Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

VividSimon Simply Perfect

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

gavin6942 In 1909, poor, idealistic theology student Henrik Bergman falls in love with Anna Åkerbloom, the intelligent, educated daughter of a rich family in Uppsala. After their wedding Henrik becomes a priest in the north of Sweden. After a few years Anna can't stand living in the rural county with the uncouth people. She returns to Uppsala, Henrik stays in the north.After a long and successful career, Bergman wrote this script: essentially the story of his parents, who were second cousins, who fell in love despite some obstacles. And he did not just write it as a throwaway, he passionately threw himself into it and it became a three-hour epic.I do love that directing duties fell to Bille August. I would think with a story so personal, Bergman himself would want to have complete control. But no, he distanced himself. And that was a brave, bold move. His family's story as told by a third party.

gizmomogwai The winner of the Palme d'Or in 1992, The Best Intentions gave Danish director Bille August his second win of the highest award of the most prestigious film festival in the world, for a film Ingmar Bergman had written. Bergman himself never won the award and didn't direct The Best Intentions, even though he was still directing two decades after his fictional retirement with Fanny and Alexander (1982). If most people in English-speaking countries have never heard of The Best Intentions, there may be a reason- the vast majority would find a three-hour, subtitled unhappy marriage drama unappealing and boring. To some, however, there is a lot to recommend here.The film touches on issues of faith, the role of church in a changing society, a deteriorating marriage- many topics of which appear throughout Bergman's filmography. A priest struggles on the outskirts of the world in a small community, believing he might do some good, but his wife is deeply unhappy. There are some conflicts with locals who do not like him, including for renting out the church for socialist meetings. Henrik himself is no saint, not particularly deep, sometimes violent against his wife- aspects we see of him as the fictionalized Edvard in Fanny and Alexander. But here we see him suffer a lot more, and it inspires sympathy. Edvard also suffers and I felt sympathy for him too, but Fanny and Alexander is not his film. In a way, The Best Intentions feels like both Ingmar's criticism and reconciliation with his deeply flawed parents.The Petrus subplot also inspires sympathy and shock- the running to the stream scene is by far the most intense part of the film. It's definitely worth a mention, even if it makes a small part of the running time.

TheLittleSongbird As a big fan and admirer of Ingmar Bergman, I was not disappointed at all in The Best Intentions. Of Bergman's resume actually, there were only two movies I didn't care for and they were All These Women and The Serpent's Egg. The Best Intentions may start off a little too slow, but once it gets going there is so much that makes for truly riveting drama. Billie August directs superbly, and the film is beautifully photographed with striking scenery. The script by Bergman himself(he's only writer here) evokes so much thought, giving the film such a powerful and poignant tone, while the story while deliberately paced constantly had me compelled. I know of people who are indifferent to the characters of many films directed by Bergman or with his involvement, but the lack of likability of some of his characters is more than made up by the realism of how they are written. That is precisely the case with The Best Intentions. The acting is superb, especially from Max Von Sydow, with him even the simplest of gestures or expressions are telling of so much. Pernilla August is equally telling for exactly the same reasons. All in all, an intensely beautiful film, though, while one of the best of his later movies, not quite up there among Bergman's finest. 9/10 Bethany Cox

mockturtle If you read the box then you are ready to get your heart warmed when you pop in this Bergman scripted film by Bille August. But if you have half-a-brain then you're probably anticipating that the box is exactly what it turns out to be: bull that hopes to get people to watch it even though it's vintage Bergman.Brutal in a way that "Scenes from a Marriage" never is, in "The Best Intentions" Bergman accomplishes something extraordinary: he gets us to root for him never to have been born.What I mean is that his father (as expertly portrayed by Samuel Froler) is such a monstrous egotistical hubristic sociopath that I almost couldn't continue watching as he defined for the first time the ground rules of the Bergmanesque hell we would all become so familiar with in the future. Maybe that's why Bergman writes such strong women, because he casts his mother as the heroine and actually lets her overcome the obstacles, but here we get to watch a saintly intelligent woman get beaten down physically and mentally over and over by her psychotic husband's fetishizing of unhappiness and misery. As an example: he takes the very fact that she does not want to be in the desolate awful town they move to as a sign that it is the exact place she should be. She can't visit her family and she has to work like a slave for him. He strikes her several times, usually when he has been in the wrong. He makes her give up everything but whenever he has to he calls her spoiled and invokes God (but only in order to get things he wants). He holds every petty thing that ever happens against her. He keeps sleeping with his other fiancé without breaking it off when he starts sleeping with Anna, but neither of them can really hold it against him because apparently (though I don't know why) he's such a good person.If you believe the box then Anna's mother, who opposes the marriage, is the witch who will be proved wrong, but if you saw "Fanny och Alexander" then you remember that the grandmother was right (and that he relegated the monster father to being a stepfather). Both mothers oppose the marriage, and they're both right. That the grandmother is actually a good person is signified by Bergman's giving her the name "Karin" which is usually reserved for the pure of heart. This is so because his mother's name was "Karin," not "Anna." Also he gives Anna's brother his own actual first name, "Ernst," though I have no clue what that signifies.Bergman knows this, and some of the best evidence he gives of this is tenuously confirmed across a few films: the foil for Henrik Bergman in this film is Nordenson, a soulless capitalist pig who reminds us that secularism can be as monstrous as hubristic piety. Nordenson commits suicide (no big spoiler). In Bergman's final film "Sarabande" there is a husband named "Henrik" (spoiler coming up) whose sainted wife (whom he did not deserve) dies and then he commits suicide. Bergman's opposition to Nordenson looks for a minute like it is going to be the only decent thing he does, then you realize that he just wants to match egos with him.I wish the other ones ("Sunday's Children", "Private Confessions" and "In the Presence of a Clown") were available readily in the US, especially to see Peter Stormare assay an older "Petrus", that little zombie.The VHS of this film is shameful, blotchy letter often against a white background, completely indistinguishable. I don't think it is available on DVD which is a joke, it won best picture at Cannes in 1992! I would honestly not advocate that people see this if they are not already familiar with Bergman and inured to the site of a loving person's soul being crushed one step at a time. Pernilla August deserved her award, I saw every lash landing; All I could think in the last frame when she reaches out to him again was "NOOOOOO!"