Two weeks ago, Mark Cousins’ film Stockholm My Love premiered in London. In the build up to its release he wrote an open letter to Ingmar Bergman proclaiming Sweden’s capital is deserving of cinematic attention and focus, something the country’s most famous director clearly never gave much priority. Well, I thought it would be nice for Ingmar to get some more post…

Hej Ingmar

I hope Fårö is treating you well in eternity.

A lot of people live and die without ever connecting with a place on an individualistic plane. That cannot be said of yourself. You loved Fårö deeply. Its wilderness and isolation inspired the fabric of your being and reflected the essence of yourself that is evident in your body of work. It doesn’t matter where your history lies, history can never prescribe you your home.

History never played much of a part in your films; the setting of them had no regard or interest for it. Yes, Stockholm has a rich culture, wonderful architecture and an urban vibrancy but it is one that is rather stilted and middle class, particularly the Stockholm you grew up in. Even today Stockholm carries the stigma of being snooty and arrogant to many outsider Swedes.

To understand your relationship to the capital requires one to watch Fanny & Alexander. The eponymous heroes are children subjected to the scandals and intrigues of their bourgeois family. Being somewhat autobiographical, this was your experience of Stockholm. Your films are predominately about struggle, faith, relationships and the human psyche. They are about stripping back to the fundamentals of human experience. The advent of the middle class simply clouds these things; it complicates and masks our natural inclinations and connections. Fanny & Alexander is a portrait of a child’s purity cowering in subjection to twisted and convoluted familial discord. The film’s truth can only be illuminated through the innocent and elemental perspective of children in conflict with the corrupt adult narratives. The adult narratives in this case don’t hold much value for you in them but only when they have been shown up for what they really are.

I think back over the locations of your oeuvre – the theatre, the archipelago, the beach, the church, the docks, the circus, the hospital, the train. I compare this to your characters – vagabonds, the unemployed, artists, pagans, circus folk, prostitutes, pregnant women, carers, the mentally ill, neglected children, rape victims. There is certainly a clear desire to document affliction and hardship and how that plays on human relationships – how it can bring some together, how it can tear some apart, how often it is somewhere in between and how always, even when we are committed to one another, we are alone with our feelings and desires.

All of this is out of kilter with Stockholm My Love, where the female lead (I’m sure I’ve got your attention now) nurses herself through a tough period in her life by walking aimlessly around Stockholm, becoming lost in its life and history, which in turn is her life and history. Stockholm is her therapy. The trouble is that your life and history, not in the sense of childhood or landmarks or time spent but in terms of connection, was Fårö.

Any successful artist creates a truth from their own perspective and the embodiment of your truth was rarely wrapped in the sprawl of Stockholm. Whenever it was, it certainly wasn’t a love-in or a positive force, or even neutrality. Summer with Monika, for example, is about Stockholmer working class disillusionment that leads to separation and abandonment in the pursuit of something undefined but freeing. Most of your films from Through a Glass Darkly onwards are set on Fårö because it embodies everything important in your truth and your view of the human condition. It enables you and your outlook, whereas it wouldn’t for others. The fact that Stockholm couldn’t act as such a vehicle for you only shows it wasn’t in your heart - not that it’s unworthy of being in anyone else’s.

I am actually looking forward to seeing Stockholm My Love because Stockholm is in my heart. I also think that if you were a young filmmaker today you might find much to inspire you in the city, in particular the immigrant population’s almost annexed existence and the changing complexion of the city’s social values. It also has a contradictory nature which I can never decide if it’s a dualism or hypocrisy. Stockholm’s history is almost becoming a ghost to haunt it, spooking it from embracing change wherein at the same time it inevitably does change because it has to.

Oh, and if you haven’t already heard, they have found the script to Sixty-four Minutes with Rebecka and intend to film it. As nobody has a clue as to why you didn’t pursue the project nobody knows whether you would approve… I’m sure if director Suzanne Osten finds a way to make it her own rather than second guessing your intentions then you will not only approve but also enjoy it like the rest of us.

mvh
Ash.

This month's favourites:
   Sinkane, Life & Livin' It
   Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler
   The Cat Returns (2002)