The Passion of Anna has the fortune/misfortune of being so splendidly shot that there were times when I just couldn’t pay attention to the story. I was just blown away by the framing, the lighting, the color pallette — my god, the color EXPLODES in this film, tearing a new a-hole to pretty much everything save The Wizard of Oz.
The story — taken almost directly from Bergman’s life at the time — Max von Sydow is the brooding man engaged in bad love with Liv Ullman on a remote island. Add to this the Blow-Up-esque phographer (played by Erland Josephson) and the gabby dame played by Bibi Andersson. All the actors get a moment to break the 4th wall and address the camera to say what they feel about the character they’re playing. All except the dude who may or may not be running around killing animals for some symbolic reason I don’t have the energy to think about. Truthfully, I am much more interested in the way these shots are set up, the editing, the long close-up/wide-angle takes and the slow zooms into heavy grain.
Bold statement: this might be one of the most exciting visual films I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Story-wise, yeah, bunch a Swedes yelling at each other in a cabin, but holy cow it looks marvelous.
