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.

I love this movie so much

Truly Dreadful Film

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I don't think I've ever struggled so much on how I should like or dislike a film. I'm going to briefly jump to conclusions and say that Ingmar Bergman's Shame is absolutely brilliant, yet far from being his best. Contrary to what Bergman himself said about this movie, I thought the first half was fantastic, I didn't find it uneven at all. Although the latter half was no less uneven, I found certain points to be dragging in nature. Still, Shame, for me, was a powerful experience, with lots of perfections on many levels.Released in the same year as Hour of the Wolf, along with the same leads, Shame is a character study of people caught in a raging civil war. Despite the epic scale of the film, it is very, very bleak; so far the most bleakest Bergman movie I've seen. In fact, this can be seen in the first scene alone that shows the two main characters, Eva (Ullman) and Jan (Sydow), simply waking up to a loud alarm clock to start the day. The one oddity that occurs in the scene is when we briefly see Eva topless.We can understand that Eva and Jan are heavily pressurized by the effects of the war; Jan's dream about returning to his profession of music and a later scene where Eva scolds Jan for crying like a child show us their hopes are deterred by the war. Interestingly, Eva's intolerance with Jan's behavior is quite the very opposite of what was shown in Hour of the Wolf: Ullman tolerates what Sydow's character is going through.The variety of encounters the couple have on their way and in town tell us a lot about the characters' anxieties. Jan's irritation of himself for not being thoughtful and accomplished enough is evidenced in the scene where Eva talks to Filip, the kind guy who gives them the fish and tells of them some news regarding the war. His not being able to fix things, such as the radio (the only telecommunication device available) shows how Jan is limited beyond his apparent talent in music.The part where Eva and Jan visits the wine salesman was quite thought-provoking. The salesman, despite his age, is called to duty, and he shares his fear of being forgotten when he dies. In this scene, we're shown shots of the room that depicts old statue pieces and whatnot. The sets decoration of the room they're in resembles the theatrical nature of Bergman's pre-(and post)-60s works, which the director seems to have moved on at that point in life. I don't if this has anything to do with the shots that showed the "souless" nature of the old room, but it's my theory. The scene itself could also mean the nothingness people will eventually become, as explored in The Silence.There many ravishing scenes during the war scenes and its aftermath. The explosions are shot perfectly, despite very little of it is shown (and to think explosions were the last thing we would see in a Bergman film). The moment where Eva sees the lifeless body of a baby child was stunningly captured. Her sadness and Jan's lack of compassion over its death show the difference in their nature, and how those traits influence the way they change later in the film.The political backdrop of the film is questionable, as Shame is more a study on the characters than being a story about surviving a war. Regardless, I think Bergman intended to have some commentary on the Vietnam War, or maybe war in general, in the movie. The interview scene is a prime example of how Bergman felt about dirty politics. Eva is forced to do an interview by enemy soldiers, to which she answers honestly. Later, the questioned by friend soldiers about the interview, which has been made into a propaganda. Bergman, as we all know, was a fan of Tarkovsky, and if he actually did intend to a political message in the film, then I think he was doing what Tarkovsky did with Andrei Rublev: how art can be destroyed by hypocrisy.Gunnar Björnstrand gives one of his finest performances as the ruthless, yet lonely, Col. Jacobi. His scene-stealing role was an aspect of good and bad for me. The convoluted relationship that he develops between Eva and Jan influence their eventual development, but at times, I feel the plot becomes too delved into this. Not that there's anything wrong with introducing this sub-plot.Eva and Jan's major transformations occur when the latter has Jacobi killed. Throughout the film, Jan has been berated for not being man enough while Eva had a lot of influence over Jan. Jan, because of his weak and cowardly nature, has Jacobi, the man who has been stealing his wife, killed in a dirty maneuver. Meanwhile, Eva retains her sympathetic nature while losing control of her husband. This becomes much evident in the next scenes where Jan kills a young soldier by stealing his gun while the latter is asleep, with Eva helplessly crying for Jan to stop. The sudden transition in characters may be a bit hard to swallow, but I think it's still executed in an appropriate way.All in all, I hesitate to call Bergman's Shame a masterpiece, containing some flaws I find hard to ignore. Nevertheless, there's still so much greatness that I can't give enough praise. The writing is splendid, with Bergman having done a fine job in characterization. Ulman and Sydow are great again; Sydow gave the better performance in Hour of the Wolf while it was vice versa for Shame. Even if you're not too much a fan of Bergman, this overlooked piece of work can be enjoyed as a superb war film that can leave you thinking hours, maybe days, after watching.

This begrudging and angry film is against not just the war during which it was made, but all war. It doesn't care what war it is. It might be the most emotionally involving experience I have ever had with Ingmar Bergman's work. There are no sides to the two main characters in this impacting drama, which doesn't intimate a point in any ceremonial symbolism as per Bergman's usual, but plainly showcases people and their lives and exercises what Bergman has already proved he understands about a person's reaction to a movie.His top-drawer regulars Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow play an internalizing but bickering married couple who were once orchestra musicians. Now they live in a weathered farm house on an island. Part of the building frustration we grow to share with these two people fertilizes in the detail that nothing in their house seems to work. They are not reclusive intellectuals, either. They are a rather familiar marriage that has more or less resigned from life and is essentially apolitical; they only get wind of distant rumors of a war that has been going on forever. Ullmann is concerned with the danger to their lives and to her desire to bear children. Her husband Von Sydow shrugs off that the war will pass them by. Their serenity is interrupted by screaming fighter planes flying low over their house, the killing of a parachuting airman, the arrival of dubious troops, their inquisition, and eventually their capture by what appears to be the local side, but loyalties have long since splintered. They are sent back to their home, witness gratuitous destruction and suffer the vindictive consequences of such an agonizingly distrustful marriage. This, one of my top favorite Bergman efforts, is a study of a couple jarred from their safely self-unaware lives and violated by a manipulative despair, testing them both to reveal who they really are. She lacks compassion to some extent, too self-serving and restless to have any patience for his capricious breakdowns into crying. His suppressed emotional issues have led to the repression of the very initiative and excitement that attracted them to begin with. The immense last twenty minutes, sporadically interrupted by images of the overwhelming gray sky, are among the closest to real emotion that Bergman ever filmed.All systems of dogma and faith are the antagonists in this very essential and downbeat portrait. The basically clearcut personalities of Ullmann and Von Sydow's characters are hurled into the degenerate world of war because they are accused of being "sympathizers," but the film, shot on Bergman's small home island of Faro, doesn't give any information about where or when it's set, who the two sides are, and for what they're fighting. To an uninvolved civilian caught in between, the knowledge base is likely to be quite similar.Ullmann and Von Sydow are not sympathizers for the apparent enemy, but they're partisans for who are apparently their side. This 1968 reactive allegory could be about the common noncombatant citizens of Iraq, or Kosovo, or Vietnam, or Israel, or Palestine, or...

I should no longer be surprised when critics miss the most obvious things in works of art, because they are human beings, and the vast majority of human beings are lazy by nature. That said, the simplistic notion that Ingmar Bergman's great 1968 film Shame (or Skammen) is merely an anti-war film does a great deal of damage to the reputation of this very complex, and highly nuanced, film. Compared to its more filmically showoffy predecessors, Persona and Hour Of The Wolf, Shame is seemingly a more classic film, in terms of narrative. But, the key word is seemingly, for while it lacks the bravura pop psychologizing of Persona and the gaudy horror film homages of Hour Of The Wolf, it is one of the best films ever made about war- and not as an anti-war film, nor a pro-war film. As such, it has to rank with Wild Strawberries as one of his greatest films, as well as one of his best screenplays, if not the best.Although ostensibly a more psychologically exterior film than the films that preceded it, it truly says far more realistic things about the human psyche and the will to survive. In it, Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman play Jan and Eva Rosenberg (perhaps a nod at the infamous American spies, whom many European intellectuals felt were innocent), two musicians who used to play for the local philharmonic orchestra before a war broke out, and they retreated to live on a small plot of land on an island, content to working in a greenhouse. The country they live in is unnamed, as is the island they live on, although the film was made on Bergman's small island of Farö, just off the northern end of the Swedish Island of Göttland. It seems that their nation has been at war for some years with an invading country, or perhaps engaged in a civil war with rebels from another province. This is all left deliberately hazy, as this war is meant to symbolize all wars. This is reinforced as the film starts with assorted war quotes on the screen, as the credits roll. These include quotes from Hitler to Vietnam Era American military figures. After early scenes that depict the prosaic nature of their rural life, and then the coming of war, where even old men are conscripted, an aerial attack ravages the Rosenbergs' land, as enemy jets fly overhead, dropping bombs and what seems to be chemical weapons of an Agent Orange like nature. One plane is hit, and a parachutist jumps out and ends up hanging in a tree. Jan, who starts off the film as a sniveling coward, refuses to go and help, so Eva goes alone. Jan joins her and they find the pilot has been shot. It seems he is, indeed, part of the invading, or possibly rebel, force. A bunch of government soldiers soon stop at their home and ask questions about the dead pilot, then advise the couple to leave their home, as the Invaders are near…. there are the misinterpretations of the film on a micro level, such as that of Bergman scholar Marc Gervais, who provides the film commentary on the DVD of the film. Like many other critics, he claims that Jacobi is a Quisling, who has collaborated with the Invaders. But, this is clearly and demonstrably wrong, for Jacobi is with the original Fascist government. As proof, first off, the Invaders are repelled after they invade the Rosenbergs' land and shoot their agitprop interview. We know this because the government that later questions them of the faked interview, and words put into Eva's mouth, see the film as supposed proof of their treason, and Jacobi is clearly working with them, the Fascist Big Brother statists. Secondly, Jacobi is in charge of deciding which of the townsfolk are sent to concentration camps, for collaborating with the Invaders, and the Rosenbergs, again, are among those spared. Thirdly, in his seduction of Eva, Jacobi tells her his son is on leave from the military, and clearly, if he was an Invader, he would not be speaking so happily of his son serving the state. Also, rebel forces are not official armies, and do not grant official leave. Lastly, Filip is clearly with the rebels, or Invaders, of the Organization, and why would he have killed a colleague?That Gervais and other critics so blatantly and wantonly misinterpret and flat out miss such a key and manifest point of this film brings into question their ability to discern any and all aspects of all of Bergman's films. This is a wonderful and great film, and very high in the Berman canon, but it is disappointing to read how so few critics and viewers have really understand its complex message, instead opting out for the cheap, lazy, and easy claim of its being merely anti-war, and a rather simple film in comparison to its two showier predecessors. And that, in the long run, is the real shame of Shame.

This film offers one of the greatest experiences available to movie-goers. It is by no means a pleasant film, but offers realities and emotions the human mind may never have meant to touch upon. It opens pathways in how an individual thinks, and afterwards will change the person forever. The first time I saw this film was in class, and immediately after seeing it I had to skip my next class and walk around campus in order to reset my body and mind. I felt devastated and, somehow unreal, as if I didn't exist. It was only a few months later that I was telling one of my friends about SHAME, and she asked, "Oh, is that when you were messed up after seeing it, and ran into me talking all strange about it?" I didn't even remember running into or talking to anyone at all while outside that day, I was astonished. In plot terms it is the simple tale of a couple torn apart by war. There suffering is greater than that of the dead and by the end...there are no words to complete the image that Bergman creates. Its like a horrible dream which causes you to wake, altering your own reality forever. This film must be seen.