Films often depict the challenges of filmmaking, and some films even include a mention of the screenwriter. Here are a few rare films that feature scripters at the center of the film: “Sunset Boulevard,” “In a Lonely Place,” “Contempt,” “Barton Fink,” “The Player,” “Adaptation” “Mank.”
These films, as well as others, almost always feature a male writer. We don’t always see the finished product, so we have to believe that the script was successful or not.
All of this makes Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island”It is even more famous. It centers on writer-director Chris (Vicky Krieps), who’s working on a script while summering on Faro Island, Ingmar Bergman’s longtime home.
Tony Roth (her husband), is a more successful filmmaker. He is now writing his own script. “I wanted a double portrait of two directors, but it would progressively become more about her,”Hansen-Love relates Variety.
Eventually “Bergman Island” shows scenes from Chris’s film-within-a-film, which also deals with a complex relationship (Mia Wasikowska, Anders Danielsen Lie) on Faro, so reality and fiction begin to blur.
“It’s extremely difficult to portray writers, or any artist, on screen and not be romantic or kitschy or idealistic,” Hansen-Løve says. “For the first 45 minutes, you don’t see Chris writing; I wanted to capture that invisible process — not the moment of writing, but all the chaos within you that you are able to give a form to, that will ultimately become a film — your past, your present, real life and your imagination.”
This is the seventh feature for the French-born Hansen-Løve. The English language “Bergman’s Island,”Distributed in the U.S.A by IFC Films, includes references to such films “The Seventh Seal” “Cries and Whispers,” but familiarity with Bergman’s movies is not a requisite.
“I never wanted to exclude people who are not Bergman fans,”She said. “I hope the film is more universal. It deals with creation, and what it is being part of a couple and trying to preserve your inner world.”
Hansen-Løve is in synch with another film giant. In 1991, Federico Fellini said, “It’s difficult to show the bond between a husband and wife who married because of romance and passion, but who now have been married a long time. Friendship largely replaces what was there before, but not totally.”
She hadn’t heard the quote but exclaimed, “He’s so right! Chris and Tony have been together a long time, so the bond is deep and strong, but not the sexuality; when Chris writes, she realizes there is something missing. You might think the film is about them breaking up, but something is holding them together. To me the end is ambiguous. You could say it’s about the end of a couple, or the opposite.”
Bergman was the first to film Faro. “Through a Glass Darkly”(1957) and did numerous works there. “Hour of the Wolf” “The Passion of Anna.” Bergman lived there from 1965 until his death in 2007. The island is made bleakly and frighteningly scary by Bergman’s films.
Hansen-Løve makes it look green, pastoral and inviting. “I was interested in the passion between Bergman and Faro — also the relationship of Bergman’s Faro to everyone else’s Faro. Faro belongs always to Bergman. However, I could also make it mine.
“The place seemed extremely welcoming, thanks to him. Even in the 1970s, he wanted his estate, after his death, to be a place where artists would come. You feel invited, not an intruder.”
Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island” is about a specific couple, but also about relationships, creativity, soul-searching — and about love of movies, and how every person is influenced by them.