Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302641875
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 630264187X
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Languages: Array
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Release Date: 2000-10-03
Running Time: 103
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: 1968-12-23

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great film on war
Comment: I should no longer be surprised when critics miss the most obvious things in works of art, because they are human beings, and the vast majority of human beings are lazy by nature. That said, the simplistic notion that Ingmar Bergman's great 1968 film Shame (or Skammen) is merely an anti-war film does a great deal of damage to the reputation of this very complex, and highly nuanced, film. Compared to its more filmically showoffy predecessors, Persona and Hour Of The Wolf, Shame is seemingly a more classic film, in terms of narrative. But, the key word is seemingly, for while it lacks the bravura pop psychologizing of Persona and the gaudy horror film homages of Hour Of The Wolf, it is one of the best films ever made about war- and not as an anti-war film, nor a pro-war film. As such, it has to rank with Wild Strawberries as one of his greatest films, as well as one of his best screenplays, if not the best.
Although ostensibly a more psychologically exterior film than the films that preceded it, it truly says far more realistic things about the human psyche and the will to survive. In it, Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman play Jan and Eva Rosenberg (perhaps a nod at the infamous American spies, whom many European intellectuals felt were innocent), two musicians who used to play for the local philharmonic orchestra before a war broke out, and they retreated to live on a small plot of land on an island, content to working in a greenhouse. The country they live in is unnamed, as is the island they live on, although the film was made on Bergman's small island of Farö, just off the northern end of the Swedish Island of Göttland. It seems that their nation has been at war for some years with an invading country, or perhaps engaged in a civil war with rebels from another province. This is all left deliberately hazy, as this war is meant to symbolize all wars. This is reinforced as the film starts with assorted war quotes on the screen, as the credits roll. These include quotes from Hitler to Vietnam Era American military figures. After early scenes that depict the prosaic nature of their rural life, and then the coming of war, where even old men are conscripted, an aerial attack ravages the Rosenbergs' land, as enemy jets fly overhead, dropping bombs and what seems to be chemical weapons of an Agent Orange like nature. One plane is hit, and a parachutist jumps out and ends up hanging in a tree. Jan, who starts off the film as a sniveling coward, refuses to go and help, so Eva goes alone. Jan joins her and they find the pilot has been shot. It seems he is, indeed, part of the invading, or possibly rebel, force. A bunch of government soldiers soon stop at their home and ask questions about the dead pilot, then advise the couple to leave their home, as the Invaders are near.... there are the misinterpretations of the film on a micro level, such as that of Bergman scholar Marc Gervais, who provides the film commentary on the DVD of the film. Like many other critics, he claims that Jacobi is a Quisling, who has collaborated with the Invaders. But, this is clearly and demonstrably wrong, for Jacobi is with the original Fascist government. As proof, first off, the Invaders are repelled after they invade the Rosenbergs' land and shoot their agitprop interview. We know this because the government that later questions them of the faked interview, and words put into Eva's mouth, see the film as supposed proof of their treason, and Jacobi is clearly working with them, the Fascist Big Brother statists. Secondly, Jacobi is in charge of deciding which of the townsfolk are sent to concentration camps, for collaborating with the Invaders, and the Rosenbergs, again, are among those spared. Thirdly, in his seduction of Eva, Jacobi tells her his son is on leave from the military, and clearly, if he was an Invader, he would not be speaking so happily of his son serving the state. Also, rebel forces are not official armies, and do not grant official leave. Lastly, Filip is clearly with the rebels, or Invaders, of the Organization, and why would he have killed a colleague?
That Gervais and other critics so blatantly and wantonly misinterpret and flat out miss such a key and manifest point of this film brings into question their ability to discern any and all aspects of all of Bergman's films. This is a wonderful and great film, and very high in the Berman canon, but it is disappointing to read how so few critics and viewers have really understand its complex message, instead opting out for the cheap, lazy, and easy claim of its being merely anti-war, and a rather simple film in comparison to its two showier predecessors. And that, in the long run, is the real shame of Shame.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: INGMAR BERGMAN, OPUS 29
Comment: ****1/2 1968. Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Eva and Jan Rosenberg live in a farm. One day, invasion forces attack the country and the couple is forced to take a stand on the horrors of the war. When Bergman takes an interest in the outside world, nobody leaves without shame. It's not a war we see on the screen, it's WAR in its essence. Ingmar Bergman doesn't differentiate the soldiers, they look all the same and nobody understand why they fight. Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann must react and interact with the real world. Our world. Isn't it then frightening that our world looks like a dream to them ? Highly recommended.

Bonus features include a commentary track and interviews with Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann. The copy in black and white is superb.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Adrift in an ocean of death
Comment: Bergman once remarked that he frequently wondered how he would measure up if caught in the chaos of war. Could he survive, physically and emotionally, as a refugee? "Shame" is his artistic exploration of the possibilities.

Released as the Vietnam War was entering its most brutal stage, the film was criticized by some as offering a too private view of war--Bergman, for example, refused to identify good or bad guys in his film, or even to hint at the cause of the war that serves as its backdrop. But Bergman was trying to capture the experience of war on noncombatants: the terror, the sense of powerlessness, the overwhelming chaos and radical contingency, the unpredictability, and the erosion of principle and identity. Eva and Jan Rosenberg, played wonderfully by Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow, exemplify the way in which war destroys. Eva longs for a child but recognizes that the new climate of death brought about by war precludes the possibility. Jan, a weak-willed character at the film's beginning, becomes hardened and murderous toward the end.

The film closes with Eva, Jan, and other refugees adrift in the ocean in a small rowboat. They've tried to flee their war-torn land. But there's really no place to flee to. War surrounds them, symbolized by a frightful slurry of drowned soldiers from a torpedoed ship through which their boat sails. It's clear that the refugees will die out there on the water, alone and surrounded by death. War has stripped them down to their ultimate nakedness, humiliating them in the process but also revealing who they--and we--are, just as Adam and Eve were stripped naked and "were ashamed."

Ullmann's acting has never been better. Two scenes in particular are memorable: toward the beginning of the film, when she and Jan share a meal and talk about having a child, and the final scene, in which she tells Jan of a dream she's had of burning roses.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Film If You've Got the Guts
Comment: Bergman's response to the American war against Asia. Bleak. The ultimate downer. And a great film.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: An unforgettable film
Comment:
This is one of the bleakest, the most harrowing of Bergman's films I've seen. I also think this is one of the most powerful films about the ugliness of war and what it does to the human souls.

The couple of musicians, who left a big city for a remote island and make a living as farmers, find themselves capable of unspeakable and shameful acts that would have ordinarily been impossible for them even imagine, as they struggle to survive horrible reality of war. They betray their souls, their friends and even each other in a desperate attempt to simply survive another day. Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow are brilliant as usual as lost, confused, and terrified couple that got caught in the midst of a civil war.

Shame is an excellent film but also the one which is almost impossible to sit through - that's how bleak, pessimistic, and hopeless it is.

4.5/5

---