The titles measure the time before and after an event called the Holocaust. Black and white monotonous interviews in the investigator’s office are replaced by bright shots of private dance. The thoughtful look of the beloved wife Katarina is interrupted by the vulgar laughter of the stripper.
At first glance, the nonlinear story of Ingmar Bergman’s From the Life of Puppets (1980) seems difficult to perceive, too stretched and arrhythmic, unjustifiably throwing the emotional vector of the viewer at the polar points. To watch this film, unconventional for Bergman's handwriting, it is worth discarding the usual ways of perceiving cinema and stop analyzing - the author himself will introduce to the course and explain the most intimate thoughts of the characters.
The story presents a series of hero recollections and investigations in an attempt to uncover the motives and prerequisites for the Holocaust – the brutal murder of a stripper by Peter Egermann, a young and successful family man suffering from some psychological peculiarities that cast a projection of fears and clamps from childhood and the past of parents for the rest of his life.
Childless couple Peter and Katarina seem to be in love, have a successful career, but have not found sexual satisfaction in each other. From the rescue - prescription pills and alcohol. As a result, confusion, erotic dreams and hallucinations. For years, the accumulated stress from the tyranny of parents, the outside world, the inconsistency of self-perception with the expectation of society, unjustified fears for their own insolvency in this life result in a suicide attempt - once Peter looked from the roof of a high-rise building.
The strangest and most irreversible thing in this story is the sensitive eye of a therapist who was able to consider in Peter the potential for violence and murder against a woman close to him. But even the professionalism of the doctor did not save the patient on the way to the point of no return.
As a result, according to Bergman, even a seemingly successful and promising person, burdened with nothing but his own thoughts, is just a puppet in the hands of capitalist society following the patterns where latent homosexuality makes a real maniac out of a pretty person.
This topic was relevant at all times, but Bergman through the cinema was able to look at the problem from different angles: where the stepfather’s house is called a “pitjack”, the wife’s best friend is ready to bring a prostitute out of personal gain, and the only means of survival in a psychiatric hospital is to live their own childhood memories.
The words “mental health” and “appropriate therapist” seem to be an integral part of the modern world. However, 40 years ago, a story was told about how a doctor was able to consider a potential threat, the close environment revealed a diagnosis, but the patient himself instead of self-analysis and competent study of the problem, affecting only him and nobody else’s life (healthy selfishness has not yet prevented anyone), devoted himself to reflection and suffering at the bottom of the bottle. So there was the Holocaust, in strict credits separating eyewitness accounts and scenes from the recent past where everything could still be corrected.
Watching the insanity of childhood trauma and the fear of being yourself in this hostile world is like eating popcorn for bored viewers is fun. However, we should not forget that the author’s idea was created to convey an idea, a message about something larger, hidden between the layers of video and sound, capable of responding through time in the depths of the memory of the viewer, who is able not only to watch, but to perceive the movie, even without realizing its resources of influence on his own consciousness.
From the life of puppets - the tape is certainly strong, and clearly cut into memory, perhaps too clearly. An uncompromising exploration of human nature that a priori cannot be pleasant. Especially when a mentally ill person is examined. According to this film in many ways repels the viewer, it can not be perceived as entertainment, but meanwhile it asks a lot of important questions that cannot be answered.
The structure of the tape is also interesting, we see both the crime itself and the person who committed it at the very beginning. Moreover, Ingmar Bergman does not even try to create a detective intrigue, he simply does not care about the course of the investigation. All he's trying to achieve is an understanding of what might drive a person to kill. And all these long scenes of interrogations show the viewer exactly how the maniac's makings can manifest themselves in a seemingly normal person.
Like almost all European cinema classics, the film causes a lot of complex reflections, so it is worth watching only clearly realizing that this is an author’s statement on a certain topic, and not an attempt to please the audience.
7 out of 10
Whether for the clarification of the “Wolf Hour”, or an extensive interpretation of Wenders’ “Fear of the goalkeeper before a penalty”, or something else, but the picture did not seem to me at all an interesting work of art. Bergman filled the film space with cold, insensitive cuts of different people's stories, ripped in time before and after the tragedy. Step by step, the viewer must develop a full and comprehensive understanding of some of the demons of modern society. Bergman demonstrates a very deep knowledge of textbooks on modern psychiatry, Freud and Fromm. But in all these details, I think, something important is missing.
It's never a spoiler if I tell you that people often try to live up to someone else's demands instead of being themselves. Imposed guises fuse tightly with the psychological body of a person, sometimes creating inexplicable explosions of destructiveness. By the way, that's what the movie is about. Surprised? I don’t think that’s clear enough.
It is also clear that a quite calm and friendly family man can be latent. Well, you get it. Attention. Here, it seems, Bergman reveals his own complexes and fears. But back to the hero. He can even actively condemn and denounce, shame. But the essence of it will not change, and being in a situation of complete freedom, he can do business. For example, to kill a cute prostitute.
Are you bored already? So I'll finish. I was very bored watching this movie. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness Fromma seems to me much more interesting, boring and pathetic film Bergman. In general, I got the impression that Bergman was more of a brilliant writer than a director. Only the “Wandering Field” in the staged aspect seemed bright to me. Most of Bergman’s paintings make a very dull impression (even with an interesting plot). Funny, but this tediousness was easily explained by the audience by the Scandinavian leisurely temperament of the author. “Marionettes”, for example, the movie is boring and boring, although not without its charm and “double bottom”.
5 out of 10
Before proceeding to consider the work of the famous Swede, it is necessary to note the fact that in certain circles the film is a model, an example given for a visual demonstration of repression, development and, finally, a sudden surge of suppressed emotions in modern civilized man. In this respect, the film is quite close to documentary.
So Bergman builds the buildings of his work in a somewhat unusual way. The direct development of the storyline, the analysis of a number of reasons that led to the “disaster” is interspersed with various dialogues, interrogations, statements of their opinion of people close to the killer. In this case, it is obvious that the existing reality and the reality of the protagonist are somewhat different.
Peter Egermann is a married man, an entrepreneur. The wife is a sexually attractive person who loves to have contacts on the side, but loves her husband with all her heart. Socially, he is quite a successful businessman, obviously from the upper middle class. The mother is a strong-willed, determined, powerful woman, dominates her son. Of the other characters, one should also note a psychiatrist who has sexual intercourse (which is often for doctors of this specialty) with Egermann’s wife, but is not able to take possession of her soul. Also, another role is played by another partner of the hero’s wife – a homosexual designer. In this case, it is the opposite of the protagonist. If Egermann is a latent, hidden homosexual, suppressing his impulses from fear of his mother and social prohibitions, he, on the contrary, openly admits his sexual orientation, without fear of reproaches from relatives, currently has a high social status and recognition from society.
Extremely important episode, which reveals the view of this character on himself, on his own PERSON. Namely: he without conceal announces that several personalities coexist in him. One is a civilized, Europeanized, aesthetic, cultured person. The other is greedy, lustful, thirsty for acts of violence, looking for rudeness in the darkest places of a crazy world. It was this confession that saved him from misfortune. In the future, he regrets that he did not help Peter in the search for himself, although he was definitely capable of it.
Katarina is a wife. The motives for her actions are extremely dark and vague. In the film, a detailed, progressive analysis of the development of her relationship with her husband is made. Due to the fact that she dominated the family tandem and asserted her power over her husband, he had a natural reaction to prove that she had her own will. A significant role on the main character had pressure from society (symbolically expressed in the constant noise of the traffic flow). The aggravation began with an episode in which the wife laughs at the inability of her husband to engage in that anal sex, which was for Egermann the last means to establish himself over the woman.
The tape masterfully displays bifurcation, stratification of the soul of the main character. The beginning is a dream of killing, consciously – complete calmness and contentment with one’s own life, the end is murder, consciously – a failed attempt to escape from oneself, prevent catastrophe.
Summing up, it should be said that Bergmann (a strong family man and a loving father) is well versed in the soul of those unfortunates who are doomed to suffer from eternal misunderstanding, underestimation of their will, their sexuality by others. The director answers the deep, important questions of life with an easy hand. Murder appears to us as a natural result in a bad game of characters in life. People are mere puppets drawn by an unknown hand of fate, necessity. And such things as marriage, social status, way of life are in this theater of absurdity only a chance, an opportunity to stand before the curtain in the most beautiful, most profitable position. And life is a chess game with death, the stake in which is its own essence.
In conclusion, the quote of the sage and sufferer F. Nietzsche:
When you get married, you have to ask yourself the question: Do you think that you will be able to talk to this woman well into old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the contact is in conversation.”
The great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman has always found it difficult to find a source of funding for his own films, especially when it comes to projects that are obviously adventurous. For example, neither in Sweden nor in Germany did not want to invest in the production of Love without a Lover (the script was not integral, but consisted of separate, disparate fragments), and as the Swedish master recalled: “Without any hardness, I buried the project and threw it out of my mind.” But later, Bergman had the opportunity to make a film for German television (and the cash costs in such cases are usually low). And then one of the stories of “love without a lover” was carved out, and on its basis the Scandinavian director shot “From the Life of Puppets”. One of the most memorable and amazing works of Bergman, which he was proud of.
The focus is on Peter Egermann. Outwardly, a successful person turns out to be in reality a creature extremely complex and dissatisfied with his existence. Existence, not life. After all, all sorts of complexes and obsessive phobias, unrealized desires and ambitions, oppress and drive Peter into a corner, suppressing him, destroying him, turning him into a weak-willed, doomed puppet. It is still more burdened and aggravated by a feeling of complete, hopeless loneliness, when the need for a kindred soul is more necessary than ever, but, alas, unrealizable. Peter is teetering on the brink, leaning from the idea of suicide to futile attempts to find a way out of depression through alcohol and sex. In the end, Egermann commits a crime (killing a prostitute), and then strikes the hour of "intellectual suicide."
Visually and technically, the film is simply flawless. And as Bergman himself noted, it was his flirtation, experimentation with form, and can be regarded as a small drawback. After all, all these luxurious editing gluings, polished and polished mise-en-scene, always extremely balanced, accurate replicas and dialogues recreate this painful atmosphere of complete and comprehensive hopelessness. This intimate, intimate, purely personal world of a very specific, specific individual is recreated. And that is why invading his privacy seems less unceremonious and cynical than it does to make him feel uncomfortable and ashamed. For listening to the confession of the doomed is unbearable and joyless. And even more annoying and bitter to realize that although this clogged, closed, sealed world of Peter Egermann exists only on the screen, but it is not an ordinary fiction and attempts to analyze the essence of man. This story turns into an unpleasant, merciless truth about people and their relationships. After all, as Sergey Kudryavtsev wisely remarked: “It is difficult not to give credit to Bergman, a psychologist who knows much more about us than we know about ourselves.”
10 out of 10