Wild Strawberries: An Old Man’s Inner Journey (Spoiler Alert)
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Nine years after the release of Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Wild Strawberries,’ Satyajit Ray’s ‘Nayak’ was released in 1966. Many critics at the time thought that Arindam Mukherjee was essentially a shadow of Isak Borg. However, apart from the concept of the first dream sequence shown in the film, it doesn’t seem to me that Satyajit took anything else from ‘Wild Strawberries.’ ‘Wild Strawberries’ appears in many lists of the world’s ten greatest films. Directors like Andrei Tarkovsky and Woody Allen considered this work of Bergman’s an ideal model for filmmaking. The most important part of this film is the dream sequence shown at the beginning. This single sequence carries the weight of the entire film forward. Let us return from there.
Viewers know that the most familiar element in Bergman’s cinema is death. The inevitability of death and the fear surrounding it—with these two things in mind, life’s cycles, development, and existence unfold. Professor Isak Borg is unwell. He lay down, fell asleep. We saw. A faint light fell across his face. He is sleeping, that sleep ancient—of weariness and melancholy. Like ten other anxious people, Borg is having nightmares. A strange and very bad dream. Watching the dream sequence brings to mind European silent movies. There is stillness there, emptiness. There is cyclical transformation of consciousness. This dream is not of life, but of death. This death is the only constant truth on earth. The scene is not very clear, blurred, as it is in dreams; but the statement of that scene is quite sharp. Lost, Borg is walking alone down some empty street in the city. At that time, people walk alone. The buildings around seem to have survived somehow after destruction. Their doors and windows are worn. The signs of death are not glittering, but faded. Along the sidewalk in front of the ghostly buildings standing side by side, Borg walks, the place completely deserted and unfamiliar—unknown like death itself. The city here is not warm, but cold. Not alive, but dead. The light scattered around is even blacker than night! Borg sees no one, no one sees Borg. This is a solitary, silent, lonely journey. A clock hangs from the wall of a building beside the sidewalk. That clock has no hands, but a pair of eyes. Blood is trickling from the right eye. The two eyes are staring at Borg, that gaze emotionless, cold, unwavering. Borg took out his pocket watch to look at it—there are no hands there either; he put it back in his pocket. Death’s clock pays no heed to any time.
A pair of eyes are staring at him motionlessly, Borg’s gaze also toward them. He moved a little into the shadow, but the gaze of the pair of eyes did not shift. Leaving that pair of eyes behind, Borg walks forward. Remembering something, he walked backward again. This return is following toward death. Turning back a little and stopping to observe the road ahead, Borg saw that he is no longer alone. A man in hat and suit is standing there. Borg walked toward the man, came close from behind and placed his hand on his left shoulder. The man slowly turned toward Borg. His face is abnormal, his two eyes tightly closed inward. The whole face seems to be caved in, the flesh and skin of the face wrung out, distorted, like the appearance shown in horror movies, something like that. The man fell to the ground. Sound of bells in the background. Dong dong dong… The man’s body disappeared, from the jacket collar some liquid substance like ink is flowing down the street. The final journey is a solitary journey; in that mysterious journey, all of life’s achievements are illusory, meaningless, powerless. Borg walked forward. He is now standing at the bend of a row of buildings. From the alley-like road on the right, a horse-drawn carriage is coming. Two black horses are pulling the carriage very slowly. Clop clop clop. There is no coachman there. The carriage came to that bend and turned left.
The two horses are walking, the carriage moving. There is a lamppost facing that clock with eyes. The rear left wheel of the carriage got stuck at the bottom of the post. The two horses are trying to move forward. With the jolting, the wheel broke free. Borg is watching this from behind. The wheel rolled beside him and a part of the wheel broke off and fell leaning against the wall. Meanwhile, the horse carriage is stuck at the lamppost. The two horses are trying to pull the carriage. The old carriage is swaying and swaying. Bells ringing in the background. Dong dong dong… At one point, the coffin in the carriage rolled toward the back of the carriage and fell onto the street. The two horses moved quickly forward with the three-wheeled, unburdened carriage. The carriage disappeared from the camera frame, the coffin lies on the street. Everything is lost from life, everyone leaves and goes far away, only death stays by one’s side. A hand has emerged from inside the coffin. The hand is lying tilted on the coffin’s edge. Standing a little distance away, Borg is staring at it fixedly. At some point he walked slowly toward the coffin. That inevitable journey. The hand is waiting for him. The right hand. The fingers of the hand are half-bent, cufflinks visible on the shirt sleeve. As Borg bent toward the coffin, the hand stirred. Borg’s right hand seems stuck to the coffin’s side, he cannot move his hand. That ghostly hand came and grasped Borg’s hand. Very tightly. Borg is trembling, unable to move his hand. A face emerged from inside the coffin. That face is Borg’s. Borg is pulling Borg toward the coffin. We ourselves pull ourselves toward our death! Borg is trying to free himself. It’s not happening. It doesn’t happen either! Borg’s lips are trembling, his body swaying. The face of the outside Borg is merging with the face of the inside Borg in the coffin! Borg is traveling toward some indefinable unknown destination. That journey is a journey from light toward darkness. Borg woke up from his sleep. The bedroom clock is telling the time. Tick tick tick…
In this film, the role of Borg is played by Victor David Sjöström, known as ‘The Father of Swedish Cinema.’ He was a Swedish film director, screenwriter, and actor. Bergman had seen his famous film ‘The Phantom Carriage’ at the age of 15. Bergman watched that movie once every year for the rest of his life. The concept of the horse carriage in Borg’s dream is basically taken from ‘The Phantom Carriage.’ When the carriage breaks down, the coffin falls open on the ground, where there is a living person’s corpse—all this frightens Borg. The elderly always have more fear of death. Our past memories and present thoughts, the combination of these two is dreams or nightmares. The person inside Borg becomes clear to us through the nightmare.
Irritable, stubborn, arrogant 78-year-old widowed Professor Borg emerges from the haze of nightmares and goes to Lund. Lund University will give him an honorary degree on the completion of 50 years of his medical life. With him is his daughter-in-law Marianne. In Marianne’s eyes, Borg is a selfish old man who has no headache about anyone other than himself. No matter how much humility he shows on the surface, only those who have seen Borg closely know what Borg really is! Marianne also says that Borg’s son has become exactly like him. Hearing this accusation, Borg is astonished. At some point, that journey ceases to be merely a journey to receive honors; it becomes a journey of self-discovery. Borg stops their car in front of a house. He tells Marianne, “We used to spend every summer in this house for the first 20 years of my life. Ten children would play together. You probably know this.” He continues talking to himself, wild strawberries used to grow here. I have perhaps become a bit emotional. Or now I am tired. My mind is also a bit upset. It could also be that I have started thinking this and that about the place around which my childhood revolved, where I grew up playing. I remember everything, everything seems to be floating clearly before my eyes. Borg could see his childhood. Various incidents, happiness, failures, beloved people—all are crowding into his memory one by one.
Those who met Borg on the journey are connected in some way or another with the memories of Borg’s past life. First he met two boys and a girl. That girl’s name is Sara; the name of Borg’s first love was also Sara, whom he never got in life—Sara had married Borg’s cousin. While the car was speeding along with them, a head-on collision with another car was narrowly avoided by luck, and the couple from that car also became their companions. That couple started quarreling so much after getting in the car that Marianne was almost forced to drop them off midway. Borg’s wife died many years ago. Seeing them, he remembered his unhappy married life. In the continuity of dreams, Borg saw Sten Alman examining Borg. Borg was asked to read what was written on the blackboard. Borg couldn’t. Alman read it aloud: “A doctor’s first duty is to ask for forgiveness.” Borg almost shouted, he knows this. The answer came: the crime of not knowing such a simple thing is unforgivable. Borg will have to suffer punishment for this. Again, when the owner of a petrol pump refused to take money for petrol as gratitude from him and his wife toward physician Borg, Borg was overwhelmed by people’s love and found meaning in working as a doctor.
Borg’s mother is 96 years old. When he met his mother, he saw a pocket watch with her that looked exactly like the watch in his nightmare. His loneliness and reclusiveness remind him again of death. The thought of death never leaves Borg alone. Finally, Borg is honored with the title of Doctor Jubilaris, receives public recognition, everyone keeps blessing him. But all of this is nothing more than formality to him. Death keeps coming before him repeatedly as the only constant truth in his life. That night, those three young people who had met during the journey come to congratulate Borg. Impressed by their love, Borg says, I will remember. With supreme peace, he falls asleep in the bed at his son Ewald’s house. In his dream, he saw that they had all gone on a family picnic by the lake; Sara is holding Borg’s hand and showing him that on the other side of the lake, Borg’s parents are fishing with hooks. What people don’t get in life, they get in dreams.
In the cinema, the present meets the past through dreams. The film basically portrays Borg’s process of self-discovery. A well-established person who has crossed all stages of worldly achievement and success and reached the final stage of life—the film shows his understanding with life. For Bergman, childhood was most important. Therefore, his films always contain the subtle work of dreams and nostalgia. He learned to contemplate death and explore life from various childhood experiences. In the movie ‘Wild Strawberries,’ through Bergman’s skillful hands, an elderly physician’s dreams, memories, and film—these three entities have merged at the level of consciousness. As if through the professor’s eyes, we can clearly see all the gains and regrets, happiness and sorrow, possibilities and crises, dreams and broken dreams, comedy and tragedy, relationships and separations, completeness and emptiness of our own lives, and hearing the sound of footsteps advancing toward death, we think in wonder and fear: I recognize these footprints!