Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Martin Bradley Ingmar Bergman shot "Autumn Sonata" in ravishing color, (Sven Nykvist again was his DoP), and set it in the present but it may as well have been in black and white and set a hundred or so years ago since this is one of his most rigorous films, seen almost entirely in close-up. It's about the relationships between a mother and her daughter, (two daughters if you count the girl in near vegetative state upstairs), and the great and painful chasm that exists between them. The mother is a great concert pianist, poised, self-assured and frostier than any ice maiden and she is played by Ingrid Bergman, working with the director for the first time and giving a magnificent performance. The daughter is the mousy, timorous wife of a vicar until one extraordinary night she roars and pours out all the bile she has inside her and she is played superbly by Liv Ullmann.To say that the characters in Bergman's films don't speak or act the way 'real' people do is like saying Shakespeare's characters don't behave like people do in 'real' situations. It doesn't matter a damn; as with Shakespeare, Bergman's characters bear their souls to us and this greatest of actor's directors draws performances from his players that go beyond mere acting allowing us to get under their skins and inside their heads.There are a number of characters in this piece but most of them are glimpsed only in the background. Fundamentally this is a sonata for two people and both Bergman and Ullmann have seldom been better. It was Bergman who won all the awards and got the Oscar nomination but Ullmann, too, was equally deserving of recognition. If it isn't quite the masterpiece it might have been, (there are times it does feel a bit schematic and even predictable), it is nevertheless a major work of art and an essential work in both Bergman canons.

Armand not different but many films by Bergman, it is a search of sense. for life, for relationships, for the feelings. nothing new. but the old recipes becomes in this case profound different. the cause - extraordinary performances. the dialogs as a form of battle in which not exactly the words are important but the silence. it is an admirable exercise of honesty. cruel, dramatic, cold, chaotic. in which Ingrid Bergman does one of her great roles with fine precision. a film about past and choices, it becomes a film about sense of family and art. and in that way it is more dramatic than many of other Ingmar Bergman's films. it is far to be comfortable. but that could not be a surprise. it is a beautiful film. and that virtue real could be important.

kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** It's the autumn of her life as famed concert pianist Charlotte Andergast, Ingrid Bergman, decides to patch things up with her estranged daughter Eve, Liv Ullmann, whom she hasn't seen in seven years. At first happy to see Eve, who's clergyman husband Viktor played by Halvar Bjork seems to go out of his way to avoid her, Charlotte is stunned to find out that her other daughter, who's suffering from brain damage, Helena, Lena Lyman, is living under the same roof that both Eve & Viktor are. It was Helena that Charlotte had committed when she was in her teens to a mental institution for life because of her mental disability. Things soon get a bit sticky when Eve who feels that her life had been destroyed by her mother's absence, playing in concerts all over Europe, now lets Charlotte have it in how unloving she was towards her and the mentally ill kid sister of hers Helena.With Viktor drinking his brandy and smoking his pipe and Helena falling out of her bed and almost cracking her skull open mother & daughter, Charlotte & Eve, have it out in a night long discussion in how their lives were messed up by each other not showing the both love and respect for themselves all those years together. It's Eve who ends up getting the upper hand in the conversation in getting Charlotte to admit that she was more interested in her career as a concert pianist then in her two daughters as well as live in lover Leonardo, Georg Lokkeberg, who after putting up with her for almost 20 finally and blissfully, in not having to put up with her anymore, passed away from cancer six months ago.After an all night verbal slug-fest both Eve & Charlotte decided to bury the hatchet, in the sand not in each other heads, and let bygones by bygones and start all over again as if nothing happened in the past. Later after Charlotte left Eve gave her husband Viktor who was neutral in the entire matter a letter of forgiveness to her mother for everything bad she said about her. It's now up to Charlotte to do the same in asking for forgiveness from Eve as well as the mentally damaged Helena for all the bad things she did to them while they were still together. And undoubtedly in what we saw in the movie up until then, with Charlotte in tears in knowing what she did, she definitely will.

Avik Kumar Si Autumn Sonata is a gem of a film from renowned Swedish director Ingmar Bergman which centers around the complicated and difficult relationship of a famous pianist, Charlotte and her eldest daughter, Eva, portrayed by stalwarts Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann respectively.Autumn Sonata begins with the pianist mother Charlotte visiting Eva and her husband. Initially, the mother-daughter relationship does seem a bit frigid though courteous. Gradually, as the film unfolds, several dimensions to this relation gets revealed -Charlotte's career, Eva's childhood, the presence of a second daughter among others.Autumn Sonata's most enduring memory is its crescendo involving the two brilliant actors Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann. While it would amount to being a spoiler attempting to describe what happens, it can suffice to say that Ingmar Bergman's greatness bursts through in this climax and one discovers the tremendous potential of a chamber drama.This is no doubt what great cinema is about and while one of the two central figures certainly blows the viewer away with her intensity, the tremendous impact and presence of the other can only be felt on multiple viewing, and this chemistry is what contributes to Autumn Sonata being perhaps one of the best films ever made, most certainly by Ingmar Bergman and maybe even in the history of cinema.