One of the leanest, meanest films Bergman ever made - it's totally bleak and uncompromising and moves along with incredible momentum, never pausing for relief or giving us a moment to catch our own breath. As harrowing as they come, and one of Bergman's best.

An anti-war film that puts more of it's focus on the struggles between a formerly happy married couple, wonderfully played by Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow. The last few scenes are so unbearably, tortuously gloomy. This film can go fuck itself, in a good way.

Distant, unfocused.

Taking a slightly unusual approach for this director, "Shame" manages to produce sequences of greater power than the vast majority of war movies, even if it does not quite reach the heights of his greatest masterpieces.

"It's not my dream. It's someone elses dream that I have to participate in. What happens when the one who dreamt us wakes up and feels ashamed". This is the core of what Bergman wants to project, and he does so with such beauty - a compliment to Nykvist who is by far one of the greatest cinematographers to grace our planet. Otherworldly images. This, and stellar performances by Ullman and Sydow makes this an interesting voyages, where Bergman, again, explores downside of human nature.

NEEDS REWATCH HARDCORE.

So this is Ingmar Bergman making a war movie? Wow, how depressing. People throw around phrases like "the reality of war" quite often, but this might actually be it. I love both Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann. I mean, I love them in everything, but also specifically in this. It's one of the most believable dysfunctional-but-loving relationships I've ever seen on film. Or maybe they don't love each other. I think they do, but this being Bergman I'll probably change my mind on my next viewing.

Sort of strange for a Bergman movie. It's almost science fiction, in the sense that it takes place during a fictional war in a non descript place.

the ending's a bit of a letdown

bergman te amo

Not a typical Bergman film. Shame takes place in the present, during war time, and in depthly shows how the lives of two normal human beings change over the course of the war. The war is not only on the battlefield, but indoors within the relationship of von Sydow and Ullman. von Sydow does an incredible job as Jan, a sensitive lover of music, who in a matter of moments transforms into a monster. Shame is definitely an under-appreciated Bergman. von Sydow and Ullman shine, A Masterpiece.

Brilliant, depressing and dirty stuff, leaving one with an adamant feeling of bitter impotency. This film is boiling from the first image to the last - it yearns for fresh air all the way through, and only seem to find it in the characters' dreams... The first 45 minutes include so many scenes of lyrical beauty and keen insight; the scene in where Eva and Jan are buying wine in town and the salesman pitch his loneliness, is particularly gripping.

A different type of Bergman film, but still a very good one. It mixes his style of personal drama with the larger scope of a war film and the results, while a little odd at times, are very effective in portraying the harshness of war in a unique manner.

Good Bergman doom-and-gloom movie, this time about innocent bystanders in the middle of a war zone

There's a lot of great anti-war films, but I've not seen as one as effective or excellent as Shame. Its multi-faceted brutality exposes the horror of two simultaneous wars: the martial and the marital. This is, I think, the bleakest film from the master of bleak.

An amazing psychological thriller about war seen from two normal people's point of view. Shocking and brilliant, the final act is nothing short of masterful. Nykvist, Ullman, von Sydow and Bergman in the top of their games.

booyah

Is it at all possible to compare a balls-to-the-wall war combat movie and something like this? Is there any point in trying? Shame tries to show war from a different point of view than what we're used to, and, needless to say, it succeeds. And while Bergman films are almost always depressing fare, Shame really takes the biscuit.

Bergman's welcome return to more straight-ahead drama (after the experimental Persona and Hour of the Wolf) is an intriguing war drama, rather more transparent than his other films, but not in a bad way. At some points I felt maybe the character Jan was a bit over the top in his harshness, but other than that this is really, really good.

Some might argue that Bergman was one-note, but no one captured angst and emotional despair better than he. When depicting the impact of the horrors of war on the individual however, he's out of his element, and just this once his art seems strangely whiny and bourgeois and his points too obvious.

One of Bergman's bleakest films, no doubt (and one of the best war movies I've ever seen). The reasoning behind the war is never told and that's what makes it so effective. Rather than lecture us about the wrongdoings of a specific country, we see the tragedy both sides cause (internal and external) from the point of view of two innocent bystanders.