One of Ingmar Bergman’s most hypnotically
inexhaustible works, The Passion of Anna is a film of sustained and unnerving
presence and precision, in which however even the most basic aspect of
interpretation is in some way open to doubt. The sense of misdirection flows
from the very title – the main character, insofar he opens and closes the film
and occupies the majority of screen time, isn’t Liv Ullmann’s Anna but Max von
Sydow’s Andreas, living in substantial withdrawal from the world on a
barren-looking island after doing time in prison; while he and Anna enter a
relationship, it’s presented in mostly functionally pragmatic terms, the real
object of her passion being a husband (also called Andreas) who died in a car
accident some years previously (she speaks of that relationship in heightened
terms, but evidence exists that it was less than she claims, despite her insistence
on truth as a preeminent value). The film often strikes a measured, analytical tone,
including brief interviews with the four lead actors (the other two are Bibi
Andersson and Erland Josephson) on how they view their characters; Josephson’s
character, an architect who maintains an extensive archive of photos, embodies
a vaguely sinister sense of control. But he also disparages the prospects of his
flagship project, a cultural centre being constructed in Milan, and the island
is plagued by instances of animal cruelty, for which one disliked loner falsely
comes under suspicion, and is sadistically persecuted. A brief scene of TV
news, even fighting through poor reception, links these fragmentations to
broader global conflicts; it’s a moment of spectatorship echoed at the end of
the film, when the camera slowly moves in on Andreas after the relationship’s
apparent break-up, caught in a form of both physical and spiritual limbo, the
image quality correspondingly degrading, his very name no longer capable of
being asserted with certainty.
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