Face to Face (Swedish; 1976)Director: Ingmar Bergman
This is a painstakingly slow film about an extremely difficult topic, of mental illness.
A psychiatrist, Dr Jenny Isaksson, comes to stay with her grandparents after her husband, also a psychiatrist, goes on a long conference. She had lost both her parents during her childhood to be cared by her grandparents.
Her grandfather is having senile dementia whilst the grandmother goes out of her way to care for her partner.
The environment of the house rekindled her suppressed childhood memories to ignite an episode of mental disorder that becomes quite debilitating, affecting her duties as a doctor, mother to her daughter and herself.
It shows the intricacies of a breakdown. It is difficult to pinpoint events that lead to it. In a world where we like to put a name to any disease and go down to the bottom of it, it makes us wonder if there is anything (or do we know everything) about this dreaded irritant. There seem no shortcut to put this ailment at bay. It is a case of the body being willing but not the mind. Individuals inflicted with worse life situations and misery somehow come out unscathed and in stronger form whilst others just keep slip sliding down the slippery pit of hopelessness and helplessness.
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