Europe Endless - Scandinavia: Wild Strawberries (Dir Ingmar Bergman, 1h31m, 1975)
Think of Bergman and you think of Sweden; or rather, you think of a stereotypical Bergman's film: Sweden, bleakness, misery, of harsh winters and landscapes, Bergman's own idyll of Fåro writ large, of men tormented by their own existential crises, or external forces, most notably religion, into which tragic fractured women peer in. This of course is reductive, even to dear Ingmar Bergman: trying to suggest a long-held set of stereotypes of one director's work defines Swedish cinema and the nation at large is like saying that Sweden can be be understood by popping in "ABBA Gold" into the CD changer on your Volvo on your way to IKEA. Yet Bergman has become a shorthand for Swedish cinema, for better or worse, and whilst many of his films were on the shortlist to consider, I've chosen the travels of an elderly doctor, both to a prize giving ceremony, and back into his past and his childhood, as he contends with his life and his mortality that we turn, as we go...
