Plot
Cries and Whispers takes place in a lavish mansion in the 1800s, filled with red carpets and white statuary. It depicts the final days of Agnes (Harriet Andersson), who is near death with cancer. Her sisters Maria (Liv Ullmann) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin) have returned to the family home to be with her. They remain distant and awkward, and struggle to comfort their sister, while dealing with the shock and the fear of mortality her death is bringing to them. The deeply religious maid Anna (Kari Sylwan), whose own daughter died young, is able to comfort her. At length, Agnes dies, and a priest (Anders Ek) arrives at her death bed. Later in the film she returns to life for a short moment. In a dream-like sequence, she asks her family for love and care. For a moment, Karin, Maria and the dead Agnes get closer to each other, only to be even more distant shortly afterwards. Only Anna is able to embrace and mourn the dead. The film is characterized by flashbacks that visit the protagonists' lives and their memories, tracing each woman's personality to the childhood they spent together. Maria remembers her failed marriage; Agnes remembers her unrequited devotion to their distant mother; Karin struggles with self-harm. She performs an act of self-mutilation on her sexual organs to disturb and drive away her husband.
The last flashback, from the deceased Agnes' point of view, is narrated through her diary, and shows her sisters descending upon the house clad in white, like angels. The last words are Agnes whispering "Come what may, this is happiness. I cannot wish for anything better. Now, for a few minutes, I can experience perfection. And I feel profoundly grateful to my life, which gives me so much."
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“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
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