Autumn Sonata (1978)
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Autumn Sonata Movie Review
Autumn Sonata is a 1978 Swedish drama film directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann. It’s a slow, but eventually dramatic movie.
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“Are the daughter’s miseries
the mother’s triumphs?“
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It follows a celebrated classical pianist and her neglected daughter who meet for the first time in years, and chronicles their painful discussions of how they have hurt one another. This is one of those movies that entirely hinge on one relationship, and not only that, but basically one conversation for it work.
And that conversation is so amazing that the film truly was uplifted from that to much greater heights. When the mother and daughter discuss how they both hurt each other in different ways and how they carried their pain throughout all of these years, the emotional catharsis is very much felt and that sequence is absolutely brilliant how sad and poignant it is.
But unfortunately the rest of the flick is very slow and ultimately very boring to be honest. The first half is very uneventful and too much of a set-up, and the entire film relies on that one sequence way too much. It needed more great scenes, more good character moments and more drama in it.
But that entire scene is beautifully filmed, and I loved how the husband heard it, but decided to stay out of it. That was a wonderful little detail. The film overall is phenomenally shot per usual for Bergman films. The close-ups are excellent and the angles are great, but the movie is of a very small scope overall, and not as cinematic as one would hope. The score and the direction are both good, though. And the dialogue is fantastic for sure, but the conversations from the first half are not as engaging or as important.
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Autumn Sonata is also phenomenally acted by its two highly talented actresses. Liv Ullmann delivered such a strong, very effective performance and I found her stupendous throughout. But of course watching Ingrid Bergman act the hell out of this difficult role was a sight to behold and I am so glad that she got a great opportunity to act for her namesake director and to have her final performance be this terrific.
Autumn Sonata is a better two-woman show than ‘Persona’. It’s still a flawed movie that is very uneventful, slow and ultimately very boring in its first half, but the second half is great as it features that amazing conversation which provides an emotional catharsis for the two women. The film’s reliably well shot and it features great acting by Liv Ullmann and a terrific turn from Ingrid Bergman who ended her career on such a powerful note.
