“Looking back at his five marriages, many lovers and his indifference to family life, he is aghast at his own cruelty at the same time that he is strangely unapologetic,” writes N.Y. Times reviewer Stephen Holden about legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman as he appears in Marie Nyrerod‘s documentary Bergman Island (now at the Film Forum).
“I had a bad conscience until I discovered that having a bad conscience about something so gravely serious as leaving your children is an affectation, a way of achieving a little suffering that can’t for a moment be equal to the suffering you’ve caused,” Bergman tells Nyrerod. “I haven’t put an ounce of effort into my families. I never have.”
