Saraband Critic Reviews

It would be difficult to identify a single frame in Saraband that is not a distinguished composition in itself; Bergman has the eye of a latter-day Vermeer.Read the full review

Powerfully, painfully honest.Read the full review

Bergman has never been an ordinary filmmaker, and what he's given us is no genial last hurrah but rather an intensely dramatic, at times lacerating examination of life's conundrums that is exhilarating in its fearlessness and its command.Read the full review

Bergman's Saraband is sublime.Read the full review

Builds slowly and naturally to an unbearable personal crisis.Read the full review

Ms. Ullmann, now 65, and Mr. Josephson, 81, have a supreme mastery of the Bergman style. Their performances are spiritual and emotional X-rays.Read the full review

Bergman has not gone soft, not emotionally, philosophically and certainly not artistically. This is as tough a film as he has ever made.Read the full review

Anyone expecting a tender sunset elegy, however, has wandered into the wrong film. Saraband, despite a few wistful moments, is a poison pill of a reunion.Read the full review

If ultimately the highly talky Saraband comes across as a minor entry in the canon, it nonetheless marks a dignified farewell for one of cinema's greatest directors.Read the full review