What is WILD STRAWBERRIES about?


Isak%20Borg.jpg

"In Wild Strawberries, Bergman, like Freud, situates the dreamer at the center of the dream and uses the remaining portions of the film to identify the equivalents of the day’s residues, thereby allowing the exploration of the associations arising from the dream elements" -Vlada Petric, Film and Dreams

Isak Borg is 78 years old and is about to receive an honorary award for his 50 years as a hard-working doctor, but is experiencing recurring nightmares. We later find out that in his childhood, his brother stole his fiancé. We, and Isak, find out that this has plagued him ever since, even if subconsciously. Though, this allows him to stop and reflect on the life he has lived and even go back to the events of his childhood in the form of flashbacks, daydreams, and nightmares.

Borg%20Clock.jpg

Bergman's film is in black and white, therefore not relying on color as a film technique reminiscent of Hitchcock. Rather, he uses symbols, like the clock you see to your left, to represent dreams as meaningful insights into oneself. It becomes an obvious revelation that time is running out for Isak Borg and the clock is a type of foreshadowing - one for the main character mostly than to us - into the various subjective elements of Borg's inner struggle. Isak ends up going on a journey, a literal and psychological one, where he begins to learn about himself by asking questions posed or implied in his dreams. He finds out he has become a cold-hearted person. With all his self-reflection, he is able to amend his mentalities, end his nightmares, and live in peace.

FILM TECHNIQUE 2: We are shown Isak’s actual nightmares and are left to analyze them in relation to what Bergman gives us – symbols. During one of Isak’s nightmares, the famous coffin scene, we are introduced to famous Freudian symbols (“representations in dreams”) like the eye, clock, mirror, window, carriage, wild strawberries. The mirror stands for self-reflection of Isak and/or “a repressed self image”; the clock stands for time running out on Isak; the eye stands for inner psychological consciousness; the window stands for another way of looking into the soul and/or “past or future escape”; the carriage stands for movement, like Isak trying to figure out where he is going with his life; and last, but not least, the wild strawberries stand for the actual childhood trauma he experienced.

FILM TECHNIQUE 3: Bergman also uses various camera angles, like close-ups and distant shots, to show us that Isak Borg is dreaming. We are then able to distinguish between these “nightmares” and the flashbacks (reality) of life when Isak was a little boy.


Read more:

  • An Introduction to Dreams on Film
  • Who are HITCH and BERG?
  • What is MARNIE about?
  • What is WILD STRAWBERRIES about?
  • So who is influencing HITCHBERG?
  • RED RED RED!
  • Is that you...Borg?
  • Think Psychoanalysis, Think Freud
  • Dream-work and Wild Strawberries
  • Concluding Thoughts, Works Cited, Suggested Reading, Image Credits, and About Me