“Autumn Sonata” Review: The Warm Interrogation of a Cold Relationship

Cinema’s iconic Bergman’s finally collaborate in a painful look at one of life’s should-be loving relationships.

Ingmar Bergman’s intimately painful filmography never fails to capture the complications in life’s most essential relationships. The director has proven himself a master at using intimacy in a subversive manner as a filmic device. For Bergman, emotional proximity is a vehicle for developing fear and tension in a film’s atmosphere, along with acting as the launching pad for realizations about painful pasts in his narratives that are void of the typical “drama” that entices mainstream audiences. Instead, Bergman’s films remain close to their subjects to explore nuanced internal conflicts that inform characters and their greater dynamics with the rest of a film’s cast. Autumn Sonata, Bergman’s collaboration with legendary actresses Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullman, is one of the director’s greatest examples of this ability to weaponize intimacy into a tool for evoking the opposite sensation within viewers. With once in a lifetime performances and a sophisticated camera, Bergman once again exposes the tangled web of emotions and unsaid conflicts beneath what should be a loving relationship. Instead, Autumn Sonata painfully examines the torturous pairing of a mother and daughter that society expects to present as one of life’s impenetrable bonds, but in reality, is riddled with cultural and social taboos that uproots the supposed comfort of family.

Autumn Sonata is a film that acts like a stage-play. At a brisk 90 minutes and consisting primarily of dueling monologues, Autumn Sonata is a one act show in form,as well as aesthetic. Bergman and Director of Photography Sven Nykvist submit characters to entrapping close-up’s that physically force two opposing characters into the same frame with awkward but impressive compositions. Impressive, because, like many of Bergman’s films, a viewer can detect the intentionality behind creative decisions that at first seem confounding, but are later revealed to be calculated techniques to affectively enhance elements in later scenes. A lesser cinematographer would make every shot in a given film as picturesque as possible, which Autumn Sonata proves it is certainly capable of doing. In fact, what enhances the “stage-play” form, which in turn enhances the intimate feeling that strengthens the film’s themes, are the unique cutaways to clearly staged and beautifully constructed renditions of character’s memories. Further creative choices enhance the warm, intimate atmosphere that is quickly converted to chillingly claustrophobic. A warm color palette is enhanced by spectacular lighting, which contradicts the coldness that freezes the relationship between the lead characters. All of these intentional elements make the home feel almost like a doll-house with an idyllic family that could be picked up and played with in order to destroy the imaginary life these characters try to uphold. Meaning, Autumn Sonata proves that Bergman’s camera dares to delve beneath the surface to reveal what character’s would never admit, and as a result, enhances the thematic trenches the film’s script dares to enter.

If the camera visually interrogates the shallow appearance of a happy family, the script utterly rips that image to shreds. Like the cinematography, Autumn Sonata constructs an image of congeniality between its lead members through representations of family and how they “should” act being underscored by glimpses of emotional trauma that build until exploding in the film’s emotionally affecting climax. That is to say, the script operates in what I find to be a similar way to the cinematography: establishing the ground work.

The film follows Eva, the wife of a village pastor, reconciling with her estranged mother, Charlotte, after seven years of separation. A talented but eccentric and aging pianist, Charolette at first appears singularly two-faced. At this point, audiences are familiar with the elderly member of the social elite defined by their condescension and inability to move on. Similarly, Eva is but a door-mat to her mother’s eclectic personality and subtle jabs at every insecurity. However, as the film develops, and as both character’s are reminded of why they’ve spent the past seven years apart, the warring parties are thematically enhanced and further developed through what proves itself to be a truly poetic script. At times, one can detect the constraints of only having a few main characters in an isolated location - Charolette consistently explicates her feelings in private for the audience to hear, and these overt declarations initially feel out of place for what feels like such an intentionally crafted film. Yet, these bumps in dialogue, while at times affecting the pacing by providing the audience with direct answers instead of intriguing them with fleeting glimpses at one’s true emotions, are again proven to be apart of the film’s intentional construction. Autumn Sonata develops a language of pained acceptance, with both the script and performances being laced with powerful ambivalence. Poetic dialogue let’s itself be heard in the film’s most climactic moments, where characters reveal their deepest secrets in lines that make one’s ear’s cry instead of bleed, the melancholy laced in the words more powerful than any overt monologue that came before.

The camera and script work most effectively together in the film’s powerful climax, where Charolette and Eva have the confrontation the film has been building towards for over an hour. Here, the camera is at its tightest framing, the script is at its most painfully elegant and poignant, and thus, this is where the film reaches its maximum thematic potential. Viewers are constantly learning more about the characters and their contradicting feelings towards one another, explicated through staged flashbacks that are visually warm to juxtapose the cold, static presentation and content of these memories. As a result, viewers are consistently wondering as to which character is telling the truth, which feelings are more “valid,” and which perspective to align with. This duality is only properly understood by audiences because of the actor’s unbridled talent and capability to present characters as believable two-faced, in pain, and desperate. The cinematography emphasizes the proximity between characters, thus placing extra emphasis on performances that, in their effectiveness, work to convince viewers of character’s complexities.

While I believe this attempt at examining both parties equally is ultimately successful, at times Charolette is admittedly presented as singularly antagonistic, and as such, the ending struggles to properly interrogate both characters and alter audience’s perspectives that have previously been established by the film’s presentation. However, I found the film’s cyclical structure coalesces the various ideas introduced in Bergman’s thematic web. While viewers may be upset that after such a tumultuous climax that Eva so overtly rededicates herself to her mother’s approval and happiness, I find this to be exactly the point Bergman attempts to convey. Family is complicated; it is a confounding concept to imagine average people living together and not developing some unhealthy behaviors and attitudes towards the other. In a sense, Autumn Sonata ends as a painfully realistic tragedy because of how realistic it feels. As in life, the destructive cycle of reconciliation is infinitely repeated in the hopes of finally winning over the people society claims are the most important in our lives, even when they are simultaneously the most destructive.