Isak Borg is a physician in his seventies, who’s has always secured a shelter within a cocoon, largely created by the figments of his own imagination. Borg has always maintained a distance from the harsh truth and has managed creating a fictive reality around him. The film however almost assumes the pattern of a dramatic monologue to expose him through a constant projection of the mismatch between his words and his deeds. In an epilogue to the film Isak claims his indifference towards human relationships, as people tend to become judgmental. As the film proceeds, however, we find that the old doctor is oversensitive when it comes to what others think of him. The character of Isak Borg was modeled after Bergman himself. The director was himself a compulsive liar as a child. Often being compelled to conform to the bourgeois structure against his wish, young Bergman would find his escape route in blatant lies. He too, like Isak shall weave a fiction around himself and would eventually get lost in it. Film making for Bergman has mostly been a process of "cleaning his upbringing" to confront his own lost self. This explains how film for Bergman becomes an anti-establishment political weapon to counter the bourgeoisie. The celluloid medium thus becomes for him a tool to defy the societal stereotypes.
For Bergman the artist the question that looms large is "who am I?" and all his creations might be seen as an endeavour to seek an answer to this. He acknowledges the presence of "an enormous amount of chaos" in him. He is also into a simultaneous recognition of the inefficiency of our social existence to accommodate this "chaos". He is aware of the duality residing in him but knows that this existence shall demand of him to play the role of a one-dimensional being. As Bergman points out how this uninspired living curbs down the possibilities for human potential, we are jerked out of our complacency towards a drudgery, which we had mistaken for life. We are compelled to ponder over what lies hidden beneath the apparent serenity as imposed by culture upon us. Marianne Borg shall provide as a perfect example to illustrate this case. Marianne is a fine young woman, whose sophistication perfectly conceals the pain of an individual nearing her spiritual exhaustion. Bergman’s characters are masked actors performing at the meaningless pantomime. While commenting upon the frequent use of close ups by Bergman, Peter Cowie, a Bergman scholar points out that the faces have become masks here and the close ups are intended to show how the different emotion find expression upon these masks.
Isak, when we first see him in the movie is into a habitual certainty of seeing himself as nothing but the old pedant he has made himself into. He is almost into a deliberate ignorance of what he is beneath this surface. The film thus attempts at revealing his subconscious through his dreams. As the old scholar revisits his youth through his dreams, Bergman adopts the technique of flashbacks into the past. In his dreams Isak visits their vacationing villa at the east coast of Sweden- a space where everything has been preserved as if untouched by time. Things have remained the same while Isak himself has grown old, showing signs of decay.
Initially in his dreams Isak assumes the role of a voyeur. He sees episodes that had taken place in his absence. And often the world of the dream and that of reality are fused into each other. The handless clock that had occurred to him in his dream becomes a real object when Isak’s mother shows him one such pocket watch that once belonged to the father and now shall be given to his eldest nephew.
As Isak’s mother complaints that she has always felt cold around her stomach we are left to ponder if the womb that had given birth to Isak is a dead womb or not. Our speculations are further endorsed by Marianne who sees the old lady as the epitome of the coldness that death is. We realize at once that being born from a dead womb, Isak strives to derive his succor from what others think about him. Isak must do this to sustain his ego, thus even in his dreams he listens to what is being said about him by Sara while the speaker remain unaware of his presence.
Sara was Isak’s first love. For Isak, Sara is the embodiment of ideal beauty. She could have provided him with the religion of love, but Isak’s desires were thwarted as Sara married his brother and not him. Bergman, however, makes Isak meet a new age Sara. The young girl in fact claims it to be a better idea for her admirers to talk about her than to quarrel over the existence of God. Bergman thus subtly presents here his view on religiosity- while institutionalized religion often becomes a weapon used by the bourgeoisie to manipulate the mass, spirituality, as contrary to the popular believe, lies in love.
It is Sara, who shall make Isak meet himself through her mirror. At the patch where wild strawberries once grew, Isak experiences his second birth. It’s a painful recognition of himself that Isak goes through but then every birth is through the portals of pain. Sigfrid’s baby becomes almost becomes a visual metaphor for the newly born Isak and Sara as the new mother comforts her child with the promises of a new beginning.
Isak has made a long journey to arrive at his anagnorisis. It is the journey of Jesus, son of man too the awareness of being Christ, the Son of God. Bergman subtly suggests this through his efficient use of montage. After catching a glimpse of Sara’s happy domesticity, as Isak stand dejected outside a door; he receives a Christ like injury as his palm starts bleeding, as he is hurt at a nail.
Isak Borg is exalted to the heights of a true absurd hero as he discerns the "extraordinary logic" permeating the apparently incoherent events of the day. He has finally arrived at recognition of himself. Those whom he has met during the day have made Isak confront fragments of him in them and he has been able to gather the pieces and arrange them together to arrive at a holistic understanding of himself. Free from the imposed identity that he had mistaken for himself, the old physician decides to share his experience with others. The film ends with Isak revisiting his childhood in yet another dream. But unlike the other disturbing nightmares that he has already experienced, in this last dream Isak finds back his parents. He is at last reconciled to his roots
But can there be any reconciliation within the frameworks of existentialism in which Bergman posits Isak Borg? Is it at all possible to reach an awareness about the self? Is their really any meaning for which we aspire? The questions remain unresolved. Bergman admits to his friend Donnar that with passing time he is becoming all the more unknown to himself. The distance between the person and the persona has become greater with time. Is then Bergman’s project of searching the self as undertaken in his films a failure? Perhaps not. Through his work Bergman has arrived at the supreme knowledge that there cannot be any specific identity. Neither is it possible nor desired. A specific identity shall limit the artist. It is through the acknowledgement of the different personas that dwell within that an artist strives at an estimation of the self.
By,
Priyanka Mukherjee
