052: movies, movies, movies

bergman island, the whale, and the menu

source: bergmanisland.movie

There is pleasure. That’s what lies at the center of meaningful and honest art, even when its subject is the deep sorrow of being alive. There is pleasure. This seems to be the thesis of Bergman Island, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve. The film follows the journey of a filmmaker couple, Chris (played by Vicky Krieps) and her husband, Tony (Tim Roth) to Fårö, an island associated with the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman that has become a shrine to his life and work. As filmmakers who love and are inspired by Bergman’s work, Chris and Tony have come to the island to work on their future projects. Whereas Tony has a thick notebook filled with scrawls and doodles of story ideas, Chris struggles to figure out her project, scratching things out in her notebook. As she begins to get clearer picture of what she’s making and shares it with her husband, the film moves from the Chris’s reality into the reality of her film, the plot of which becomes the film we’re watching, with Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie playing the leads. Every part of Hansen-Løve’s film is beautiful, especially the scenes from Chris’s film. Well actually, not every part is beautiful. There are a few minutes that are not beautiful, that play out in muddy blue and gray tones. These are the few minutes of the film that depict a scene from one of Tony’s movies, a scene that plays before a panel on his work where he describes a time when the seemingly fraught nature of his life led him to make films where women were the central character. Another participant on the panel responds: “The women, they keep you in touch with reality…But at the same time, they are the ones who pull you into fiction.” Eyes (mine) roll.