Ingmar Bergman
The kettledrums roll and a stark chorus chants like it’s Carmina Burana; a raven hovers in a lowering sky; a Crusader knight washes up on a rocky shore alongside a chess board; a pale figure cloaked in black appears and announces, “I am Death.” The knight is unsurprised by the visitor, yet unwilling to embrace the inevitable. He challenges Death to a game of chess, knowing that even if he wins, he will ultimately lose.
Thus opens Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957), emblematic of European art house films for being pregnant with symbolism, heavy with meaning, and utterly lacking in car chases and explosions. Bergman was one of the leading figures of Swedish cinema, and Sweden is the international focus at this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival. MFF’s Passport: Sweden program features seven films, six of them contemporary, plus that enduring cinematic touchstone of Nordic gloom, The Seventh Seal.
Each year, the multi-week MFF presents hundreds of feature, documentary and short films from all across the world while highlighting the cinema of a particular nation. “We always tried to secure a Scandinavian country,” says MFF Executive Director Jonathan Jackson. “I think they have such an original sense of style—the films are approachable in content. The comedies have a wicked sense of humor. They are usually well photographed, often darker studies of the human experience—of friendship and family.”
One of the surprises in programming Passport: Sweden was that women directed all six of the contemporary films. “A wave of contemporary female filmmakers is coming out of Sweden,” says MFF’s Programming Manager Jaclyn O’Grady. She adds that Sweden recently introduced a new rating system, the Bechdel test. For a high Bechdel rating, a film must feature at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. Most Hollywood movies flunk the test, but many Swedish films rank high.
Few contemporary Swedish films bear the Bergman stamp. According to Ursula Lindqvist, film professor at Gustavus Adolphus College, “The Swedish filmmakers who have enjoyed the most global success over the past decade—Roy Andersson, Ruben Östlund, Gabriela Pichler and Anna Odell—have irreverent and intermedial filmmaking styles that are the polar opposite of the Bergman classics we all know.” Lindqvist will be in town for MFF speaking on contemporary Swedish film at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 26 at Kenilworth Square East, 1916 E. Kenilworth Place, Room 620.
“Swedish filmmakers today, regardless of their personal regard for Bergman’s films, appreciate the lasting structural contributions he has made on behalf of Swedish cinema—carving out a global path for Swedish film, building up critical infrastructures for filmmaker training and public funding in Sweden, and leaving behind an entire archive of his work materials,” Lindqvist continues. “I believe that Swedish filmmakers today view these institutional legacies as the most meaningful for their own work. But no one is trying to make films like Bergman did. They want to create their own legacies, and hopefully there is finally more space opening up internationally for that.”
User’s Guide to Passport: Sweden
Eat Sleep Die
Saturday, Sept. 26, Fox-Bay Cinema; Friday, Oct. 2, Oriental Theatre
When Rasa, a young immigrant, is laid off from her job in a failing factory, she must juggle searching for work with caring for her elderly father in a working-class story that crosses all boundaries. Directed by Gabriela Pichler.
Ego
Saturday, Sept. 26, Fox-Bay Cinema; Monday, Sept. 28, Avalon Theater; Wednesday, Sept. 30, Oriental Theatre
Sebastian is leading a glamorous life of expensive shops, nightclubs and reckless sexuality when a freak accident leaves him blind, angry and in need of reevaluating his values. Directed by Lisa James Larsson.
Hallahalla
Sunday, Sept. 27, Avalon Theater; Monday, Sept. 28 and Thursday, Oct. 1, Downer Theatre; Friday, Oct. 2, Fox-Bay Cinema
In this perky comedy that breaks the stereotype for Swedish films, Disa, 40-something and dumped by her husband for a younger woman, takes up martial arts as a way of escaping her midlife rut. Directed by Maria Blom.
Hotell
Thursday, Oct. 1, Fox-Bay Cinema; Sunday, Oct. 4, Oriental Theatre; Tuesday, Oct. 6, Downer Theatre
Rising international actress Alicia Vikander stars as a woman who hates her reality and wants to be someone else—somewhere else in this comedy of group therapy. Directed by Lisa Langseth.
My Skinny Sister
Sunday, Sept. 27, Fox-Bay Cinema; Wednesday, Sept. 30, Avalon Theater; Monday, Oct. 5, Oriental Theatre
Overweight adolescent Stella discovers that her role model and beautiful older sister Katja has an eating disorder in this closely observed film about emotional intimacy and conflict between siblings. Directed by Susanna Lenken.
A Separation
Monday, Sept. 28, Downer Theatre; Tuesday, Sept. 29, Times Cinema; Tuesday, Oct. 6, Avalon Theater
Life becomes art as the director assembles home movies from the parents’ divorce—a film Bergman might have made had he lived long enough. Directed by Karin Ekberg.
The Seventh Seal
Sunday, Oct. 4, Oriental Theatre
Set in medieval Sweden, this classic of European cinema concerns a knight who returns from the Crusades to find a land stricken by plague, madness and death. Directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Stockholm Stories
Friday Sept. 25, Downer Theatre; Tuesday, Sept. 29, Oriental Theatre; Thursday, Oct. 8, Times Cinema
In interlocking stories set in Sweden’s capital, five lonely people weave in and out of each other’s lives during a rainy week in early winter. Directed by Karin Fahlen.
