The film approaches war from an eye-level, a personal one--not like a Hollywood piece of crap would, ala Saving Private Ryan trash. There is no score, and all the shots of the people are close up. It deals with the psychology within a marriage and the war is just the background material. So it's still very much something within Bergman's arena.
The end is also very interesting and poetic, with the couple escaping on a boat and Liv Ullman (Eva) telling her husband Jan about a dream she's had. Earlier in the film she makes the point about feeling like she's within someone else's dream--not her own, and what will happen if that person wakes and is ashamed? It's little insights like that that make me such an admirer of Bergman's films. I go back and forth between him and Antonioni when it comes to ranking my fave European director, and so I guess it all depends on whichever one I'm watching at the time.
Dan begins his review of the film stating:
"I should no longer be surprised when critics miss the most obvious things in works of art, because they are human beings, and the vast majority of human beings are lazy by nature. That said, the simplistic notion that Ingmar Bergman’s great 1968 film Shame (or Skammen) is merely an anti-war film does a great deal of damage to the reputation of this very complex, and highly nuanced, film. Compared to its more filmically showoffy predecessors, Persona and Hour Of The Wolf, Shame is seemingly a more classic film, in terms of narrative. But, the key word is seemingly, for while it lacks the bravura pop psychologizing of Persona and the gaudy horror film homages of Hour Of The Wolf, it is one of the best films ever made about war- and not as an anti-war film, nor a pro-war film. As such, it has to rank with Wild Strawberries as one of his greatest films, as well as one of his best screenplays, if not the best."
I definitely think Shame is a great film, but Winter Light and Scenes From a Marriage are really tight competition there.
And here is the trailer:
