My favorite thing about Bergman Island is the way it functions, in some ways, as a hand wave to Ingmar Bergman. It’s not that I don’t revere the legendary Swedish filmmaker; but a film about a screenwriting couple visiting Fårö, the island where Bergman conjured and filmed some of his iconic pictures, could have been insufferably pretentious in its hero worship. Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve avoids exactly this. There are explicit moments that do so—as when a trio of locals brush off questions about Bergman from a curious tourist or when a groom at a wedding who grew up on the island spits, “F*** Bergman!”—but you can also sense some skepticism in the way the writers—Vicky Krieps’ Chris and Tim Roth’s Tony—work on their independent projects. Tony signs up for a “Bergman Safari” alongside other cinephile blowhards (a term I use with tender recognition) who debate the great man’s significance. Chris bumps into a film student staying on the island thanks to a grant (Hampus Nordensen) and together they explore the beaches, swim, and browse lambswool for sale on a roadside farm. Hansen-Løve formally complicates things when Chris shares the details of the screenplay she’s working on with Tony—about a young woman who visits Fårö for a wedding and reunites with a former lover—and her story is dramatized onscreen. (Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie play the couple in that narrative.) Bergman Island deftly interrogates the idolization of art and the lionization of artists, while also distinguishing between experiencing a place and sucking it for “inspiration.”
(12/17/2021)
