Anatomy of A Mother and A Daughter: A Brief Analysis of Autumn Sonata

There is perhaps no bond as intimate, and yet as fraught, as that between a mother and her daughter. It is a relationship of love, reflection, and expectations. This intricate emotional terrain has also been explored across many fields. The mother-daughter relationship has long served as a profound wellspring for artistic and literary expression. Literature and cinema, in particular, have offered rich terrains for mapping the emotional, psychological, and social intricacies that define this primal connection.

The mother's injuries are to be handed down to the daughter. The mother's failures are to be paid for by the daughter. The mother's unhappiness is to be the daughter's unhappiness. It's as if the umbilical cord had never been cut.

One of the most powerful portrayals of this special bond is in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata(1978), starring Ingrid Bergman as Charlotte and Liv Ullmann as Eva. The film brilliantly portrays a broken mother-daughter relationship through its palette evoked by its title. The film begins by introducing Eva, who has not seen her mother Charlotte for seven years. After receiving news of the death of her mother’s partner, Eva decides to invite her mother to stay at her home along with her husband and disabled sister, Helena. Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) is a celebrated and ambitious pianist who has devoted most of her life to her career. Eva was deprived of her mother when she needed her the most. She lost her son, Erik, and now takes care of her sister, Helena, who is on the verge of death. Having lost her own son, Eva finds some solace in filling that void by becoming a maternal figure to her sister. She now understands Helena much better than her own mother, who has left Helena to a nursing home. Charlotte, always trying to escape from her responsibilities, finds it painful to be around the consequences of her absence, which is embodied in Eva’s quiet sorrow and Helena’s helpless state. Her visit, intended perhaps as a chance to strengthen family bonds, gradually unfolds into an emotional reckoning. The film takes place mostly within a single setting and unfolds over the course of the night. The past—long suppressed—emerges through silences, glances, and eventually, words. Yet, Charlotte is not a villain in this story. Rather, the story is an emotional confrontation between a mother and daughter, reflecting each other’s fears and failures, yet unable to restore what time has carved between them. When Eva plays Chopin for her mother, she performs with emotional sincerity. Charlotte later critiques it as lacking technique. Drawing from Freudian and object-relations theory, Charlotte represents the narcissistic mother, and Eva the neglected child who builds her identity around absence. The mother’s lack of mirroring creates a lifelong yearning for approval.

 Are the daughter's miseries the mother's triumphs?

As they confront the ghosts of their past and delve into the expectations of both, it leaves the viewer with raw, unfiltered emotions of the characters and in the midst of a shattered relationship. The film is a profound exploration of the complexities between mothers and daughters and a devastating portrayal of love, longing, and suffering. Autumn Sonata resonates on a deep level with its beautiful and yet haunting soundtrack and outstanding performances.