Saraband

Marianne has not seen Johan for thirty years. One day she decides to visit him; he is old now and living alone in a house in the country. She arrives and stays. Nearby are Johan's son Henrik and his granddaughter Karin. Henrik does not speak to his father; there is an enmity between them going back years. Karin plays the cello and her father trains her; she wants to leave and he will not let her. Marianne is caught among the three and can intervene in almost nothing. Ingmar Bergman writes and directs. Liv Ullmann plays Marianne and Erland Josephson plays Johan. It is Bergman's last work and returns to the characters of Scenes from a Marriage from thirty years before. It was made for television and shot on high definition video; Bergman had stopped working on film. The narrative is divided into ten sections and each takes place between two people; the structure is deliberately built like chamber music. The matter it works at is the harm a father does his child, and the narrative follows it across two generations. Bergman had generally refused to return to his own characters; this work is the exception. The narrative offers reconciliation nowhere and the characters keep their hardness toward each other. Who it is for: viewers who like Bergman and two hander scene work. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, almost nothing happens, and the context is missing for anyone who does not know the earlier film.