After
the Rehearsal (1984)
This interesting
and stark film made for Swedish TV by Ingmar Bergman
is as much a meditation on aging as it is about the
theater process or male/female relationships. Containing
only one set, a theater stage, and 3 speaking actors,
the film's claustrophobia seems to be a motif here.
The claustrophobia of a life (in general or in the theater)
as well as relationships is preeminent in what the film
is discussing as well.
Director
Bergman seems to use actor Erland Josephson as an alter
ego who deals with female actress Lena Olin. Along the
way, an older woman also pops in for a act two sort
of flashback. Through the interaction on stage, after
a rehearsal, we learn of the two's past. Josephson's
a friend of the family to young Lena. The pathetic and
aging female in the centerpiece, her mother, exposes
her breasts as well as more background into the story.
This is a awesome piece of acting with the older woman
a sad and pathetic wretch who really saddens us as well
as making us feel so deeply for her.
The film's
final act, where Josephson and Olin discuss what could
have been the plot of the film, rather than enact it,
is the true meat and bones of this piece for they do
not discuss it, rather than enact it, as a constraint
of budget or as a storytelling device or even as a meditation
on the theme of claustrophobia, per se. Rather it is
verbalized here because enacting it would not be true
to the characters or reality. Discussing it is all Josephson's
aging character is really able to do here. His old age
has caught up with him to the point where an affair
with a beautiful young actress is only conceivable as
a fantasy or a play's plot. This idea is so subtle and
so understated that the film's characters do not seem,
on the surface, to reveal any pathos. Bergman is not
overt here. We don't feel sorry for these characters,
really, not in the way we do for the older woman, nor
do we feel them tug on our heartstrings. The director
so bothersome and exasperating in a way and the actress
so confusing and confused in her youth that we feel
very little for them at first. What I'm saying, I guess,
is that this is not a typical Hollywood type film where
the characters are thinly drawn and they inspire pity
or pathos or ethos from us, rather these characters
are real and human and subtle in their frailty where
we only notice that we feel sorry for them well after
the film is over, upon contemplation of what we've seen.
"After
the Rehearsal" is a marvelous film, even if it takes
a little while to get going. A meditation more than
a story, it is also a saddening and troubling look at
aging and the futility of relationships between older
and younger participants.
Note:
In Swedish
with English Subtitles.
Directed
and written by Bergman.
It is a
Strindberg "Dram Play" that is supposedly being rehearsed
before the film begins.
Note: Review
written in 1998
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