Fårö Document (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Fårö Document (1970) – I. Bergman

Ingmar Bergman made two documentaries about the people on the island that he came to call home in the late 1960s, Fårö (which is a small island just off the coast of the larger island of Gotland, southeast of Stockholm in the Baltic Sea).  Bergman interviews a few of the 900 residents (a school-teacher, a 102 year old carpenter, a sheep farmer, a fisherman, a young couple just about to have a baby, an old retired woman with an amputated leg, some school children) and shows scenes from the island and its routines (graphic scenes of sheep being slaughtered by hand caused me to look away).  In 1969, the island was dealing with a decreasing population (as young people left for the mainland) and a decrease in autonomy as local services were becoming centralised in Gotland.  Bergman uses some of his questions to address the politics of the island (and of Sweden), advocating for the rights of his neighbours (the documentary was shown on Swedish TV).  Bergman is a good interviewer and the interviewees seem at ease and their reflections are intriguing – even if one knows nothing about Fårö, it isn’t hard to imagine their lives and concerns (and to see the universal human condition in them). Sven Nykvist’s cinematography, in both black & white and colour, elevates the picture to something more poetic than a series of talking heads.  Bergman made a sequel in 1979 (which I will turn to next).