Shame represents a high point in the career of a master. Ingmar Bergman penetrating, existential study of a couple on the island of Gotland dealing with surviving a long war. Liv Ullman and Max Von Sydow give painfully detailed performances in this spare, stark drama. The films intensity rests in Bergman's keeping our focus on the minute, intimate relations of his two characters - both accomplished musicians - trapped in a landscape they have ceased to understand. We see the way the external pressures of the war complicate and corrode their relationship. Both characters are forced by the material circumstances of the war to betray their own sense of ethics. In one of the most powerful episodes Bergman forces us to reflect on the manipulative power of the cinematic medium by showing us a filmed interview with Ullman's character that has been re-edited and distorted for political effect by one side of the conflict and is used by the other side as evidence of war crimes in a brutal interrogation scene.
