The most enduring film meme of 2018 seems to be docs by New German Cinema icons on their icons – Wim Wenders did the Pope at Cannes, Margarethe von Trotta does Ingmar Bergman at Cannes and TIFF, and Werner Herzog does Gorbachev at Telluride and TIFF18.
The title SEARCHING FOR INGMAR BERGMAN (
trailer) is apt for this rapprochement: Margarethe von Trotta, reluctantly and only with the help of her director-son Felix Möller and über-editor Bettina Böhler, set out on a journey to capture that elusive thing that is artistic influence and creative impact. She doesn’t entirely succeed, but not in a bad way.
The opening scene, at the original location of The Seventh Seal, the Bergman film that made von Trotta want to become a filmmaker, is a beautiful piece of film education, the accomplished German veteran lovingly explaining, take-by-take, what this crucial Bergman Scene did to her. It is followed by a myriad of
film clips, interviews with and set footage of Bergman (that I at least had never seen), interviews with collaborators and family as well as contemporary European filmmakers who count Bergman as an influence, to varying degrees, from clearly burning Olivier Assayas to much cooler Ruben Östlund. von Trotta doesn’t probe enough for my taste, even talking over the interviewees though. She does add contextualizing ruminations on how Bergman came to be the bridge between “Papa’s Kino” and the Nouvelle Vague in the 1960s Paris of her youth. Ingmar Bergman decades later named Margarethe von Trotta's Venice-winning drama Marianne and Juliane as one of 10 films that had the greatest impact on him.
Every episode in the documentary --astoundingly von Trotta’s first, after five decades of filmmaking-- adds another little piece to the puzzle.
Bergman comes together as curious, jealous, intrusive, controlling, mystical, sexual, infantile, insecure, caring, funny, neurotic, instable, alienated, cheerful, hypnotic, phobic, brooding, aggressive, experimental, cruel, self-involved, intuitive, charming. Make Your Own Bergman. For a #MeToo takedown we will have to look elsewhere.
Bergman saw art as therapy for the artist, film as a channeler of dreams. Early on in the film I start thinking about his directing style as nearly telepathic (albeit very precise), a symbiosis the director entered into with his, mostly, actresses (and mistresses). Bergman the (nearly autistic) seer.
We certainly approach Ingmar Bergman, the filmmaker, the playwright, the man-child. But in the end, there are more questions than answers, the damage is hinted at –religion, guilt-- but not revealed, he remains enigmatic. “
Never trust Ingmar’s stories,” warns his filmmaker-son, who normally does not comment on his father. Bergman seems to have been forever searching, and we are still Searching for Bergman after the film is over. Which is not a bad thing.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
