Set in a home dominated by hellish reds of fire and blood, CRIES AND WHISPERS brings us into the lives of three sisters and a maid. One of the sisters, who may love the maid, lies on her deathbed. The other two have come to join the deathwatch, but they lack the compassion or the empathy or the basic human kindness to do more than go through the motions.
Much of creator Ingmar Bergman’s work deals with the existential horror of life without faith. In a post-faith world, to what bulwark can we cling? The four women of CRIES AND WHISPERS walk different paths, two destructive and two constructive. One chooses bitterness and despair. Another embodies narcissism. A third, kindness. And the last, perhaps the luckiest, never joined the antichristian revolt of Europe’s learned class.
We learn that kindness presents the only alternative to the post-faith world’s existential crisis. The cries of despair and the whispers of hate carry so much power that only faith and kindness, or perhaps simply kindness, can provide shelter. They can’t stop the selfish from acting selfishly, the cruel from behaving cruelly. But perhaps they can give some peace when the time comes to lay one’s head on one’s pillow.
But this is not a film in which everyone learns a handy lesson. The world of CRIES AND WHISPERS horrifies because it has us bear witness to the alternatives to kindness. It dramatizes the power of unkindness and the toll it demands upon those who exercise it and those upon whom it is exercised. And it leads to damnation, for one needn’t wait for death to be damned. We can bring it on ourselves and experience it today, tomorrow, and ‘til the day we die. CRIES AND WHISPERS shows us a great deal of horror in the days of its narrative, but it greatest horror lies in the knowledge that these people will go on living as they do to the end of their days.
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