Bergman Island 2021 is an internationally co-produced drama-comedy film. The film is rated R and it is an hour and 52 minutes long.
Bergman Island Review
Bergman Island 2021 film is written and directed by Mia Hansen-Løve. It stars Vicky Krieps, Tim Roth, Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie.
A couple retreat to the island that inspired Ingmar Bergman to write screenplays for their upcoming films when the lines between reality and fiction start to blur.
The film is about a couple played by Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth, both filmmakers who go on a trip to Bergman Island to write screenplays.
The island is generally a place where filmmakers go for inspiration or as a sort of pilgrimage. It’s where the legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman directed a lot of his films and also where he lived.
Because he films so many of his movies there the island is just coated with references to his own movies.
The movie actually pokes fun at people who are just so pretentiously into Ingmar Bergman, and they’re just insufferable because it’s all they can talk about.
Most of the writers there are inspired by Bergman’s dark psychological themes and they want to kind of mimic that or get inspiration from the same colors that Bergman shaped his films with.
But for our protagonist, Chris, played by Vicky Krieps. She kind of wants to take inspiration from elsewhere. And the movie itself is about what inspires us to make art and where we draw from.
And for many who are drawing from Bergman, they’re kind of drawing from these ideas that great artists can’t have good personal relationships or that art needs to come from suffering and be a little bit torturing.
And Vicky Krieps is looking around the island, the place where Ingmar Bergman had all his ideas and thinking, how could he make such dark movies all the time when this island, to me, is just so damn pleasant?
And so the movie’s about how the island becomes kind of a place for her to figure out what kind of feelings she wants to draw from and how she wants to write.
And we actually get to watch her idea for the screenplay come to life in this movie within a movie.
And this movie within a movie actually stars Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie and the story structure here with watching the movie within a movie and watching the movie itself is actually pretty daring.
The movie takes a long time to set itself up before diving into that movie. But then that movie almost overtakes the entire narrative.
And yet what’s so skillful about the way this movie is written is that the through line for our protagonist seems to continue really fluidly throughout both these layers of story.
When we’re learning about the kind of story that she’s telling and the feelings that she’s evoking in there, even though we’re not watching Biggie Crapes anymore, we’re able to witness what she’s wrestling with. It’s a very risky move, but I think it really pays off.
And the story within a story that’s being told is so warm and romantic, very anti Ingmar Bergman’s philosophy almost.
It draws from places of optimism and love and fantasy, and those kind of ideas are often taken less seriously in cinema because of the ideas that we have about what great art is that come from filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman who are undoubtedly great, but there’s more than just their perspective, obviously.
Mia Hansen-Løve shows us that maybe we can find something more profound and something that’s about joy or longing or romance. After all, those emotions can be just as intense as anything on the negative spectrum.
And it’s not that the story doesn’t have it sad or conflicting moments, or even moments where Biggie crap is tempted to take the story in a darker direction.
I actually felt very conflicted watching it about where this protagonist was gonna go with these feelings and how she would feel resolved in the end, about them.
And the way that it ends, I think, is maybe the part where I’m a little bit most perplexed because I do think the end works, it brought in an element of the story that I think was necessary, but it felt a little bit of an external resolve for the conflicts in the movie.
A lot of people are going to end up just missing. This movie is just being light and breezy. And therefore, it’s not really that impactful of a story.
But I think that’s the kind of thing that the movie is rallying against, like, why can’t a movie that is lighter or sunnier be just as profound.
The screenplay is a huge highlight here. It’s probably the best thing in the movie. From the daring structure to just the unique way that characters in this movie are developed.
Vicky Krieps is just perfect here. Her performance is so smart and measured, she’s just proving again that she’s a brilliant actress.
Tim Roth is also really good, and he has some really funny moments. Mia Wasikowska is great in it. The way that she reflects a little bit of the spirit of the main character makes her performance kind of layered.
So I really enjoyed this movie, and I had a lot of fun thing kind of thinking about and piecing it together.
So I am going to give Bergman Island 2021 film a C.
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Bergman Island Trailer
Check out the trailer of the new drama film, Bergman Island 2021.
