Creative detachment

I'm not an Ingmar Bergman fan. I appreciate his work and I understand why his admirers are legion, but much of what he produced simply never spoke to me in the same way as, say, Akira Kurosawa, whose themes actually frequently intersect with Bergman's. Both were fond of questioning the human condition and, in this respect, the film Bergman Island is no different.

The plot is a very Bergman-esque tale about unpredictable human emotions, the bowels of creativity, and the loneliness that often comes with that. It's set on Bergman's home of Fårö and is populated by characters who are great fans of his and the main two of which also happen to be filmmakers. In the course of the story, we're introduced to two more characters who are part of a story that one of our main characters is working on while on the island, so it's all very meta and self-referencing the whole way through. There is no breaking of the fourth wall, but you get the feeling that the audience is very much supposed to be in on the central joke, as it were. For as convoluted as that sounds, the plot is actually quite simple and, amusingly enough, led me to echo the question of Chris (Vicky Krieps) as she regularly wonders whether there's enough to her story to make a film. Perhaps that was the joke?

What initially attracted me to the idea of seeing this film were two things: 1. It has Tim Roth, of whom I've been a fan since Reservoir Dogs and have never been disappointed in whenever he's been on the screen. 2. The trailer presented the situation in a much more dynamic fashion, such that Chris' concerns seemed to be far more of a conflict arc that would need to be resolved. But it's actually much more of a Bergman approach (surprise!) in that the conflict is mostly within Chris as she struggles with certain elements of their living situation that don't have much to do with whether or not she's trying to write a screenplay. Indeed, Roth's role as Tony basically ends up being a sounding board for Chris and little else. He's supposedly the motivator for them being there, but he ends up being almost incidental to the story, as everything revolves around Krieps' character and the characters that she, in turn, creates who are then brought to life in the film. So, I didn't get much conflict and I didn't get much Roth, either.

There's nothing wrong with a story being simple. Some of the best films ever made have been quite small stories that the director explored with enough depth and feeling that they had much more impact than one might expect. As I mentioned Kurosawa, Rashomon is a perfect example of this approach. It's also a perfect contrast to much more complex (and in some cases, overwrought) stories like, say, Dune (just to pull a name from a hat.) 'Simple' doesn't mean 'simplistic.' Most of Bergman's stories were, on their face, fairly simple but it was his willingness to explore the deeper meanings of his themes and emotions of his characters that made them work. Director Mia Hansen-Løve, as you might expect, takes a similar approach here and ends it as soon as the emotional arc of Chris' experience is fulfilled. But the film's slow pace and length of two hours left me doing perhaps too much examination of those emotional themes and wondering if there was anything else to accompany them.

It's a well-made film and certainly something that Bergman fans will probably revel in. I just don't happen to be one of them and I think it kind of missed the mark for me, as a result.