Mother Wounds & Autumn Sonata
“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.”
- Autumn Sonata (1978)
In Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn writes, “When a child knows that young that her mother doesn’t care for her, bad things happen.” Mitski sings, “Mom, am I still young? / Can I dream for a few months more?” Lady Bird/Christine wishes that her mother liked her, not just loved her. In Questions for Ada, Ijeoma Umebinyuo writes, “Mother I have pasts inside me I did not bury properly. Some nights, your daughter tears herself apart yet heals in the morning.” Of all the tortured mother-daughter relationship films, books, and other pieces of media out there, Autumn Sonata is perhaps the most gut-wrenching. Ingrid Bergman, who plays the mother Charlotte, and Liv Ullmann, who plays the daughter Eva, unite to encapsulate a troubled, claustrophobic mother-daughter relationship, as Eva struggles to cope with the sudden visit of her mother after a seven-year absence, with the tension primarily stemming from the mother choosing her career as a classical pianist over maintaining a close-knit relationship with her two daughters. The movie explores this psychological torture chamber that the mother puts the daughter through, through words left unspoken, silences held too long, embraces and loving words coming far too late. An emotionally draining but ultimately cathartic cinematic experience, we are whisked into the melodrama of their futile attempts to reconnect, with Eva asking, “Do you see me? Do you like me? Do you love me?”, with Charlotte left speechless, uncomfortable with these feelings being put out into the open — to be seen is to be loved.
Despite the film’s color palette being noticeably dominated by autumnal hues – soft golden-browns, sunset yellows, leaves freshly touched by the turn of the season – this warmth is nowhere to be found in the characters and their dialogue. In psychology, a mother wound refers to emotional scarring or the trauma associated with emotional neglect or unavailability from a mother during one’s childhood. This could lead to the internalization of several dysfunctional coping mechanisms learned from the mother. This mother wound, this childhood pain that acts as a never-healing, open sore, is similarly never bandaged or closed by the film’s conclusion. In the end, Charlotte abandons the uncomfortable situation and boards a train, while Eva visits the grave of her deceased son, with one of the film's final sentences being, “A mother and a daughter. What a terrible combination of feelings and confusion and destruction.” The sole hope of healing rests upon a conciliatory letter Eva has penned to her mother, but whether she decides to send it is unknown. It’s also telling that, yet again, these words could not be uttered verbally – things left unsaid contribute to this never-ending tension between the oppressive mother and wounded daughter, being left to live on only in the inked letters of an ominous letter. The letter becomes both a confession and a question, a fragile bridge suspended over a timeless chasm of generational pain. In choosing the written word over the spoken, Eva retains a semblance of control over her own vulnerability, preserving the hope of healing without exposing herself to the possibility of further rejection by her mother.