Saraband

In this sequel to 1973’s Scenes From a Marriage, using the same incomparable acting duo of Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, Ingmar Bergman has given us a glorious late masterpiece. Marianne decides to look in on her ex-husband Johan, to see how the old goat is doing after all these years. While the two revisit their wounds and rediscover an irritable, mocking fondness for each other, they are suckered into a more volatile power struggle between Johan’s widowed middle-aged son Henrik and his beautiful, talented daughter Karin. Both father and daughter are cellists; and the dance and musical form to which the title alludes conveys their elegant, risky movements of converging and parting. Bergman’s ability to push scenes beyond civility to explosive feelings of love and hate remains unsurpassed. The acting of the four principals is peerless. This is no old man’s sentimental valentine, but a work of shocking vitality and robustness, sublimely poised, directed by one of the grandmasters of cinema.