Editing Wild Strawberries (film) (section)

==Plot==
Grouchy, stubborn, and egotistical Professor Isak Borg is a widowed 78-year-old physician who specialized in bacteriology. Before specializing, he served as a general practitioner in rural Sweden. He sets out on a long car ride from [[Stockholm]] to [[Lund]] to be awarded the degree of [[Jubilee doctor|Doctor Jubilaris]] 50 years after he received his doctorate from [[Lund University]]. He is accompanied by his pregnant daughter-in-law Marianne who does not much like her father-in-law and is planning to separate from her husband, Evald, Isak's only son. Evald does not want her to have the baby, their first.

During the trip, Isak is forced by [[nightmare]]s, [[daydream]]s, [[old age]], and impending death to reevaluate his life. He meets a series of hitchhikers, each of whom sets off dreams or reveries into Borg's troubled past. The first group consists of two young men and their companion, a woman named Sara who is adored by both men. Sara is a double for the love of Isak's youth. He reminisces about his childhood at the seaside and his sweetheart Sara, with whom he remembered gathering strawberries, but who instead married his brother. The first group remains with him throughout his journey. Next Isak and Marianne pick up an embittered middle-aged couple, the Almans, whose vehicle had nearly collided with theirs. The pair exchanges such terrible vitriol and venom that Marianne stops the car and demands that they leave. The couple reminds Isak of his own unhappy marriage. In a dream sequence, Isak is asked by Sten Alman, now the examiner, to read "foreign" letters on the blackboard. He cannot. So, Alman reads it for him: "A doctor's first duty is to ask forgiveness," from which he concludes, "You are guilty of guilt."<ref>[[Erik Erikson]] [http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/erikson.strawberries.html "Wild Strawberries"].</ref>

He is confronted by his loneliness and aloofness, recognizing these traits in both his elderly mother (whom they stop to visit) and in his middle-aged physician son, and he gradually begins to accept himself, his past, his present, and his approaching death.<ref name="gu">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/jun/10/1|title=Ingmar Bergman: Wild Strawberries|date=10 June 1999|work=[[The Guardian]] | first=Derek | last=Malcolm}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D06E0DE173BEF3BBC4B51DFB0668382649EDE |title=Wild Strawberries (1957) NYT Critics' Pick |date=23 June 1959 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=16 May 2010 |first=Bosley |last=Crowther|authorlink=Bosley Crowther}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Se-Sno/Smultronst-llet.html|title=Plot and review: SMULTRONSTÄLLET (Wild Stawberries)|last=Manvell|first=Roger|website=filmreference.com}}</ref>

Borg finally arrives at his destination and is promoted to Doctor Jubilaris, but this proves to be an empty ritual. That night, he bids a loving goodbye to his young friends, to whom the once bitter old man whispers in response to a playful declaration of the young girl's love, "I'll remember." As he goes to his bed in his son's home, he is overcome by a sense of peace, and dreams of a family picnic by a lake. Closure and affirmation of life have finally come, and Borg's face radiates joy.