Agnes’ Self-Reflection in Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers

Abstract

The essay explores Ingmar Bergman’s film Cries and Whispers
(Viskningar och rop, 1972) from the perspective of the protagonist’s self-
reflection as the main plot-constructing tool. The self-reflection of the main
protagonist Agnes is presented by Bergman in a variety of forms which create,
by mixing with each other, a polyphony of senses and images.
The author analyses those dramatic tools which make it possible to immerse a
spectator into Agnes’s inner feelings. Her diary is her conscious self-reflection and,
therefore, becomes a cinematic instrument for a study of her psychology. Bergman
explores the visual images of the main protagonist’s self-reflection and, logically,
turns them into symbols. This is exemplified by the symbolic comparison of her
mother’s and her sisters’ images to a bouquet of magnificent white roses. And
then, a close-up of a flower shows symbolically the true nature of Agnes’s mother:
the flower turns out to be an artificial one, revealing the hypocrisy of Agnes’s
externally beautiful mother. The protagonist’s conscious striving to understand
herself is also revealed through the use of an analytical voice-over monologue
accompanying a sequence of reminiscences about the mother.
The essay analyses the same sequence from the viewpoint of the object-
orientation of Agnes’s self-reflection. Within this sequence, self-reflection
changes its object, becoming either introspective or extrospective. Agnes
recomprehends herself either through the prism of herself or through the prism
of the others. Quick alternation of these two types of self-reflection indicates the
causal connection between Agnes’s identity and her relationship with her mother.
Significantly, the sequence's ending is the moment of the closest rapprochement
between Agnes and her mother - that is, between two types of self-reflection.
A protagonist's self-reflection could be an effective tool of creating semantic
resonance. An example of this is provided in the film's final sequence, in
which Anna, the servant, reads the diary of the dead Agnes. This sequence is a
reminiscence of those several minutes of Agnes’s life when she was “absolutely
happy”. It begins with Anna reading the diary and turns into the visualisation
of a diary entry accompanied by the Anna’s voice-over on Agnes's behalf. This
creates a triple resonance of the film's semantic content.
In the author's opinion, the above examples confirm that a character’s self-
reflection can become an effective dramatic tool for exploring a character’s
psychology and a technique of revealing the meanings in their polyphony.