Recently, it had occurred to me that the more some people try to reach God, the more it reflects their hatred on human nature, as if bigotry or misanthropy couldn't do without looking down on people. I know there are many real-life examples of sheer altruism displayed in God's name but does Mother Teresa's work amount to something on the scale of fanaticism's death toll.
This opening paragraph isn't much an attack on God but on his believers and the way they unconsciously live God's inaccessibility as a conditioning frustration... or frustrating condition, trying to model the world according to their vision because they're incapable to reach the original modeler. Indeed, how can you figure God? If he's the Creator, then he's whatever is left if you remove his creation. Remember that gag from "The Simpsons" where Kang and Kodos made time go so fast it sucked everything out the picture, planets, galaxies, the cosmos, even God... and then the screen went white.
This is just a gag but in Bergmanian language, it's silence and nothingness, whether the latter is in white or black is a matter of speculation, but both can be seen as two poles of perception, opposite and inaccessible so that you could only visualize semblances of truth in the black-and-white photography served by Sven Nikvyst. The monochrome format is the perfect embodiment of what can be regarded as God's 'indifference' to the pleas of human beings, subject of Bergman's "faith" trilogy, driving his most tormented subjects to craziness or alienation... that's for the common thread. Whether Bergman wanted us to pity or understand his characters is none of his concern, as long as we're not indifferent (an attitude that can only be feigned because only God is truly indifferent), we realize our own vulnerability.
So, in "Through the Glass Darkly", we had a widowed writer estranged to his daughter, whose dementia made her believe she was approached by God and carry some ambiguously incestuous feelings toward her brother. "Winter Sleep" was even darker in the depiction of a priest, also a widower, incapable to reach God and be a soothing voice of reason for people fearing the nuclear apocalypse and questioning the future of humanity. Ironically, the third opus of the trilogy (though I wonder if it was intended that way) is the less loaded but no less enigmatic, carrying the same ingredients such as death, Oedipal incest, carnal fantasies, triangular loves and existential dead-ends. If you hate head-scratchers, "The Silence" isn't for you.
The film's rich in puzzling imagery, groundbreaking shots of nudity and sex, a pivotal moment in Swedish cinema's history that disinhibited every director's impulse since then, and it also indulges to surrealistic moments à la Bunuel. It's not much pretentious as it has the personal resonance of a nightmare. It starts with two sisters suffocating in a train going to some foreign European country, Ingrid Thullin is the older one: Ester, her natural dignity is spoiled by blood coughing, whatever she represents, we gather it's not life. Anna is played by the breathtakingly beautiful Gunnel Lindblom, and the way the camera endlessly lusts on her leaves no doubt that she represents the basic desires. Her son Johan, played by Jörgen Lindström (he was the little boy in "Persona") swings back and forth between what seems to be two opposite mother figures... or two sides of the same persona, one of flesh and one of soul.
The little boy wanders through the film with the innocence that befits his age, until we start to suspect his continuous gazes on his mother's body to be representative of our voyeuristic position. Johan admires his mother because she's got the reassuring voluptuousness of the nurturing body and his aunt, a translator who can help him to understand the country's language, nurtures his intellect. Either he's a bridge between the two women estranged one to another or he's a plot necessity showing that their tragedy isn't on the conflict itself but the hopeless absence of any communication channel... although they speak the same 'language'.
Ironically, communication is never an issue with foreigners: the kid has fun with a bunch of Spanish dwarfs, there's an old hotel steward,played by Håkan Jahnberg, whose body and face language is so expressive that he always finds a way to amuse Johan and comfort Ester; meanwhile Anna has an affair with a waiter. Blaming Ester for being a Holier-than-thou individual, selfish and proud, rejecting her own pleas as if she was playing God herself, jealousy through sex is the only expression of Anna's resentment. God becomes the scapegoat of the tragicomedy, he's inspired that seemingly disdain of the things of life within Ester, and Anna who made herself even more worthless since she's not worthy of Ester, God... or both.
Ester could only have sex alone because she could never stand the smell of 'flesh' the original language between human beings... and ironically is left alone at the end with the kind of uncertain future that doesn't speak much of God's gratitude toward his firmest subjects. Approaching God is shown as a descent into alienation while the "terra ferma" of sensuality makes us feel alive among humans even if it means suffering... So are we suffering when we're close to God or suffering when we try to stay among humans we secretly despise? That Ester is still afraid to die alone is an indication that we need to stay in touch with our own humanity. Still...
Sven Nykvist's cinematography has the strange capability to show people so close and yet so far, lost in long hotel corridors, in the sweaty darkness of sordid rooms or scorching speeding trains... two faces can be separated by darkness or shadows as if each one was immersed in its own dimension. I guess "The Silence" tries to envision the way people our desperate attempts to reach each other as if the impossible communication with God had affected our own interactions.
This opening paragraph isn't much an attack on God but on his believers and the way they unconsciously live God's inaccessibility as a conditioning frustration... or frustrating condition, trying to model the world according to their vision because they're incapable to reach the original modeler. Indeed, how can you figure God? If he's the Creator, then he's whatever is left if you remove his creation. Remember that gag from "The Simpsons" where Kang and Kodos made time go so fast it sucked everything out the picture, planets, galaxies, the cosmos, even God... and then the screen went white.
This is just a gag but in Bergmanian language, it's silence and nothingness, whether the latter is in white or black is a matter of speculation, but both can be seen as two poles of perception, opposite and inaccessible so that you could only visualize semblances of truth in the black-and-white photography served by Sven Nikvyst. The monochrome format is the perfect embodiment of what can be regarded as God's 'indifference' to the pleas of human beings, subject of Bergman's "faith" trilogy, driving his most tormented subjects to craziness or alienation... that's for the common thread. Whether Bergman wanted us to pity or understand his characters is none of his concern, as long as we're not indifferent (an attitude that can only be feigned because only God is truly indifferent), we realize our own vulnerability.
So, in "Through the Glass Darkly", we had a widowed writer estranged to his daughter, whose dementia made her believe she was approached by God and carry some ambiguously incestuous feelings toward her brother. "Winter Sleep" was even darker in the depiction of a priest, also a widower, incapable to reach God and be a soothing voice of reason for people fearing the nuclear apocalypse and questioning the future of humanity. Ironically, the third opus of the trilogy (though I wonder if it was intended that way) is the less loaded but no less enigmatic, carrying the same ingredients such as death, Oedipal incest, carnal fantasies, triangular loves and existential dead-ends. If you hate head-scratchers, "The Silence" isn't for you.
The film's rich in puzzling imagery, groundbreaking shots of nudity and sex, a pivotal moment in Swedish cinema's history that disinhibited every director's impulse since then, and it also indulges to surrealistic moments à la Bunuel. It's not much pretentious as it has the personal resonance of a nightmare. It starts with two sisters suffocating in a train going to some foreign European country, Ingrid Thullin is the older one: Ester, her natural dignity is spoiled by blood coughing, whatever she represents, we gather it's not life. Anna is played by the breathtakingly beautiful Gunnel Lindblom, and the way the camera endlessly lusts on her leaves no doubt that she represents the basic desires. Her son Johan, played by Jörgen Lindström (he was the little boy in "Persona") swings back and forth between what seems to be two opposite mother figures... or two sides of the same persona, one of flesh and one of soul.
The little boy wanders through the film with the innocence that befits his age, until we start to suspect his continuous gazes on his mother's body to be representative of our voyeuristic position. Johan admires his mother because she's got the reassuring voluptuousness of the nurturing body and his aunt, a translator who can help him to understand the country's language, nurtures his intellect. Either he's a bridge between the two women estranged one to another or he's a plot necessity showing that their tragedy isn't on the conflict itself but the hopeless absence of any communication channel... although they speak the same 'language'.
Ironically, communication is never an issue with foreigners: the kid has fun with a bunch of Spanish dwarfs, there's an old hotel steward,played by Håkan Jahnberg, whose body and face language is so expressive that he always finds a way to amuse Johan and comfort Ester; meanwhile Anna has an affair with a waiter. Blaming Ester for being a Holier-than-thou individual, selfish and proud, rejecting her own pleas as if she was playing God herself, jealousy through sex is the only expression of Anna's resentment. God becomes the scapegoat of the tragicomedy, he's inspired that seemingly disdain of the things of life within Ester, and Anna who made herself even more worthless since she's not worthy of Ester, God... or both.
Ester could only have sex alone because she could never stand the smell of 'flesh' the original language between human beings... and ironically is left alone at the end with the kind of uncertain future that doesn't speak much of God's gratitude toward his firmest subjects. Approaching God is shown as a descent into alienation while the "terra ferma" of sensuality makes us feel alive among humans even if it means suffering... So are we suffering when we're close to God or suffering when we try to stay among humans we secretly despise? That Ester is still afraid to die alone is an indication that we need to stay in touch with our own humanity. Still...
Sven Nykvist's cinematography has the strange capability to show people so close and yet so far, lost in long hotel corridors, in the sweaty darkness of sordid rooms or scorching speeding trains... two faces can be separated by darkness or shadows as if each one was immersed in its own dimension. I guess "The Silence" tries to envision the way people our desperate attempts to reach each other as if the impossible communication with God had affected our own interactions.