Holy Crap*: "Shame"

This 1968 apocalyptic piece from Ingmar Bergman is about as dark a slice of life as you can get.

This relentlessly bleak drama stars Liv Ulmann and Max von Sydow as a couple suffering through the indignities of a rebel war descending on their buccolic island. Eva and Jan are not the happiest couple, but they have a chemistry between them as they work their farm, off the beaten path. Jan is weak and melancholic; Eva, apparently younger, wants a child.

One day, a civil war literally descends on their doorstep. They try to escape in their rickety station wagon, to no avail. There is no escaping war; that's the message Bergman is bashing us over the head with.

Bergman shoots in verite black-and-white, as if he is re-enacting newsreels from World War II. The onslaught never lets up. The apocalypse is coming, he suggests, and it doesn't care who or what gets in its way.

Life is a humorless slog and random fate decides whether you die young or are cursed to ride it out till the end. Harrowing and fascinating.

GRADE:  B+

* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here.

BONUS TRACK
The trailer pretty much says it all: