As much as I am a fan of Ingmar Bergman's most famous film, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries has a deeper emotional current running through it. Dr. Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström) is a social recluse, spending his days in solitude, with no human contact other than the interactions he has with Miss Agda, his elderly housekeeper. This isolation is partly Borg's own choice, but mainly because he is disliked due to his cold and unfriendly demeanor. He sets out on a trip, but decides to take the day-long drive in lieu of flying, and along the way, he reminisces about earlier parts of his life. Accompanied by his daughter-in-law Marianne, they encounter various people who serve as living reflections to Isak's own life, forcing him to confront the emptiness of the life he has chosen.
Borg's symbolic journey through the countryside is a gorgeous take on the required 'road movie'. Many people I know have cried at the end of the film, and it's not because Bergman insists on broadcasting sentimentality, it's because at its heart, Wild Strawberries is a movie about memory and hope. It's a piece of art. It's been hinted that Dr. Isak Borg is a proxy for Bergman to express his own feelings towards his personal and emotional failings, but even without that knowledge it's easy to connect to Borg (even if it is only a secondhand connection). Audience members have all struggled at one point or another with strains in there personal relationships, or the feeling that life- no matter what point we are at in it- is more forbidding than death. But Wild Strawberries is not a struggle with mortality, it's the search to find meaning in what we have done. To quote Oscar Wilde: "To live is the rarest thing in the world, most people exist, that is all." The pursuit to fulfill that quote is what drives the movie, making it Bergman's most subtly beautiful piece.
Borg's symbolic journey through the countryside is a gorgeous take on the required 'road movie'. Many people I know have cried at the end of the film, and it's not because Bergman insists on broadcasting sentimentality, it's because at its heart, Wild Strawberries is a movie about memory and hope. It's a piece of art. It's been hinted that Dr. Isak Borg is a proxy for Bergman to express his own feelings towards his personal and emotional failings, but even without that knowledge it's easy to connect to Borg (even if it is only a secondhand connection). Audience members have all struggled at one point or another with strains in there personal relationships, or the feeling that life- no matter what point we are at in it- is more forbidding than death. But Wild Strawberries is not a struggle with mortality, it's the search to find meaning in what we have done. To quote Oscar Wilde: "To live is the rarest thing in the world, most people exist, that is all." The pursuit to fulfill that quote is what drives the movie, making it Bergman's most subtly beautiful piece.