Höstsonaten

I haven't ever read interviews of Ingmar Bergman, or rather anything about him - the way I know him is his work, his films. He is, to me, one of that rare breed who are not afraid to doubt - who stand within the pales of religion and yet take a promenade in there. He is a "doubter" - not just in the sense accepted, that of doubting religion and God, but also doubting the arguments contrary to it. Bergman's overarching pain, which he imposes on others through his films, has been striving to understand the perfection of a world which has so much ugliness as well; if man is God's work, why the ugly institutions he created to venerate the same God? Why, Man whom Eva alludes to in the film as having the highest and the lowest in him at the same time, why that man who bears the image of God in himself does need the external symbols and securities? Eva loves: this is the expression of Man, and we give it names. She loves; and thwarted in a world long decayed, she tries to learn to live, wherein every day is a practice.

A beautiful film, which on the face of it is about a failed relationship between two humans, a mother and a daughter, Höstsonaten (int'l title: Autumn Sonata) delves much deeper and brings into play all the themes Bergman struggled with, all the things he tried to understand. One of the features of most Bergman works, one which is not met often in literature or films otherwise, is that it is the women who are successful (and also often prey to that success, just as men are in others' works): forgetting the successful pianist Charlotte, even the tormented and unloved daughter Eva comes across in a way successful compared to her silently suffering husband, Viktor. That is the way Bergman plots the film: although, of course, a silence does not mean that a person does not suffer, yet Viktor is, for Bergman's film, dispensable; he is merely a "detached" narrator, a man playing a side role in the prominent story of a daughter who wants to be loved as she is, without questions and without judgments, without expectations and without bouts of enthusiasm and worry about her. She wants to live but be loved, but not be weighed down by love. Or the affected love - as that of her mother.

Autumn Sonata brings in one more very strange constant of Bergman's work: an old, cynical, intelligent man, a man who understands the world very well but is always a bit bored and wants to keep himself amused by a novelty (Stavrogin if you have read Dostoyevsky, Uncle Erland if you have seen that marvellous Bergman film Summer Interlude), who finds a new prey in a young girl, ready to believe and love, ready to adore and pray, a girl whose spirit is strong but who is what the world will call as naive (it is interesting that in a politically correct world, all the actual cruel words do keep on existing). I consider the Leonard-Helena happening as a complete byplot in the film: probably, in structural terms, it is even a defect; it distracts from the main body and that for a long time in a mere one-and-half-hour film. Yet, who will mind? To glimpse what goes in Bergman's mind, and what dark shadows lurk there, is more fascinating itself.

The question that Bergman never really asked openly - maybe he never got further to the pith, or somehow he just didn't want to - is not a mere rhetorical one, that why this? It is, rather, why the boredness? At the same stroke, Bergman, almost, attacks the religious institutions and glorifies God: in a world of thousand things and patterns to learn, or as Eva says in a world of many alternate realities than we can sense or know ever - God - there is the pew-sitting, there is the sacrament, and there is the choir - religion - someone instilling and instilling always inside us, as if we were mere cardboards, as if our desires and hopes were unclean, as if they were not enough to make us learn ourselves. Instead of trying to know the other realities, we don't even know ourselves - but run after a shining wax model erected by someone and told as desirable, all to protect us from our insecurities, a deus ex machina for the times that we are in doubt of us.

For, yes, we are doubters: and it is good that we are doubters. The inherent opposition between the concept of God and the idea of religion has probably never been so brilliantly put, excepting Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor. Brilliant acting performances, especially by Liv Ullmann, and a simple film with no editing tricks elevate Ingmar Bergman to a master story-teller: the one who touches hearts, who can feel oneself.

Nattvardsgästerna

More important than Why hast thou forsaken me?, why did Jonas brood so much over atom bombs being made by heathens as to commit suicide? Why did he start getting troubled over injustice and by his observations that God is apparently not doing anything in retribution, in recompense? Nattvardsgästerna (international title: Winter Light) is a beautiful film by Ingmar Bergman, most of the film a close-up of human faces and human frailties, and a stunning indictment of a sickening malaise: Christianity. It also asks questions about the existence of God and whether we should be even worried about if God exists or not. Should we not be better human beings instead of shutting ourselves inside dark recesses born out of custom and vocation and ritual and years of beliefs that seemed permanent, that seemed bulwark?

I like the simplicity in which Bergman made the film; except a boy sleeping during sermon and the organ player himself, the whole film is non-judgemental of anything; it just observes, shows, and thus asks the viewer his own questions. Even the questions are the viewer's. There are several provoking situations, dialogues, darknesses: a man kept on performing miracles yet didn't do any to save his life? If only to take the sins, then why the final cry of despair and doubt that oh Lord why hast thou forsaken me? Christ hung on the crucifix: why this emblem? In outward garb just showing the moment when he died for sins committed by man, then why not rather a symbol of an empty cave or the Ascension, a more promising and hopeful symbol? Or is it because it would be easy to make heathens believe in the goodness of a man who could die upon crucifix, forgetting that it was the punishment of the times (choosing to forget). What Godard calls shot and countershot in Notre Musique. Establish the countershot of Jesus hanging on crucifix; the rest becomes a relief, forming the shot.

Bergman also slides in a very interesting thought somewhere inside: love is the undoing of religion. Wouldn't the pastor have returned content with his administered communions to the woman he loved; maybe even if the woman looked at him with a question in his eyes; had not the woman died? That is what probably Märta doesn't do, and the pastor despises her even after using her body to try to wash his sins. Shot in close-ups throughout, the film only deviates in one long sequence into a hazy wide shot: when the pastor is in action, on the spot with Jonas' body, and a little far thus from his otherwise constant internal struggle. Why? Even if I don't find the why, since there could be many and my why might be different from Bergman's, it is beautiful. I find it beautiful. The rawness of the world which is laying and has laid out impressions on man's soul captured not being objective at all; and while man now struggles with his conscience, again eliminating the objective by filling the whole frame this time with the nothingness of a man's face, his impassive face. Or Märta's kind, sad eyes. Or the hate of living in an unbearable world in Jonas' eyes. Or the hate of weariness and the anticipation of more weariness in a world not understood, not wanted to be understood in Jonas' wife's face. Or the light of bitterness and realization in the sexton's face. Or the "ridiculous" image of the dangling Jesus in the pastor's eyes.

Musik i mörker

Quite evident as the work of an early Bergman, Musik i mörker (Music in Darkness) is more raw and hitting on some of the themes that Bergman grappled throughout his life, just because the argument's just begun, as opposed to the continuation in his later works. Most early Bergman films had Birger Malmsten as the hero, and he is here again typecast as the overtly sensitive young man plunged into blindness caused due to an accident, not mitigated by the fact that that accident happened due to his love for animals and nature.

While the film overall is touching, the cast disappoints me just a shade. While Malmsten was perfect in Summer Interlude, I still reserve doubts over him in this film in spite of his looking so naturally a sensitive, sacrificing young man: he would have been a better choice in Sommaren med Monika (Summer with Monika) as the jilted lover. Malmsten doesn't look a proud accomplished, upper-crust Bengt Vyldeke calling Ingrid (played by Mai Zetterling) a "little wench" and nor later a very decided man. Though this also lends a shade of tragedy to the film which does not end on a too happy note: the lovers have married against society's odds and fighting their insecurities, but the future is still too uncertain and the viewer doesn't know who will break first, or will they last for ever. Zetterling herself in the role of Ingrid is wonderfully assured, and has a face of angels, and is dreamy which is difficult to bring out in a film: yet it is maybe the director who uses her as Hollywood used to use its heroines, just angels to save men or vamps to jilt them, with the god in creation being the hero even in a love story! One of the most Hollywood-esque scenes is when Bengt plays the music upstairs and Ingrid gets thrilled by it, and the camera just focuses on her getting thrilled for quite a long time and quite a strong unneeded light on Ingrid's face.

Another disappointment turns out to be the loose screenplay: the incidents of the hotel where Malmsten worked, the railway station where he almost gets crushed, the thief and subsequent confrontation with the hotel proprietor are all meant to show Malmsten's decline through society as well as in his own character, yet each of them is an end left untied, leaving an imperfectly wrought film. It is as if Bergman is just putting one by one all the arguments in a list that he means to, and not elaborating on them, not even indicating why to have here such an argument. Aunt Beatrice's conversation on suicide is a pertinent example: it has no precedent or follow-up in the film, despite considering the atheist views as well as suicidal tendencies of the hero.

As a story and as a visual, the film works. As much accomplished as Bengt was and is, he still doesn't have the love that Ingrid overflows with, and a faith in humanity and God, and it is almost as Raskolnikov and Sonya that they start now their married life: all might go awry, yes, but a tincture of hope is there that Bengt might finally be able to love people and thus himself. It is only then that he can truly love his most prized possession and treasure: Ingrid.

Sommarlek

To say a simple thing, yet beautifully, yet effectively, to show a story which hadn't had to use far stretches of imaginations, except the most inspiring ones of what happens between a young man and a young girl when they are in love with each other, and when it's first love for both of them, to do all this you not only require a director of the calibre of Ingmar Bergman, but you also require an actress like Maj-Britt Nilsson. She is so natural, so much the Marie, the playful, winsome ballerina she is playing in the film, you don't even realise that these are actors and this is a film. More crucially, Bergman has stuck true to the title (literally "Summer Games"), so the film is a long sequence of youthful love which you don't otherwise get at all in films.

Usually, there is at the most a scene like the montage scene in Eric Segal's Love Story, but why a montage? Why a brief moment, when your whole film is about love between two people? Are you lost of ideas, or do you feel shy and insecure that your film is a celebration of love? This is the place where Bergman excels, he has given full scope to his characters in the degree they require. So while there's that old woman all in black walking in front of Marie, no one knows whether foreshadowing Marie's lonely old life or just being a placard on old life in general, she just strikes a terror in the heart, she just forebodes what is to happen in the film afterwards. There is no attempt of variegating the example or extending the analogy. There is again, much later in the film, a much direct reference to what the viewer can expect soon, through the moustachioed aunt of Birger Malmsten (playing the hero, Henrik) talking about death and legacy. And finally there's the magician, who is more the mirror for Marie rather than the one they are both looking into. The magician incidentally reminded me of the philosopher of Godard's Vivre Sa Vie, almost doing the same role of letting realise the protagonist the punctum in her life.

The cinematography of the film is stunning. And even more so the choice of locale by Bergman. It looks fit for those two young lovers, wanting to be free birds, Marie and Henrik. They both look a part of that world and part of each other when they are on those sharp rocks jutting out on the sea, they both look lost in the world and to each other when they are seen in company, in that world where there is more piano, crockery, ballet, Uncle Erland. The film goes on to show how actors who fit into their parts are essential for a film, especially if it aspires to rise to the heights of "sublime", which Sommarlek (Summer Interlude) does easily.