. Similar to Bergman’s earlier film Scenes From a Marriage (1973) which was also derived from an mini-series and cut down from five hours to three. Scenes From a Marriage maintained the overall arc of the central couple’s relationship, played out through semi-episodic sections. In both cases each episode of the mini-series deals with different stages of the relationship, but the overall focus of the story is still the central couple. Set at the turn of the 20th Centaury from 1909 to 1918, The Best Intentions centres on Henrik (Samuel Fröler) and Anna (Pernilla August); beginning with their courtship, Henrik is a poor pastor and is engaged to an older woman, he falls in love with Anna but tries to resist her, he fails and gives into temptation, but then promises to break off his current engagement so that he can be with her. When he fails to break-up with his spouse Anna’s mother (Ghita Nørby) intervenes, much to the disapproval of Anna’s father (Max von Sydow). As the film continues the pair are eventually wed and move to a small town in the North where Anna becomes increasingly unhappy with the local people and Henrik incurs the wrath of a local business leader; the Queen of Sweden offers Henrik a position working in Stockholm but Henrik turns the offer down in act of class based recalcitrance, but outwardly spins his motives so that it appears that he doesn’t want to abandon his flock in their time of need. This once again places their relationship in jeopardy, and their first born child’s life is endangered by their staying put. The Best Intentions is potentially unfocused, much of the first act sets us up for a catastrophic love-triangle, agitated by meddling parental influence, but this plot strand is unexpectedly and resolutely concluded early on (although certain elements such as Anna’s underlying snobbishness towards Henrik’s waitress fiancé will return later in the story). Bergman’s script works because of how organically the flow of events are allowed to occur, we never feel as if we’ve reached the end of one episode and have begun another. The passage of time is also conveyed quite convincingly through subtle changes in Henrik and Anna’s appearance, adding to the sense that we are witnessing the trials and tribulations of a young couple as they begin a family, rather than a more traditionally passionate and sex obsessed relationship drama which place infidelity at its core. Infidelity does play a part, but only a small part in a much wider dramatic canvas. The true strength of the film is in its individual scenes; a perfectly friendly conversation can develop into a full blown argument which threatens to destroy their relationship and then back to tentative reconciliation within a single, sustained scene, in one-room, lasting all of ten minutes. The usual clichés are absent here, the resolution of the love triangle is but one example where Bergman’s script chooses not to opt for a painful break-up scene between Henrik and his lover, but instead shows the lover meeting with Anna and effectively giving Henrik to her, knowing that Henrik loves Anna but can never act on this love because she is in the way. This bitter sweet scene is beautifully played by the performers, but its excellence is re-enforced by the fact that Anna doesn’t just rush into the arms of Henrik, their reconciliation takes a bit of time. Bergman presents neither his mother nor his father in a particularly flattering life, Henrik is portrayed as an egotist who sits quite happily in judgment of others when his own behavior is often quite despicable, a man who will happy act in his own self-interest but then manipulate the presentation of these actions so that it appears he’s acting in good conscience. Anna is a little more sympathetic, but with an affluent family and upbringing she never seems completely comfortable with Henrik’s need for impoverishment, she wants the finer things in life and Henrik often derides her as “spoilt”. It is a testament to Fröler and August’s performances and Bergman’s skills as a writer that we stick with Henrik and Anna for all one-hundred and eighty minutes of this film despite the characters flaws. No one individual is truly an antagonist or protagonist, even Anna’s meddling mother is shown to have her daughter’s best interests at heart. The films title is perfectly apt for the content of the film as every character has “the best of intentions”, where Bergman’s writing excels is in perverting these intentions into conflict and pain.
The production values are very high and its origins on television are not in slightest bit apparent: the costume design, the sets and the locations are all period perfect and a lot of time has gone into re-creating early 1900’s Sweden, ultilising parts of this beautiful county like the centre of Stockholm, areas which Bergman rarely photographed in any of his post-1940’s work. Jörgen Persson’s cinematography is stunning, he has a very different visual sensibility to Bergman’s long-time collaborator Sven Nykvist, Persson’s work is more subdued and less stylised but still impressive, especially some scenes which take place during the “magic hour”, the deep shadows and defused light reminding more of Terrence Malick than Ingmar Bergman. Of course we must be careful to remember that this is not a Bergman film and to endow Bergman with all the credit for this truly excellent picture would be grossly unfair. Director Billie August has the unenviable task of directing a script written by a film maker whose reputation eclipses almost every other director on the planet. But it’s fair to say that Bergman could scarcely have done a better job himself. August’s work on this film is almost faultless, but more impressive is that he manages to maintain his own directorial voice and vision. This is not a Bergman film, an obvious example of where the directors differ is in the use of music, which is one area where August wanders a little too close to sentimentality and only just manages to stay on the right side. There are repeated themes that are used several times each throughout the film, by the third or forth time we hear a piece of music it does become a tad irksome (but I put this flaw down to it’s mini-series origins, where naturally the director would have used the same music from episode to episode with no qualms). But the music is rarely used to underscore an emotional scene or to overtly manipulate the audience’s responses to the material. August’s work is stately and immaculate, never showy or eccentric, he allows individual scenes (and the film as a whole) the space to breathe, this space is very important as it gives us time to really get to know Henrik and Anna Bergman. It’s no surprise that the film won Billie August the Golden Palm at the Canne Film Festival as this very deliberate and precise film is an extremely watchable and thought-provoking portrait of marriage.
M.Dawson
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