IMDb #135 Review: Wild Strawberries (1957)

Source: Wikipedia

A reclusive old grouch, on the momentous occasion he leaves his house to pick up an honorary doctorate, suddenly realizes how much he screwed up his life.

No real friends. Distant from close relatives. Maybe he could try not being a jerk? No, then he'd have to reconfigure his overly formal fifty-year passive-aggressive relationship with his housekeeper. That would be too much.

Despite the housekeeper's protests, he sets off alone in the car. His journey accumulates strange young people. When reality becomes annoying, which is remarkably often, he retreats into his own head. Nostalgic memories, surreal dream sequences, and casual combinations of the two.

He mentally visits his childhood summer home, where wild strawberries grew then but not anymore. (Thematically significant? Nah). As youngsters, he and his manifold siblings read poetry, played piano, tolerated their senile uncle, casually discussed sin and eternity -- y'know, kid things. In Sweden, probably.

Meanwhile, in reality, the car breaks down and they fix it at a gas station and he picks up and subsequently kicks out a bickering married couple. Two college guys, a ministerial student and a doctoral student, a romanticist and a rationalist, debate and eventually fistfight about the concept of God (as if it'll change the nature of the universe).

The old prof, perhaps representative of Ingmar Bergman, slips back into the comforts of incomprehensible dream imagery. Like the one where you're at school taking your doctoral exam and you can't identify the example under the microscope because it doesn't exist and you can't identify the word written on the blackboard because that language doesn't exist either and you can't diagnose the patient on the table because he happens to be unfortunately deceased. You know, that one.

Following the dull doctorate conferral ceremony, the old man returns to his dull, lonely, hateful life. But he receives an uplifting visit from his young road trip companions, who chuck rocks at his window, possibly to remind him that happiness exists and he missed it. (Thematically significant? Who knows.)

91 minutes.