The Passion of Anna (3 Stars)

This is a difficult film to watch. It represents the peak of director Ingmar Bergman's alienation techniques. While ostensibly a drama about four characters living on the remote Swedish island Fårö, it's actually about the four actors who play the roles and the way they represent the characters. The film is interrupted by interviews with the actors about how they understand the characters they play, and we see a stark contrast. The actors are all friendly, likeable people. The characters they play are distant, unable to relate to one another, except through acts of violence. They are as remote as the island they live on.

The film ends with the main character pacing up and down, alone in the remote landscape, with Bergman saying in voiceover "This time he was called Andreas Winkelman". Implied is that in the next film he will play a different role.

What is Bergman trying to say? Most reviewers concentrate on the action in the film, such as the love affairs and the lynching of the man suspected of killing animals. I believe we should think about the metafilm instead. Bergman knows that very few of the film's viewers live in an environment like Fårö, an island with a population of only 500 people. Despite the openness of the scenery, the atmosphere is claustrophobic. Bergman is asking the viewers if they could live in such a place. Would the viewers also degenerate and become unable to reveal their emotions? Would they undergo the same metamorphosis as the actors, who are portrayed as both physically and psychologically crippled?