Shame

Ingmar Bergman became famous for his stark portraits of relationships under stress, characters struggling with faith, and allegorical dramas set in the distant past. Shame brings all of these themes together in a tale set in the midst of a modern civil war in an unnamed country. Bergman’s longtime collaborators Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann star as married couple Jan and Eva Rosenberg, former musicians in a disbanded orchestra, who now struggle as farmers. They are a ferry ride away from the city yet the war is all around them in transport trucks and distant gunfire, and they watch the battle get closer before finally being invaded. The Rosenbergs are used for propaganda by the enemy, arrested and interrogated as collaborators, and attacked by rebels. Ultimately their home is destroyed along with any hope of being untouched by the violence. Shame is very abstract—the factions have no clear politics and there is no discussion of ideologies—and the imagery becomes increasingly more devastated and desolate. The weak-willed Jan grows more cold-blooded with each assault upon the couple and their marriage strains to the breaking point under the pressure. It’s as bleak a portrait as you’ll find in Bergman’s oeuvre and it plays like a brutal, humorless satire of modern warfare, propaganda, morality, and survival, where civilized, educated people are reduced to savagery and inhuman behavior. Extras include the 1968 documentary "Introduction to Ingmar Bergman" (made during the production of the film), a new interview with Ullmann, and archival interviews with Bergman. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)