To thine own self be true

If you or I said we’d want to be “Absolute Ruler”, we’d be handcuffed and led straight-away, chained, to jail.

You can’t fix stupid.

That the third and last film in his Trilogy turned out to be a commercial hit was, apparently, a big surprise to the director. When I first saw it on late-night t.v. in 1969, it was the first Bergman I had seen and what made it popular and controversial, at the time , were its infamous sex scene in a theatre and its nude scenes in a weird hotel (all, incidentally, relatively tame by today’s ‘standards’).

It is, definitely, an odd psychological movie, though it pales noticeably in comparison to his classic Persona, likewise, a psychological drama between two women, which followed in 1966. And, it is the weakest–I think–of the Trilogy films because of its disunity; it simply does not come off convincingly on the single theme of the absence of God–His silence in this overwrought plot.  Unlike the first two films, no religion, nor religious comfort are offered in The Silence.

There are also many loose ends:  the performing dwarf troupe, the boy protagonist peeing on the hotel floor, the oddly juxtaposed American-wild-west-style ‘shootings’ by Johan, the tank that rolls through the town at night, and Ester’s sudden, inexplicable mentioning of “the smell of semen” are but five examples of the sort of irrational loose ends offered to viewers.

The setting is not uninteresting–a strange, claustrophobic Baroque European hotel during a WWII-looking wartime, where two very different sisters and the 8-9-year-old son of one of them have come to stopover before travelling home. Cinematographer Sven Nykvist effectively makes the hotel dark, mysterious, and a somewhat spooky-looking maze. Unlike previous Bergman films, his camera moves fluidly and somewhat randomly, intercutting unpredictably between the viewpoints of the three main characters.

Johan’s mother Anna (Gunnel Lindblom) is the more sensual and carnal of the two sisters. Johan’s aunt Ester (Ingrid Thulin) is the direly ill, intellectual translator, who calls out her sister for her sexual indiscretions. Johan, the perpetually curious, innocent boy moves between the two of them: being physically close to his mother, yet moved by his aunt’s situation and her more serious character. Ultimately, his point of view is the most interesting one in The Silence; Jorgen Lindstrom, as Johan, steals the movie and viewer sympathies with his looks and realistic responses to the bizarre grown-up behaviors.

In many ways, like the ticking watch which starts this film, The Silence is about time and its passing, as characters kill time existentially and absurdly. Eventually, Bergman in an overtly, too-obvious, symbolic scene has the seedy hotel porter listen to an obviously dead watch as he fails to get it running again. The porter also, ironically and symbolically, plays Johan’s ‘father’ figure and Ester’s ‘father’/’doctor’. He is the all-purpose-‘jacknife’ character in The Silence.

Re. other elements–Bergman introduces, but does not develop a vague incest sense to the scenes when Johan washes his mother’s back in the bath and sleeps half-naked with her in their hot hotel room. The director also suggests a vague lesbian motif between the two very different sisters: a theme he would come back to and bring more convincingly to fruition in Persona.

Finally, this film fails to jell coherently, unlike Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light; it is too scattered all over the place with too many distractions, so to speak. If Bergman’s aim was to be mysterious, commercially controversial, obscure, and relatively inconsequential, then he definitely succeeded in The Silence.

From his Drum Major Instinct speech:

about his boss holidaying in another country until January 22 during the provincial power outage crisis yesterday evening. Typical UCP hypocrisy.

1. When I was teaching high-school English for 30 years from 1972-2002, I shared a ton of information, opinions, ideas, insights, and famous works and authors with the thousands of kids I taught.
2. At various times in the past, teacher-friends would ask “When are you going to write your novel?” I started planning one once in the 1980s, mapped out the plot from beginning to end, and then, didn’t choose to write it. Like Hitchcock used to say, the most boring part of his process was shooting his script; what he had imagined it would look like was far more interesting and better than the final film. In any case, this blog (started back in 2012) was and has been a much more interesting book than I ever dreamed of. BTW, the germ of this project was Michel de Montaigne’s Essays.
3. As it’s turned out, through teaching, musical performance, and this blog, my adult life has been largely about sharing views, experiences, and information from the Arts, particularly from great artists, great people, and great works. A sort of Matthew Arnold approach to life and culture. I know that when I die, I am going to take a large consciousness of the Arts and the greats with me. Walt Whitman’s “I am large, I contain multitudes” definitely sums up my experience, knowledge, practice, and whatever acquired wisdom about life.

old feelings, memories, reminders, ideas, and insights. Automatic multi-tasking.

If a pen and paper are handy, I jot these down.

Winter Light directed by Ingmar Bergman, the genius of close-ups, is, ostensibly, his most religious film, and the second of his acclaimed trilogy.

Bergman shows a rural pastor coming to terms with the hypocrisy of himself and his crisis of faith. The film is also notably about communication and the great lack of it in human relationships; punning on the word “communication”, the original title of this movie was The Communicants which also refers to faith.

The events of this beautiful black-and-white film takes place in ‘real clock time’ in the space of a few hours in one very full, complex afternoon in the lives of five related characters, making this movie a fit/ting companion chamber piece for Through a Glass Darkly, the first of the trilogy series. Sven Nykvist, who by this point, was Bergman’s go-to cinematographer, once again effectively renders the monochrome darkness of the characters’ depressed lives.

Tomas (Gunnar Bjornstrand–and the key roles are again played by Bergman’s go-to theatrical and movie casts) is a pastor in faith crisis after his beloved wife’s death, who can’t find it in himself to love Marta (Ingrid Thulin), the loving and all-in mistress who can’t find the inner strength to abandon him. Her 6-minute-on-camera soliloquy is a bold, clever theatrical device for presenting her long letter to the pastor in which she offers ‘her side of their story’.

Tomas’s religious crisis, unfortunately, is fully expressed to Jonas (Max von Sydow),  a suicidal parishioner seeking counsel, who believes that China’s having the atomic bomb will end the world. The timing and choice both have tragic consequences for Jonas, father of a family of three with one on the way and his wife Karin (Gunnel Lindblom), who in contrast, is quite a character study in love, human survival and fortitude.

Rounding out the main cast is the supportive, believing hunchback church-assistant Algot Frovik (Allan Edwall), whose main scene comes as Tomas goes to preach his post-tragedy second sermon in the film. As he begins to chatter off the top of his head, he gets Tomas and the viewer to re-experience Christ’s Passion, crucifixion, and the various desertions of Christ from a modern point of view, including references to his own suffering life.

The dialogue throughout is realistically searing and challenging to not only the characters, but to the viewers as well. In a real sense, the viewers, too, experience the feelings, doubts, and misgivings of the five main characters. We also go through a similar vicarious experience of faith, doubt, belief, pessimism, and the great, ubiquitous human failure to connect with others, be they people in our lives or some higher being.

Highly recommended for people in faith crises or for men and women unable to connect meaningfully with the opposite sex.

Classics and authors Toronto Catholic has in its sights:

Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird

Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men

Conrad: Heart of Darkness

Golding: Lord of the Flies

I predict that some of them will turn to publishing obituaries for beloved pets, especially dogs and cats.