Was Johan Esters son?

I agree with wedgewood. This did not strike me after watching the movie, but after reading this post and in retrospect, it makes perfect sense for Ester to have given her son to Anna since she did not want to accept her role of a mother back then. Her feelings for the boy are more motherly than Anna's.

Ofcourse, this could also be because she is lonely; whereas Anna is only too used to having the boy around for so many years that her life does not completly centre around him.

However, if he is indeed Ester's son, the story is menacing.

Are you sure you're not just assuming as much because Esther is blond, Johan is blond, and under the power of suggestion it could be assumed that there was a connection there? (We never see the father, so that can't be it). Or because we never see Johan interact with anyone else?

I always assumed that the "role" line was more about sexuality and ego. We can't argue that she's his mother based on kindness, since Ester isn't really that concerned about Johan, it seems. When his mother goes out, for example, she's not concerned about what it does to him, as a neglected child, but rather, what it does to her own ego. She leaves him soon afterwards, and we're left to assume that the poor kid spent the night alone because both women were simply acting out for the sake of their own egos--neither of them was thinking of him.
The only reason why we see Ester interact so much with Johan might be because, well, she's bed-bound, and he can't really leave the hotel. His mother is always out and about, so, if he wants to go home, the only person there will be Ester. Not by personal will, but simply because she can't be elsewhere.
Thematically, it would make sense for Anna to be Johan's biological mother. She *is* the one with the husband and family, after all. Ester is a *lesbian* (or suffering from some serious sexual trauma) and rather frigid.

Besides, these two sisters are almost identical to the sisters in Cries and Whispers.....and, thanks to some good ol' Bergman consistency, the frigid sister in that one is also childless, while the whimsycal and affectionate one had her children.


But, I guess it could be argued that since the two women are direct opposites, *both* of them could be his mother--but in different ways. After all, anna is the living, choleric, base, sexual, spontaneous, and "hot" sibling, while she is the distant, intellectual, existential and "cold." Anna interacts with Johan by touch (she's the only one that can), but Ester interacts with him on a more verbal, intellectual way (asking him to read to her, writing him translations, etc.) Both are so different, they might as well be *one* person, i.e. the same mother? O_o

These types of questions and the postures that debaters are forced to adopt really take away from an atmosphere which lends itself to the type of discovery process that Bergman seems to encourage. One characteristic feature of Bergman’s' approach to his art is the implicit suggestive character of the archetypes that his figures represent. If those archetypes are supposed to speak to us, or at least draw forth from our own nature a message or view that will edify, it really becomes necessary to open ourselves up to them as much as possible, and not to put them in straight jackets.

Bergman has the habit of juxtaposing characters which otherwise appear as components within a single human being. Are not these different characters suggestive of the components of one person? In physical life a child proceeds from a mother. Biologically speaking this is a process which is a consequence of a series of events which at some point include a male. Look at the males in the film. The prepubescent boy, the very senior concierge, the walking dildo waiter, the "little people" (only males), the very brief appearance of the custodian changing the light bulb, and one half of a coital drama witnessed by Anna in counterpoise to the stage performance of the dwarfs. There are really only 2 women; reason unsupported by passion, and passion unguided by reason. This is not an unfamiliar theme among artistic giants seeking to find the resolution within the human soul. Goethe, Schiller, Hesse, Soloviev, Paschal and plenty others have drawn us along with them in their pursuit of answers to the many gnawing questions surrounding this drama.

To isolate out and try to pin down a basically undefined element like - Whose son is Johan? - breaks up the mind rather than allowing its picture weaving ability to discover an element in the texture of the films fabric. Consider for a moment: When did you ever hear someone refer to Johann Sebastian Bach as "Sebastian Bach"? Not once, but three times; only from Esther. It is the Concierge who clarifies with the forename. Why can't she say Johan(n)? What is her real connection to this child? She wants on the one hand the caresses that the boy readily shares with his mother, but there is a wall between them. The child is at a loss to express his genuine feeling for her. Not that he doesn't have it but something about HER obstructs it. Consider the "Punch and Judy" scene. What was that? How much he wants to get through her wall but can't. It is not until he fears she is near dead that he can really embrace her. He is pure, and inviolate (being pre-pubescent) unlike Anna who is totally given over to the post-adolescent sensual. It is not HIS fault that he can't "touch" her. His touches would be pure. But somehow Esther cannot receive "touches". What is the difference between the carnal touches of her sister which she craves, and the innocent touches of Johan which are blocked? On the other hand, it is Esther that uses the word conscience. What is behind this voice called “conscience”, which Esther pursues and Anna flees? In the theater it is Anna who rushes to escape when she witnesses the two lovers who are lost in abandonment. That is the way it looks to her from the outside. But it is precisely for the pursuit of this condition that she left the hotel room to begin with. This is a tremendous dichotomy. The only way she can surrender herself to the same coital bliss, is to give up conscience. From outside it seems to her shocking and disturbing. She can't bear to look on. All of these questions point to a deep mystery concerning the balance of spirituality within the single human being. We are not human without or feeling/sensuous life, yet we are animals if our spiritual/reason side is overshadowed by compulsion. We live out our life in the range of these two extremes. What can we hope to discover about ourselves by these considerations?

If you start with some dogmatic question about whether or not Johan is Esther's son based on something appearing in a web site, you get lost in abstract and intellectual questions that turn forever on themselves and take you nowhere. I suspect that Bergman would flee from a room where such questions were being considered. I feel that the relationships are of utmost importance, but not along abstract lines. For myself, I try rather to follow the dramatic flow of tension and release between the characters. One of the wonderful aspects of dramatic art is that we are freed from the confines of abstract and analytical thinking and can receive impressions that many times overcome the limitations that pragmatism and philosophy require. It allows us to get, for a moment, outside of the narrow confines of our regular way of constricting our experience (only to support why we are right and the “other” is wrong).

(PRN) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id-bFpYQzXE