MOVIEFONE

Cinema isn't dead - just hiding in a box set.

Now that Slumdog Millionaire has won every award short of the Nobel Prize, 2008 can officially be labeled the year of optimism and hope in film (despite Synecdoche, New York). With economic prognosticators predicting more bad news than good in the coming year, and if the relationship between film and the economy holds historically true, we’ll be seeing more joy than Joy Division and more happy endings than, well, “happy endings”. Thankfully, Taschen’s The Ingmar Bergman Archives will keep us sane through the High School Musical-era.

Bergman’s subtle, somber films took on the great themes of life, death, love, and loss with an acerbic wit and pronounced nuance. As often with directors who play in grand proportions (a la Stanley Kubrick, who got the Taschen treatment in 2007), Bergman is often looked at as larger than life, yet Archives takes us behind the camera, showing the director at work, play, and in his own words.

With complete access to the Bergman archives, Taschen shows us a unique side of the auteur, at once humorous, meticulous, and fashionably iconic. Plus, each book comes with a filmstrip from Bergman’s seminal Fanny and Alexander, appeasing the movie nerd in all of us.
JARED FLINT

$200 at taschen.com



This story was published on February 25, 2009.