11. Cries And Whispers (1972)
Cries and Whispers is set in a mansion in the 1800s. Agnes is dying from cancer in a painful and protracted manner watched over by her two sisters Maria and Karin who act towards each other in a very abrupt and distant manner, both of them scared silly by their sister's death throes. Only the deeply religious maid - Anna - can comfort Agnes. When Agnes eventually succumbs to death and is buried, the priest states that Agnes's faith was stronger than his. There is a dream like sequence in which Agnes comes to life and asks her sisters for all of the love and care they didn't give her during her life. This momentarily brings all of the sisters together until Maria and Karin realise that Agnes is dead and recoil in horror. There are flashbacks a-plenty with Agnes remembering the devotion she had to her mother. Maria remembers her affair with a dashing doctor juxtaposed by the failure of her marriage. Karin mutilates her vagina to stop her husband from getting at her. The last flashback is Agnes'- her two sisters in white, descending upon the house like angels. Cries and Whispers is an elegy to familial dysfunction, and in portraying the sheer unhappiness of the characters - Bergman shows us, with plenty of drama, how wretched human misery can be. Especially when those miserable people are disconnected from each other and there is no solace to be found anywhere (with the exception of Agnes drawing comfort from Anna). One of the themes is that we don't appreciate our lives until it is too late. and also present are the usual Bergman motifs of emotional alienation, illness, depression and despair. A sombre masterpiece.