The Best Intentions

The Best Intentions is the most moving film I’ve seen this year. Read full review

Warmer and more forgiving than Bergman's own work, it is one of the most moving films ever made about the exacting, full-time job of living with another person.[31 Jul 1992, p.17]

Realized beautifully by director Bille August, Intentions is a moving, profound requiem to all human relationships. Read full review

Never mind that Best Intentions, which was filmed both as a six-part TV miniseries and a three-hour movie, is occasionally uneven and sometimes confusing. It remains a rare August pleasure, a film for grown-up audiences that challenges and enriches. Read full review

August's direction, as usual, is a tad glacial, but at its frequent best, the film soars to explosive heights. [31 Jul 1992, p.6D]

Not only does The Best Intentions work, it works so well that its emotions are hard to shake off. Here's an epic that pulls no punches in depicting the crushing, unresolvable conflict that frequently defines marriage more than hugs and kisses. Here's that rare soap opera with more hard lather than soft suds. [14 Aug 1992, p.42]

Despite the melancholy background of Scandinavia, the repressive work ethic, the class struggle, this is a beautiful love story. [14 Aug 1992, p.3G]

A deeply satisfying film, THE BEST INTENTIONS, honored with the prestigious Palm d'Or at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, uses its considerable length to examine the early relationship of Bergman's parents with uncompromising thoroughness. Read full review

An epic story of mismatched love shaped in the most intimate terms, the Ingmar Bergman-scripted The Best Intentions packs a sustained emotional wallop that lightens its three-hour span. Read full review

The Danish director, whose film Pelle the Conqueror won the best foreign-language film Oscar, has turned out a thoughtful and accomplished piece of filmmaking, skillfully acted and beautifully put together with a kind of discreet elegance that the biggest budget (roughly $10 million) in Swedish film history made possible. Read full review

Charming and gentle and steady-on, it contains few dramatic moments (except for one notable scene involving two children), even fewer surprises, and lacks the judgmental harshness and bite of Bergman's most celebrated creations. [14 Aug 1992, p.B]

The Best Intentions is more plodding than Bergman's earlier works, but its characters are sympathetically and richly drawn. It succeeds as a macabre family portrait. [02 Oct 1992, p.G4]

Best Intentions should be engaging for those unfamiliar with Bergman -- and at three hours, it had better be engaging. To Bergman buffs, it is fascinating -- a lively, clever drama of opposites powerfully attracted. [14 Aug 1992, p.17]

For a time, The Best Intentions captures the elements of a profoundly difficult and credible love story, one plagued by essential differences that cannot be resolved. Read full review

It's all very pretty, but its use of motion-picture possibilities is unimaginative. What lifts The Best Intentions above its visual limitations, and makes it seem impressive, is the extraordinary depth and sincerity of Bergman's screenplay. Read full review

Not a masterpiece, but it's not negligible either. [14 Aug 1992]

For those looking to be stylishly entertained while learning more than anyone might ever want to know about the formation of the Bergman psyche, well, here it is. Read full review

As anyone who saw Pelle the Conqueror remembers, August is great with landscapes, but perhaps because he was telling Bergman's story here instead of his own, he seems on this occasion too reverent. Considering the fierce emotions that are the film's subject, The Best Intentions is too hushed, decorous, solemn. [14 Aug 1992, p.43]

The film boasts impeccable performances (von Sydow is splendid as Anna's father). But with a running time of three hours, this weighty drama tests the most patient soul. Read full review

August keeps a discreet distance from the harsher realities, making The Best Intentions must viewing only if you find diluted Bergman better than no Bergman at all. Read full review