I don't think I've ever struggled so much on how I should like or dislike a film. I'm going to briefly jump to conclusions and say that Ingmar Bergman's Shame is absolutely brilliant, yet far from being his best. Contrary to what Bergman himself said about this movie, I thought the first half was fantastic, I didn't find it uneven at all. Although the latter half was no less uneven, I found certain points to be dragging in nature. Still, Shame, for me, was a powerful experience, with lots of perfections on many levels.Released in the same year as Hour of the Wolf, along with the same leads, Shame is a character study of people caught in a raging civil war. Despite the epic scale of the film, it is very, very bleak; so far the most bleakest Bergman movie I've seen. In fact, this can be seen in the first scene alone that shows the two main characters, Eva (Ullman) and Jan (Sydow), simply waking up to a loud alarm clock to start the day. The one oddity that occurs in the scene is when we briefly see Eva topless.We can understand that Eva and Jan are heavily pressurized by the effects of the war; Jan's dream about returning to his profession of music and a later scene where Eva scolds Jan for crying like a child show us their hopes are deterred by the war. Interestingly, Eva's intolerance with Jan's behavior is quite the very opposite of what was shown in Hour of the Wolf: Ullman tolerates what Sydow's character is going through.The variety of encounters the couple have on their way and in town tell us a lot about the characters' anxieties. Jan's irritation of himself for not being thoughtful and accomplished enough is evidenced in the scene where Eva talks to Filip, the kind guy who gives them the fish and tells of them some news regarding the war. His not being able to fix things, such as the radio (the only telecommunication device available) shows how Jan is limited beyond his apparent talent in music.The part where Eva and Jan visits the wine salesman was quite thought-provoking. The salesman, despite his age, is called to duty, and he shares his fear of being forgotten when he dies. In this scene, we're shown shots of the room that depicts old statue pieces and whatnot. The sets decoration of the room they're in resembles the theatrical nature of Bergman's pre-(and post)-60s works, which the director seems to have moved on at that point in life. I don't if this has anything to do with the shots that showed the "souless" nature of the old room, but it's my theory. The scene itself could also mean the nothingness people will eventually become, as explored in The Silence.There many ravishing scenes during the war scenes and its aftermath. The explosions are shot perfectly, despite very little of it is shown (and to think explosions were the last thing we would see in a Bergman film). The moment where Eva sees the lifeless body of a baby child was stunningly captured. Her sadness and Jan's lack of compassion over its death show the difference in their nature, and how those traits influence the way they change later in the film.The political backdrop of the film is questionable, as Shame is more a study on the characters than being a story about surviving a war. Regardless, I think Bergman intended to have some commentary on the Vietnam War, or maybe war in general, in the movie. The interview scene is a prime example of how Bergman felt about dirty politics. Eva is forced to do an interview by enemy soldiers, to which she answers honestly. Later, the questioned by friend soldiers about the interview, which has been made into a propaganda. Bergman, as we all know, was a fan of Tarkovsky, and if he actually did intend to a political message in the film, then I think he was doing what Tarkovsky did with Andrei Rublev: how art can be destroyed by hypocrisy.Gunnar Björnstrand gives one of his finest performances as the ruthless, yet lonely, Col. Jacobi. His scene-stealing role was an aspect of good and bad for me. The convoluted relationship that he develops between Eva and Jan influence their eventual development, but at times, I feel the plot becomes too delved into this. Not that there's anything wrong with introducing this sub-plot.Eva and Jan's major transformations occur when the latter has Jacobi killed. Throughout the film, Jan has been berated for not being man enough while Eva had a lot of influence over Jan. Jan, because of his weak and cowardly nature, has Jacobi, the man who has been stealing his wife, killed in a dirty maneuver. Meanwhile, Eva retains her sympathetic nature while losing control of her husband. This becomes much evident in the next scenes where Jan kills a young soldier by stealing his gun while the latter is asleep, with Eva helplessly crying for Jan to stop. The sudden transition in characters may be a bit hard to swallow, but I think it's still executed in an appropriate way.All in all, I hesitate to call Bergman's Shame a masterpiece, containing some flaws I find hard to ignore. Nevertheless, there's still so much greatness that I can't give enough praise. The writing is splendid, with Bergman having done a fine job in characterization. Ulman and Sydow are great again; Sydow gave the better performance in Hour of the Wolf while it was vice versa for Shame. Even if you're not too much a fan of Bergman, this overlooked piece of work can be enjoyed as a superb war film that can leave you thinking hours, maybe days, after watching.

Without question, Bergman was a master when it came to the cinema of alienation; presenting characters with a singular point of view that is at odds with the world around them, leaving them inevitably cut off and isolated with their own distorted thoughts and fears. In many of his films, this inability to see eye to eye with other human beings - even on an entirely intimate level - leads his characters to seek solace and escape; creating their own limited psychological space and projecting it outwardly in an attempt to remove themselves from the harshness of their true surroundings. Alongside these particular ideas, there are conflicting issues presented by Bergman in other films, for example Persona (1966), in which the outward projection of an idealised world that protects you from the judgements and criticisms of the wider world is internalised; giving way to a breakdown in reality and the projection of various visions that have no clear bearing on the truth. That is what this film is about.Here, we have the idea of war presented as a literal nightmare; with two characters at war with one another and at war with themselves, and all further represented by a landscape of cold uncertainty, violence and turmoil. With this in mind, Shame (1968) is perhaps not the easiest Bergman film to appreciate, though it is one of the most fascinating; especially when we compare it to the similar elements presented in the subsequent film, A Passion (1969). As with that particular film, Shame offers a story about characters in retreat; in retreat from themselves and from the world around them. In Shame, the idea is given further dramatic weight by an approaching civil war set to eventually destroy the walls of cowardice and self-preservation that these particular characters have put up to protect themselves from the harsh realities of life. As the walls begin to tumble, the two characters begin to show elements of their true selves that they have hidden during the idyllic years spent safely hidden away on the island, and the escalating horror of the world itself becomes secondary to the crippling emotional suffocation and psychological breakdown of the characters.There are a number of other, more complex themes analysed alongside this central idea, with the typical Bergmanesque issues of jealousy, adultery, guilt, impotence, lack of communication and the inability or unwillingness to see the world for what it truly is. The film is naturally outstanding on a superficial level; the production design, editing and cinematography are harsh and gritty, the performances from all involved are honest and enthralling, and Bergman's carefully detached presentation of the script lends itself to some truly harrowing sequences that manage to sidestep any potentially fatal moments of melodrama. The film is also notable for what seems like an increased budget - or at least, increased by the standards of many of the filmmaker's more iconic chamber-pieces - with Shame featuring aeroplanes spitting machine-gun fire and shells across the tiny island community, a procession of military vehicles stretching back through a small Swedish town as far as the eye can see, thousands of extras, explosions and costumes, all establishing this callous and nightmarish world that seems to exist without time and context.The fact that Bergman chose to leave the setting of this film a mystery is one of its most interesting aspects. Although the threat of civil war and some of the more heart wrenching depictions of abuse and degradation might suggest the era of the Second World War, the cars and costumes and central ideologies are all very much a post-war, 1960's abstraction. No information about the war is given, other than the fact that it has split the country down the middle (though again, the country is never specified) and both sides seem to be using a regime of violence and threat to manipulate the locals into assisting in their cause. The fact that the war is seemingly secondary to the war that erupts between the two central characters is again a sign that Bergman is using metaphor to externalise a very much internal story, with the inner-battle between two characters being projected out, against the landscape, and resulting in further elements of interpretation that set the scene for Bergman's subsequent film, the tortured masterpiece A Passion.At the end of A Passion we have a vague and enigmatic scene that not only contextualises the whole of that particular film - and its two central protagonists - but also the whole of the film in question. Quite what Bergman was suggesting by this odd sense of duality is ultimately unknown; however, I can only suppose that it points towards something of a dissatisfaction with Shame and its overall intentions; with Bergman feeling the need to clarify his own purpose with that subsequent film. Was he unhappy with Shame? Did he feel the story became lost in the superficial qualities of production design and special effects? Or that the political attack and its subtle comment on the mechanics of the Second World War were too sharp? Who knows? Admittedly, the sense of abstraction here is understated more so than in many of Bergman's other films, for example, Hour of the Wolf, which used elements of horror and supernatural iconography to underpin the story of an artist driven mad by personal demons and ghosts from the past, but I feel that Bergman is clearly attempting something similar with this story of two seemingly mild-mannered, pacifistic musicians discovering darker shades of their personalities when threatened by the approaching war.With this in mind, there are the obvious themes of dehumanisation, as the wheels of war destroy everything including the human spirit, but I'd imagine there are even deeper themes than that; something that is perhaps only truly felt when we watch the two films together, and see Bergman's perhaps cruel mocking of his characters, and the subtle line in which one painful nightmare bleeds into the next.

Shame (1968) *** 1/2 (out of 4) A husband (Max von Sydow) and wife (Liv Ullmann) live in a peaceful, if lonely, life in the country but all of this takes a turn for the worse when war hits their town. Here's another fine film from Ingmar Bergman, which hits all the right notes except for an over-dramatic final act that goes on a tad bit too long. The opening sequences are beautifully directed as Bergman sets up the peace that these two people share and then he hits us with the scenes of war when all of the peace gets thrown out the window. The war scenes are haunting and Bergman gets his message across without any long speeches. Von Sydow is very good as usual but it's Ullmann who steals this show.

What Bergman has got here is "What if all that bad stuff happened here in Sweden, to nice people like us?" And what he gives us, in the Swedish language, with Swedish actors, on Swedish locations (and using what appear to be genuine Swedish military vehicles) is what was familiar from war films set in almost every other country in Europe-- all the confusing invasions and counter-invasions, political lies, internment camps, faked confessions, summary executions, torture, turncoats, "collaborators", and so on. As in a modern short story, it's done in the abstract, with no real names, cities, or countries used. But the stronger faction are "Nazis": they strut about self-importantly, and some wear shiny knee boots. One even whips things with a riding crop (ok, it's actually a cane). The victimized couple are named Rosenberg. Apart from the shame they feel at finding dirtier ways to survive-- and who would not do what they did?-- what all of the above suggests is that the title is clearly meant to refer to Stockholm's de facto complicity with the Nazis. Indeed, what we are shown is what Sweden might have looked like if Germany had asked for a bit more than mining concessions.The first half plays like a black comedy. We see the "fog of war" from the point of view of a comically passive couple who ignore the troops all around, the long convoys, the bombed-out buildings, the news reports, &c. They do not even bother to find a working radio. They are the ultimate in "Not in my backyard". They talk of wine and lingonberries; meanwhile friends are mysteriously conscripted and growing numbers of troops show up in the town. They show no curiosity about the war that has been going on around them for many years.The man (Von Sydow) is cultured, sulky, and a navel-gazer; the woman (Ullman) is somewhat more impulsive, passionate, and outward-looking. There's a beautiful scene in which the man talks about his violin: the manufacturer, he says offhandedly, fought in the Napoleonic wars, but his own interest stops with the cultural artifact in his hand-- or, more precisely, which his own warm feelings about owning it, and the security that that ownership assumes. Not in my backyard! But when war finally breaks into their bucolic idyll, the man's timidity, an irritation in good times, turns into a liability, one he ends up overcompensating for-- as is often the case-- as Bergman demonstrates subtly and beautifully. Definitely worth seeing.