David Parkinson is drawn into this beautifully-filmed study of family and faith, scripted by Ingmar Bergman and based on his parents' troubled marriage.
Having retired from directing, Ingmar Bergman was sufficiently impressed by Bille August's Oscar-winning Pelle the Conqueror (1987) to entrust him with this austere à clef memoir of his parents' unhappy marriage. The full story is contained in a little-seen six-hour mini-series. But such is the intensity of this study of family, faith, class and hypocrisy that the 180-minute version is still dramatically engrossing and emotionally draining.
Desperate to seem pious, yet flintily unforgiving towards those who disappoint him, theology student Samuel Fröler accepts a parish in a remote mining town in northern Sweden without consulting new fiancée Pernilla August. Her haute bourgeois parents, Max von Sydow and Ghita Nørby, oppose the match, but their headstrong daughter soon finds herself ministering to the sick and maintaining a household in the most inhospitable conditions. A child is born, but Fröler and August continue to bicker and their relationship is even more firmly based on mistrust and resentment by the time they return to Uppsala for the birth of a second son (Bergman himself).
Meticulously designed by Anna Asp to recreate the contrasting worlds of urban comfort and rural penury between 1909-18, this maybe lacks the intimacy of Fanny and Alexander (1983) and Sunday's Children, the unofficial sequel that was directed later in 1992 by Bergman' son, Daniel. However, it more than atones in psychological ferocity, first as Nørby attempts to sabotage the match and then as August forces Fröler to confront his failings as both a pastor and as a man.
Bergman had personally insisted on Pernilla August being cast as his mother and she thoroughly merited her Best Actress prize at Cannes, as it's her spirit that gives the film (which also took the Palme d'Or) a humanity that is lacking in both Nørby's scheming snobbery and Fröler's delusional vision of vocation. Indeed, it's fascinating to contrast Bergman's attitudes to divine and temporal love with those explored in Winter Light (1962), in which another small-town cleric feels himself unworthy of either God's grace or a beloved's solace.
Based on the troubled marriage of Ingmar Bergman's parents, and scripted by the master himself, Bille August's The Best Intentions is beautifully shot and performed, not least by the director's own wife as Bergman's wilful, stubborn, yet passionate mother.
Poverty stricken young Henrik (Samuel Fröler) meets a beautiful and vivacious upper class girl, Anna (Pernilla August), who is adored by all, especially her father, the affectionate but ailing Johan (Max von Sydow). They fall in love despite the opposition of Henrik’s mother, the pitiful and asthmatic Alma, and Anna’s mother, Karin - the real ruler of the family.
Completely gripping as a love story, this will also resonate with anyone who recognizes the strife that crossing the invisible but powerful boundaries of class to pursue love, can cause.
