Shame is Bergman’s reaction to the Vietnam War and, more deeply, to all the trauma of war that has defined twentieth-century experience. The film tells of a married couple (von Sydow and Ullmann), two orchestra musicians who are living on a farm to escape war but are ultimately overtaken by it. As they are subjected to its degradations, they are tragically changed for the worse. We see their relationship crumble, as does the community life of the nearby village the couple provisionally calls home. Much of the film is shot outdoors, and a hand-held camera and jarring editing mirror the stress and sense of anarchy felt by the characters. The final episode, with war survivors adrift at sea in a small boat, is one of Bergman’s most powerful sequences, an indelible image of the human plight.