Number 161 on IMDb's Top 250
This Ingmar Bergman film explores the disillusionment of an elderly physician, Professor Isak Borg, as he reflects upon his life and begins to perceive his mortality. As he travels to Lund to receive an honorary award after 50 years of medical practice, he finds himself repeatedly affected by intrusive dreams and hallucinations that expose his darkest fears. He slowly comes to realize that the choices he made in the past have created a cold and empty life, devoid of real meaning or value. Finally, he achieves redemption and reintegration through forgiveness and the love of his family. Hilarity ensues.
Trivia: Ingmar Bergman wrote the script while he was in hospital.
While watching some of the extra stuff on The Seventh Seal DVD I realized I had watched this movie when I took the "Art of the Cinema" class (Hey, don't knock it, we watched movies and wrote papers about them and I got an English credit for it, My major paper was comparing Jaws and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. How cool is that?). Anyway, I have no desire to rewatch this one. I remember sitting there thinking to myself "what the heck is this and what does it mean?" For example, right at thebeginningg the old guy has a dream where he is walking on an empty street and he sees a clock with no hands, then looks at his watch and it has no hands. Next he sees a horse drawn hearse that breaks down right in front of him and the coffin falls out and breaks open. As he peers into the open coffin and hand comes out and grabs him. The hands turns out to belong to him, in the coffin. What the heck? I think this was the reason I was dreading the foreign films on the Top 250 list, but since then I have come to like most of the foreign movies I have seen.
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