Another masterpiece by master Ingmar Bergman. A little one.

Difficult, I mean emotionally. It's so stark, but powerful anyway.

For critics every Bergman movie is sacred, but this one in my opinion is no match to previous ones.

Pretty damn good. Weird to consider it a "sequel," considering how little of the focus is on Johan and Marianne, but even with that in mind I had no problem being engaged by the central characters and their emotional distresses. As far as final films go you'd be hard pressed to find better ones.

Bye, Bergman. Your last movie was really powerful, thanks for it.

"Bergman consistently evokes the ghost of history in Saraband." - Keith Uhlich

I'll admit that this took me about 4 sittings to get through. Don't get me wrong, the movie's excellent. It had nothing to do with a lack of quality. It's just that every act break (there are 10 of them) was a natural place to pause, and I felt fairly often that I needed to regroup and gather my thoughts. I'm sure this isn't a popular opinion, but Saraband is up there with some of his best films. Sure, he has like 5 films that are untouchable masterpieces, but this is easily in the top 10.

I've seen too many directors losing their vision and their work crumbling into most basic elements making me wonder if the originals were coincidental. Luckily Bergman is not one. Not only he continiued his major characters consistently(even though not the way I envisioned) and takes the story further with infants in the preceding movie. Last great piece before the journey ends.

A great, late movie from the late, great Ingmar Bergman. A superb and surprising sequel to one of the great movies of all time.

Bergman is still good and in shape.

To judge this as a sequel is to diminish it. It's a superb film in its own right, and except for a few small details it doesn't rely on the previous film at all. The cast is uniformly superb and some of the subtleties in the relationships become clearer on a second viewing. I also like how it's structured, a series of 10 dialogues, never more than 2 people in a scene. As the title implies, it's almost musical in its form... slightly artistic and slightly mathematical.

"Saraband" is a difficult film. The two leads are lifted from Bergman's swedish television masterpiece, "Scenes from a Marriage," but beyond this simple detail film carries no real similarities to the former. The film begins and ends with Liv Ullmann speaking directly to the viewer. Each of the following sequences is shot as a series of duets--two characters engaging in a metaphorical dance. "Saraband" is intended as a stand alone film. It is emotionally disturbing and bleak. It seems to

Confrontational and sore, this firm and watchful study of (difficult) family bonds is marked by quiet frustration and sombre resignation. Some of the editing doesn't quite work that well for me - as the quick overlapping between shots of nature early on and the sudden incorporation of a b&w-image a few times -, but this is a work of a tired but still masterful filmmaker.

While watching, you understand this is a Bergman film. It's nice to see Liv Ullmann again and i think this film is not as strong as his known films. It was like a mix of his autobiographic elements and a farewell from Bergman.

The acting is uniformly terrific but the story feels jumbled.