While watching Wild Strawberries the other night I began to come to a realization. I was watching a road trip movie. But like most Bergman movies, there is so much more to it. I'll admit it, I'm not the biggest fan of Persona, I think it has some excellent moments (hottest sex scene in a film has no sex at all), but as an overall film I found it lacking. Wild Strawberries is fantastic.
The film starts off slow, at first I found the opening narration filled with exposition, I understood the man was lonely, I get it. Let's move on. You do not really get how misunderstood this man is until we start his journey. How he is haunted by dreams and memories of the past, which I never really understood until he visited his 94-year-old mother. I truly enjoyed watching this character's immense amount of history.
That being said, it is a road-trip movie and I've always had something against road-trip movies. Perhaps it is because the concept is simple "a character or a number of characters get from one place to another and change." Now, one could argue that all films are like that, but that's another argument entirely. What I am saying is the true genius of this film that only a handful of road-trip movies get right (see Y Tu Mama Tambien) and millions get wrong (see Little Miss Sunshine) is how deep the character is. This film cannot be talked about without mention of the ingenious dream sequences, something that Bergman mastered. This film isn't just about a character changing, but about the audience coming to realize how they can change. Which is why this film is so important.