Billy August, president of the international jury of this year's North Film Festival "Temple of Heaven Award", in addition to meeting with other judges to decide who to spend various awards, also brought the audience his 1992 film "Betrayal of Goodwill". The film, which won best film and best actress at that year's Cannes Film Festival, was written by world cinema master Ingmar Bergman. Paraphrasing the title of Bergman's 1973 TV series, it tells the story of the "marriage scene" of Bergman's parents. Although before filming began, Bergman said that he would give Auguste absolute creative freedom, the film is still clearly imprinted on Bergman - whether Bergman "never interfered" during the filming process has been impossible to test, and Panilla August, who was affirmed by the Cannes Awards for acting, is the best candidate for his role as a "mother".
The audience became interested in this film, and the rush was naturally Bergman's "I Write My Heart by Hand". Although danish director Auguste's origins are not small - the Cannes award brought by "The Betrayal of Good Intentions" is not an unattainable windfall for him, he has won the Cannes Palme d'Or in 1988 with the film "Pell the Conqueror", and the following year won the Oscar for best foreign language film for the film, intimately touching the little golden man - but compared to the "big god" Bergman, his position is obviously much smaller. Therefore, some fans have wishfully regarded "Betrayal of Good Intentions" as Bergman's choreography and directing work, and perhaps there are reasons for it.
Like Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander" and "Marriage Scenes", "Betrayal of Good Intentions" is also divided into two versions, the film version is about 3 hours long, and the TV version has a total of 4 episodes, with a total duration of about 5 and a half hours. There is no difference in essence between the two versions, both of which are about the difficulty of "falling in love" with "mother" Anna of Bergman's "father" henryk and "mother" Anna, and the inevitability of "killing each other", and the difference in duration is only in the abundance of details. The poor boy Henrik and the rich woman Anna were originally separated by class differences, and Henrik tried to fill the gap between the two in the name of God with theological texts, but from the moment he stepped into Anna's world, when he did not know how to enjoy a rich dinner for a middle-class family, the gap was destined to widen.
Everything stems from inferiority that has already penetrated into Henrik's bone marrow and blood. He simply did not believe that love had the great power to bridge the gap between the identities of the two people. His forced separation from Anna during his studies at seminary is inseparable from Anna's mother's strong will and means of opposition, but he also embraces the lover of the "proletariat", which can be regarded to some extent as a "spare tire" for his marriage that leaves no risk. Becoming a pastor and reconciling with Anna, he immediately took Anna to the cold frontier, hoping to exchange asceticism for God's lifelong blessing for the relationship between the two, but when a disagreement broke out over how to hold the wedding, Henrik showed Anna the roughness of "God is not rudderless", believing that Anna was betraying his "good intentions". After that, this behavior intensified, Anna finally could not bear to return to her mother, Henrik began to practice more extremely, but could not withstand the "temptation of goodwill" of the village women, the worldly desire overwhelmingly overcame God's will, he truly realized that his "preaching and teaching" was not of substantial help to capitalists or workers, men or women.
This kind of rigid and conservative form of adhering to the rules and precepts, helplessly not "possessed by God" mortal body is difficult to resist the desire to be stupid in the heart, from time to time will "transform" into the image of the devil's priests or bishops and other clergy, often appear in Bergman's films. The priest Erikson in his 1963 film Winterlight was almost a "replica" of Henrik. After the death of his wife, Erikson lost interest in managing the community church that the two used to run, and God drifted away. His instinct to obey his body on a cold and lonely winter day, to become a lover with Marta, who has always loved him, but he could not make up for the pain caused by the lack of God, and every weekend he led a small number of believers to do prayers, of course, it became a purposeless perfunctory thing. In Bergman's 1982 film and projection of her childhood experience, "Fanny and Alexander", in the eyes of Fanny and Alexander, two scouts sent out by Bergman to explore the real world, their stepfather Edward is a bishop who has the appearance of a bishop who speaks for God, and in his bones is a cold tyrant under the guise of "god's name".
Bergman's constant "blackening" of clergy in the film stems from his childhood "feuds" with his parents. The profound influence of his family and parents on his life and creations has been mentioned several times in his autobiography, The Magic Lantern. His father, Eric, had a career as the exclusive priest of the King of Sweden, but was extremely incompetent in educating his son. Just as Edward in "Fanny and Alexander" punished Alexander for "disloyalty to God" for confinement, fasting, and other behaviors, Bergman was locked in a dark closet by his unsmiling father as a child for bedwetting. At the same time, his mother did not play the role of "loving mother" corresponding to "strict father". When Bergman pretended to be ill or other lies in an attempt to win his mother's love, in exchange for the coldness of her eyes.
The "inexhaustible" relationship with his parents as a child brought an indelible shadow to Bergman, who explored religious attitudes in the film and reflected the hatred for his father in life, but in front of his mother, he was always a child who took the initiative to stretch out his arms and longed for a hug. In early 1965, Bergman, who was close to the age of destiny, received a call from his mother, learning that his father was suffering from malignant esophageal cancer and preparing to be hospitalized for surgery, for his mother to let him go to the hospital to visit the request and pleading, Bergman explicitly refused, when his mother braved the snow and wind to rush to the Royal Opera House in Stockholm, Bergman wanted to comfort her with hugs and kisses, but ushered in a loud slap from his mother, and the tearful version of "shouting and whispering" between mother and son was subsequently staged.
This conflict was taken by Bergman in the form of "tracing back to his father" and put it at the beginning of "Good Faith Betrayal", self-deprecatingly explaining that his father and his mutual hatred may come from the inheritance of the Bergman family. In the film, Henryk's grandfather offers a large price tag that is enough to support him to successfully complete his education and pay off his debts, asking him to visit his critically ill grandmother in the hospital, but Henryk cannot let go of the two people's expulsion of him and his mother, firmly rejecting, and after the death of his grandmother, his attitude remains unchanged and refuses to attend the funeral.
But "Betrayal of Good Intentions" "exposes" the father's "evil deeds" at the same time, but also presents his "love" for the child, echoing Bergman's almost distorted need for "love". Henrik and Anna obey God's arrangement and take in an orphan, but Anna is never able to accept him as a member of the family, and the orphan learns of Anna's dislike for him and retaliates by throwing Anna and Henrik's eldest son (Bergman's brother) into the cold and turbulent river, but Henrik succeeds in stopping him and inflicts atrocities on the orphan by punching and kicking him. This move almost completely shattered the symbolic meaning of Henrik as a priest, and also shattered all the value that Anna was willing to pay, becoming the last straw that crushed her, prompting her to return to the way of life that had been away from her for a long time, but it cannot be denied that this scene nakedly presents the immediate reaction of an ordinary father, even if it is extreme, but it is in Bergman's heart.
The "middle-class life" that Anna could not really let go of from beginning to end was naturally what Bergman longed for in childhood. The essence of this kind of life may not be understood by the young man, but the harmonious and cheerful family atmosphere is undoubtedly what he hopes to feel. Understood on this level, "Betrayal of Good Intentions" is both a sequel to Fanny and Alexander and a tribute to it. In "Fanny and Alexander", the mother and son, with the help of family members, also escape from Edward's "clutches" and eventually return to the family. At the end of "Betrayal of Good Intentions", the scene of Anna with Bergman in her belly celebrating Christmas with her mother, eldest son and other family members is also easy for the audience to think of the opening of "Fanny and Alexander". From August's directorial point of view, this seems to be a natural thing. In Pell the Conqueror, he has paid homage to Bergman. In the humble bag of the father and son who came to Denmark from Sweden to make a living, there are several embryos of Swedish "wild strawberries", which produce a delicious "Swedish taste" on danish soil.
Throughout the film, on the way to Bergman's parents' love and marriage, almost everyone involved, except for Henrik and Anna, is in "betrayal of goodwill". Anna's mother, concerned for her daughter's well-being, did not heed her husband's advice to destroy Anna's letters to Henrik; Henrik's mother was dissatisfied at the first sight of Anna, and issued a vicious curse while begging God for forgiveness. As the two mothers wished, although Henrik and Anna did not "go to the sky on the other side" in the end, the cracks in the mirror could no longer be repaired.
But perhaps thanks to the rifts that have always existed. Without them, the childhood Bergman would not slowly grow into a Bergman who will never fall in the history of world cinema.
| Mei Sheng
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