I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Excellent but underrated film

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

I had the opportunity to watch it with the Istanbul Film Festival. I felt lucky to have watched this classic movie in the cinema. There are many details about the movie. First you are confronted with an incredible drama film. I'm sure your eyes will be full while you watch. I think that everyone has a scenario where they can find a piece from themselves. The movie players are playing incredibly. Your mouth will remain open. I want to congratulate Liv and Ingrid once more. You have to watch this movie, which is composed of sadness, love, pain, lack of communication and hope. By the way, it was Bergman's first film I watched. Sometimes the value of some things can be understood later. We need to know the value of our family now. We should not regret it later. I want to finish this masterpiece's critique with a line I like very much. "I will never let you vanish out of my life again. I'm going to persist. I won't give up, even if it is too late. I don't think it is too late. It must not be too late."

It is Ingrid Bergman's big screen swan song and the two renowned Bergman compatriots' one and only collaboration. Charlotte Andergast (Bergman) is a renowned pianist who recently lost her companion Leonardo (Løkkeberg), so she accepts the invitation to stay with her eldest daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann) and her husband Viktor (Björk) for some time, whom she hasn't seen for seven years.This highly nerve-wracking chamber drama begins with Viktor's breaking-the-fourth-wall monologue about him and Eva's temporal life, he is a minister and how they are united under the guidance of the parish work. Then Eva brings him the letter she writes to invite Charlotte, at first impression, Eva is a tender, self-effacing and soft-spoken woman. Only when Charlotte arrives, who is presumably a self-centered artist with elegance, a vivacious but neglectful mother, garrulous about the last days of Leonardo, puts on a strong patina of being high spirited and after the initial and necessary pleasantry, Eva throws the first bomb, she tells her Helena (Nyman), Charlotte's bed-ridden, mentally disabled younger daughter, is also here, whom Charlotte puts in a health institution for years, but now she has been under the attendance of Eva for two years. The mother-daughters reunion proceeds into a rather awkward situation, as Charlotte is more than unwillingly to face her ill daughter, which clearly evokes her guilty conscience for being absent most of the time. After dinner, a turbulent undercurrent is grafted on Charlotte's professional advice on Eva's piano skill, from Eva's angle, she never quite inherit any merits from her mother, neither the look or the talent. This is one of the main reason of their clash, under her vulnerable mien, she is in hopeless anguish. After an interlude about the premature death of Viktor and Eva's four-year- old son and a tête-a-tête between Viktor and Charlotte (during which Viktor refers that Eva is incapable of love), in the still of the night, Charlotte is awaken from a nightmare, Eva hears the noise and they embark on a thorough heart-to-heart two-hander, Eva divulges all her unhappy childhood memories and attributes it to Charlotte's career-first option; while Charlotte tries to justify the story from her side, but in no avail, both actresses' performances are sparklingly galvanizing, Ullmann is fearlessly aggressive, arbitrarily unforgiving, while Bergman refutes with a tour-de-force achievement, unyieldingly emits compassionate remorse and unexpected perplexity. Both actresses competently consummate their characters' emotional arcs, which is undeniably enthralling to watch, even for those who don't feel comfortable in Bergman's school. Personally I will give the edge to Bergman, considering her the harsh similarities between the role and her legendary personal life, and it is a stupendous curtain call for her illustrious career, although I impulsively think this performance is her career-best. The bond between a mother and a daughter often comes off as an amalgam of love and hatred, AUTUMN SONATA is at its best to dissect the relationship in dialectics, there is no right or wrong in the story, firstly, viewers is prone to cold-shoulder Charlotte's self-seeking pretentiousness, her failure in motherhood, but, when Eva's anger is fully emancipated, her one-sided blame- shooting accusation is also defectively biased, Ingmar Bergman is a true maestro in concocting this kind of brutal revelation of human being's deep-rooted character deficiency, it is not a parable, it is just a real life situation may occur to many others, unfortunately this time one might also sense a tint of misogyny. In the end, there is no sign of reconciliation despite Eva writes an apologetic letter, which Charlotte may or may not receive, the whole mess cannot save them from their respective mental condition, leastwise, they know each other better afterward, the scar may never be healed and truth hurts, yet everyone of us is living with both pain and happiness, simultaneously, as long as we come to terms with that, we will be fine.

Autumn Sonata is a gem of a film from renowned Swedish director Ingmar Bergman which centers around the complicated and difficult relationship of a famous pianist, Charlotte and her eldest daughter, Eva, portrayed by stalwarts Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann respectively.Autumn Sonata begins with the pianist mother Charlotte visiting Eva and her husband. Initially, the mother-daughter relationship does seem a bit frigid though courteous. Gradually, as the film unfolds, several dimensions to this relation gets revealed -Charlotte's career, Eva's childhood, the presence of a second daughter among others.Autumn Sonata's most enduring memory is its crescendo involving the two brilliant actors Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann. While it would amount to being a spoiler attempting to describe what happens, it can suffice to say that Ingmar Bergman's greatness bursts through in this climax and one discovers the tremendous potential of a chamber drama.This is no doubt what great cinema is about and while one of the two central figures certainly blows the viewer away with her intensity, the tremendous impact and presence of the other can only be felt on multiple viewing, and this chemistry is what contributes to Autumn Sonata being perhaps one of the best films ever made, most certainly by Ingmar Bergman and maybe even in the history of cinema.

Ingrid is great as a totally self involved woman of great musical talent but no outward vision beyond how it serves her no matter how she tries. This was her final feature and second to last acting work and it's heartbreaking watching her full mastery of her craft to realize that while still in full command of her gift illness cut her down. The rest of the film is dour and terribly depressing which of course is par for the course with Ingmar Bergman. We are supposed to empathize with Liv Ullman's character but she seems stunted by her bad childhood unable to realize that at some point you have to accept people as they are and get on with the business of living.