Like a demon rising from some dark pit to inflict as much misery on society as possible, or a man ready to tear the world down with him on his way to hell, there is no real direction to Johnny’s nocturnal wandering through the city streets of London. He might very well be the most intelligent person he has ever met, though this would also be the kindest thing one could say about him. The only way he can practically apply his extraordinarily quick wit and abstract philosophising is in targeting the vulnerable, who inevitably feel enough loneliness, pity, or curiosity to invite him into their lives. His knack for rapidly gaging their weaknesses is impeccable, whether it is a security guard’s distant dream of retiring to Ireland or a middle-aged woman’s desperate longing her youth, and from there his takedown is swift and vicious. He talks fast, speaking of conceptual theories far beyond his target’s comprehension to beat them into a gloomy submission, before moving onto whoever is unfortunate enough to cross his path next.
Even as Leigh is dedicated to the black production design, he also balances this against a gritty realist aesthetic.
Mike Leigh thoughtfully constructs a character study of immense nihilism here, bleakly considering a tragic figure so absorbed in his own solipsistic perspective that healthy relationships are virtually impossible. It is a tonally tricky line to walk, as Naked’s screenplay is also wryly funny in its dark, comical musings. Like Johnny’s victims, we too find ourselves drawn to his thorny charisma, which constantly rises to the surface of David Thewlis’ bitter, verbose performance. Even when asked by a sympathetic stranger if he has a home to go to, there is a sardonic poeticism to his response, expressing an eternal, restless instability.
“I’ve got infinite number of places to go, the problem is where to stay.”
Johnny is despicable from the very first shot, as Leigh’s handheld camera discovers him raping a stranger in an alleyway.
All attempts to cut through the irony and draw some sincerity out of Johnny are fruitless, as he proves himself to be as equally skilled at deflecting as he is attacking others. To those perceptive enough to see past the smartass façade though, his tortured depravity is evident. Leigh’s decision to open the film with what may be Johnny’s most wretched act exposes that side of him right away too, running a handheld camera down a dark alleyway to find him raping a clearly distressed woman.
Black clothes, black decor, dark grey walls – Johnny radiates darkness from his very presence, or has he taken on the evil of the larger world?
Realising the need to lay low for a while, Johnny departs his hometown of Manchester for East London where his ex-girlfriend Louise now lives, and makes himself comfortable. There, he meets her junkie flatmate Sophie, who he casts an immediate spell over and starts a relationship with before Louise can even get home from work. The strangers he torments throughout Naked may suffer sharp blows to their self-esteem and happiness, but most of all our pity is reserved for these unfortunate women who know him on an intimate level, yet still can’t seem to escape his cruel, psychological rampage.
Dark, crumbling walls, creating an almost apocalyptic vision of modern London.An immense accomplishment of production design from Alison Chitty and cinematography from Dick Pope. Leigh’s black palette is woven into the mise-en-scene in virtually every shot, making a bold statement on this world’s bitter nihilism.
As to whether Johnny is a product of this grim, joyless world or vice versa, Leigh is purposeful in blurring the lines of influence, developing a pervasive, pitch-black production design. It is a remarkable visual motif that is woven into almost every shot, cloaking a dishevelled Thewlis in a dark jumper, overcoat, and boots, and radiating out into tarnished wallpapers, high-end restaurants, and the lifeless décor of Louise’s apartment. It goes beyond the sort of low-key lighting that cinematographer Gordon Willis would innovate in the 1970s, though as he saunters past London’s piercing neon signs and lingers in silhouettes for entire scenes, it is clearly an accomplishment on that level too. These monochromatic shades are rather infused with the total dilapidation of modern-day London, bordering on apocalyptic as black brick walls crumble and homeless camps light fires beneath dank, damp bridges.
Beyond the black production design, there is also a Gordon Willis approach to the minimalist lighting, piercing the darkness with neon signs on the nocturnal streets of London.Another stroke of inspired genius, playing out a conversation in silhouette and sinking characters into total darkness.A tinge of noir in the pessimism and urban setting, as Leigh throws Venetian blinds shadows across Johnny’s face.
Leigh’s claustrophobic location shooting in urban city streets and apartments firmly place this in the lineage of British neorealism, though with such a painstaking curation of mise-en-scène and firm grounding in mythological archetypes, Naked often verges on transcending these conventions. Especially when it comes to the latter, Johnny’s nomadic wandering between various strange characters bears resemblances to Homer’s Odyssey, which he feels he must condescendingly explain to one shy waitress whose home is filled with Ancient Greek figurines, posters, and books. The Book of Revelations similarly becomes a key text in Johnny’s conspiratorial ramblings about the end times, and given the urban decay surrounding him, perhaps there is some vague truth to this. After all, it isn’t hard to imagine him as a charismatic demagogue in such cataclysmic circumstances, gleefully feeding off the chaos and suffering he generates.
Thewlis gives one of the most audacious performances of the 1990s in Naked. There could be a hundred adjectives used to describe his difficult, smart-ass persona, but he is also a woefully tragic figure – almost Shakespearean.Location shooting on the streets of London place this in the lineage of British neorealism, even as it bucks against those traditions.
Given the destruction Johnny could potentially wreak in such an elevated position, it is fortunate that he isn’t wealthier or more privileged than he is, but Leigh doesn’t spare us from envisioning that disturbing hypothetical in the character of Jeremy, Louise’s yuppie landlord. He is introduced in extreme contrast to Johnny, visually surrounded by pure white tones, though there is some formal weakness when these disappear and never return.
It would be tough to imagine anyone in this world more despicable than our main character, but Jeremy is viciously psychopathic on a level that rivals Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Where Johnny lords his intelligence over others, Jeremy violently asserts his privilege over all those residing in the flat he owns, even raping his tenant Sophie as a horrific display of ownership. The distorted counterpoint that Greg Cruttwell offers to Thewlis in his characterisation may be firm, yet it is not always relevant in its broader purpose, lacking the depth which makes Johnny such a compelling subject.
A brief sequence introducing yuppie landlord Jeremy takes us into his world of pure whites, though Leigh does not follow through on this formal setup.
This wouldn’t be nearly as rich a character study if we didn’t believe that redemption was in the realm of possibility for this amoral vagrant, though Leigh deals this hope out sparingly, only building it to a peak when a beaten Johnny comes crawling back to Louise and instigates a gentle reconciliation. Their quiet rendition of the folk song ‘Take Me Back to Manchester When It’s Raining’ as they wearily lie down together may be the closest he ever gets to an honest display of emotion in the entire film, revealing a nostalgic connection we never believed him capable of making. There is evidently a past here that holds the two ex-lovers to each other, and it may be all they have left in this crumbling world.
Surprisingly tender characterisations emerge towards the end in Johnny’s connection with Louise, exposing his deep wounds.
No, it isn’t that redemption isn’t available to Johnny in Naked – it is that even when Louise graciously offers to move back to Manchester with him, he is still governed by a deep, irrational impulse to keep lashing out. He is wounded, and therefore everyone around him must be as well. As soon as the house is empty, he scrounges up all the money he can find and limps off down the street. Andrew Dickson’s propulsive score of harp and cellos urges him forward in this long, unbroken tracking shot, though his destination remains just as much a mystery now as any other point in the film. For all his intelligence, Johnny simply does not possess the self-awareness to break free of the darkness that consumes his sharp-witted mind and vulnerable soul. Instead, it must become an infectious disease to be spread from one place to another, leaving him as its miserable, permanently-afflicted carrier.
A brazen ending that denies us or Johnny easy resolution, following him as he limps down the street in one long tracking shot, his destination as uncertain as ever.
Naked is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Through the twenty years of Ingmar Bergman’s career leading up to his crowning achievement Persona, his long running fascinations with the human face had manifested in some of the art form’s finest close-ups. It is “the great subject of cinema,” he believed. “Everything is there.” He didn’t need David Lean’s extraordinary panoramas or Michelangelo Antonioni’s modern architecture, though he certainly demonstrated a fine control over both visual devices whenever a scene called for it. To him, faces were landscapes on their own, with the potential to be shot in an unlimited number of angles, lighting setups, and arrangements within ensembles – and that isn’t even considering yet the incredible facial expressions reliably delivered by his troupe of recurring actors. In profile shots, the curves of the face become valleys and mountains, while front-on portraits might be partially hidden by shadows or visual obstructions.
Faces become like landscapes to Bergman in Persona, with slopes, crevices, and mountains – entire worlds of expression.
As such, there is an inherent tension between any character’s outward communication and internal emotions in a Bergman film. Not necessarily at odds with each other, but at least working in conjunction to create a mask of some kind. One which Carl Jung might describe as “designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual.” Or to put it even more simply, a persona.
Therein lies the case for why this film may stand as the finest formal synthesis of Bergman’s intimate visual style and his deeply psychological subject matter, examining the perplexing duality which simultaneously defines humans as social beings and distinct individuals. All abstract truths conceived in one’s mind must be filtered through some sensory expression to reach the outer world, and Bergman does not discount his own film from that inevitable distortion. The raw materials of cinema itself become integral to Persona’s very form, opening and closing with montages of film reels, flickering lights, a penis, a cartoon, a silent comedy sketch, and a dying sheep, among other images. Even the very final shot of the film after Bergman’s camera pulls back to reveal his crew shows the film reel running out, and the incandescent arc lamp of a projector slowly dimming, signifying the end.
Bergman is playing with the raw materials of cinema in Persona – light, illusion, entertainment, all tying into his meditations on identity and artifice.
Much like everything else we witness in this film, these are but mere representations of reality, only possible through illusions of light produced by machines. And yet like the young boy we see at the start reaching out towards a giant screen featuring blurred images of Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson’s faces, we too might find ourselves suspending our disbelief during Persona, convincing ourselves on some subconscious level what we are watching is not art, but truth.
A boy reaches out to Ullmann and Andersson’s faces in the opening montage, trying to grasp the illusion of the cinema screen.
Perhaps it is a similar recognition of this artifice which prompts theatre actress Elisabet Vogler to become voluntarily mute as she stands onstage, simultaneously rejecting both artistic and verbal forms of expression, and setting off the events of the film. To her nurse Alma, Elisabet’s mental strength to wilfully remain silent inspires great admiration, though the head doctor describes her philosophy from a far more nuanced, understanding perspective.
“The hopeless dream of being – not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others, and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don’t have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn’t play any parts or make wrong gestures.”
One of the great all-time female performances arrives through Ullmann’s magnificent silent acting, marking the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with Bergman.
Here lies the key to unlocking many of Persona’s confounding mysteries, moving us closer to the core of one character who conceals her identity with silence, and another who conceals her own with speech. It is one of the finest monologues that Bergman has penned, but it also takes a turn halfway through as the doctor begins to apply pressure to Elisabet’s belief, questioning her methods to separate herself from the world’s superficial facades.
“But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn’t watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you’re forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you’re genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don’t speak, why you don’t move, why you’ve created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you’ve left your other parts one by one.”
With this diagnosis, the remedy becomes apparent – a short stay for both Elisabet and Alma at the doctor’s summer estate. Like so many other Bergman films, his home island of Fårö plays host to this retreat, isolating the two women on beautiful, stony coastlines surrounded by the Baltic Sea.
Bergman’s home island of Fårö plays host to this retreat, isolating Ullmann and Andersson in its stark, beautiful scenery.
The dynamic contrast already set between Alma’s endless talking about her life and Elisabet’s patient listening continues here, drawing formal divisions in their characterisations as a submissive, emotional woman and her more assertive, rational counterpart. At the same time, there is also a subtle blending of the two which begins to take place. As Alma recounts a memory of sunbathing nude with her friend, making love with two strangers who approach them, and cheating on her partner, she also confesses a mental guilt which directly conflicts with her physical actions. “Is it possible to be one and the same person at the very same time – I mean, two people?” she wonders aloud, considering both halves of her mind as separate beings.
Personal secrets begin to spill out, and a power dynamic is set – Alma as the caring, expressive nurse, and Elisabet as the silent, judgemental patient.
Through Bergman’s blocking of their faces, this relationship continues to manifest in visual compositions he had played with many times before, specifically that which half-obscures one face with another in a representation of symbiotic duality. Not only is Persona his greatest stylistic accomplishment to date, but his cinematographer Sven Nykvist too deserves a great deal of credit for his camera’s sensitivity to the delicate movements and expressions of these actresses.
This is an immense accomplishment for cinematographer Sven Nykvist as well as Bergman, offering up some of the finest compositions of faces in both their careers – and cinema history.
When Elisabet enters Alma’s bedroom one night like a spectre, there is a surreal ethereality to the soft wash illuminating their slow, strange embrace, letting them caress each other’s faces and hypnotically gaze right at the camera. Later as they bring their heads together and look downwards, Bergman shrouds them in darkness against a white background, tracing the outlines of their intersecting, virtually indistinguishable profiles. While the emphasis on Elisabet’s face is her shrewd, perceptive eyes, only Alma’s mouth is visible, declaring that “I’ll never be like you. I change all the time. You can do what you want. You won’t get to me.” Once again though, her words are telling a different story to the corresponding reciprocals being depicted onscreen. One is of the head, the other is of the heart, and both might as well be two parts of a single, indivisible woman.
An ethereal night time meeting, lingering on the edges of consciousness as both women embrace and stare cryptically at the camera.This could very well be the shot that defines Bergman’s entire career, catching both faces looking downward in silhouette, but there is also incredible formal detail with the emphasis of Andersson’s mouth.
Bergman could not have cast two more suitable actors for these roles either, with both Andersson and Ullmann bearing visual similarities, yet expressing totally inverse personalities. Andersson brings a spontaneous vivacity to Alma’s lengthy monologues throughout Persona, speaking whatever thoughts come to her mind, while initially staged in the foreground of Bergman’s frame as the primary subject of our attention. Meanwhile, Ullmann often sits behind her, watching with an impassive face that refuses to reveal even the slightest passing thought. She may have been late to joining Bergman’s company of regular actors that Andersson had already been part of for years, but in time she would prove herself be among his most integral collaborators, starting with her tremendously silent performance here.
The chemistry between both Andersson and Ullmann only continues to grow more complex as the well-defined dynamic between them starts to break down. When Elisabet first speaks off-screen and encourages a tired Alma to go to bed, the nurse sits up in confusion, not quite believing what she heard. Rather than accepting that her patient has actually spoken, she simply repeats her words, as if verbalising an inner voice. Later when she discovers during their stay that her private life has in fact been the subject of Elisabet’s own supercilious study, the balance of power flips entirely. The observer has become the observed – the last place she wants to be. Acting out of spite for the first time, Alma leaves a shard of broken glass in the open for Elisabet to cut herself on. When she does, the silent eye contact they both share from a distance is full of mutual, contemptuous understanding. This island has turned into a battlefield of identities.
Bergman breaks the illusion of cinema as the status quo disintegrates, burning up the film reel as if it too can no longer bear the weight of its own illusion.
At this point in Persona, just as the status quo has been disrupted, Bergman rips us from his story and back into our own heads. The film reel burns, as if unable to sustain the disturbance that has taken place, and another montage of seemingly random images plays out. In some ways, the formal experimentation Bergman is carrying out here isn’t terribly different to the self-reflexive diversions from conventional narratives that Jean-Luc Godard was also exploring in the 1960s, but the purpose it serves in Persona is far more rooted in Bergman’s own cerebral curiosities. As his characters gradually transcend the limiting identities they have chosen for themselves, so too does his film break down its own façade of truth. When we do eventually make a return to the main story, there is no simple reversion to how it was before. Alma has turned in her white attire for Elisabet’s black, and the tension between them has fully manifested in an outright tangle of personas.
Seeking to draw out a raw, emotional reaction from the composed Elisabet, Alma pushes her to the brink of her patience in a physical confrontation. The threat of boiling water provokes a scream of fear, emerging from a place of honest emotion she has suppressed, and which Alma thrives on – “No, don’t!”. Conversely, the arrival of Elisabet’s husband on the island elusively switches out these women in the other direction, with the visiting man approaching Alma instead of his wife. Bergman’s deep focus blocking once again lifts off in this scene, bringing Andersson and Gunnar Björnstrand’s faces together in sweet reconciliation over past misgivings, as Ullmann’s face imposes itself as a silent, detached presence. Whatever her conflicts have been with her husband, it is not her silence which heals old wounds, but rather Alma’s warmth and connection. Her words from a few scenes prior about the importance of such affectionate openness begin to make even more sense here.
“Is it really so important not to lie, to tell the truth, to speak in a genuine tone of voice? Can a person really live without babbling away, without lying and making up excuses and evading things? Isn’t it better to just let yourself be silly and sloppy and dishonest? Maybe a person gets better by just letting herself be who she is.”
Crisp, deep focus as Alma slides into Elisabet’s role in her relationship, patching up old wounds while Elisabet remains emotionally disconnected in the foreground.
Still, how long can Alma really keep up this act of being a kinder, more considerate Elisabet? “I’m cold and rotten and indifferent. It’s all just sham and lies,” she cries in the man’s tight embrace, just as Bergman pans his camera to the side to reveal a daunting, front-on close-up of Elisabet. In her silent gaze that stares right down the lens, we see these same insecurities manifested as introspection, rather than the outward expression native to Alma’s personality.
At this point, deeper truths about both women and their ever-shifting traits begin to unravel quickly, building to a monologue that plays out twice in a row and pays off on the dual patterns woven tightly into the film’s structure. Alma may be the one who is delivering it, and yet the second-person perspective she speaks from pins the anecdote squarely on Elisabet, verbalising the mute woman’s unspoken thoughts. In this moment, the psychoanalysis which Elisabet had tried turning on the nurse now reverts back to the patient, as Bergman interrogates another false persona adopted by countless women in society – the image of the warm, caring mother. Like many of the characters she has played during her career as an actress, this is just another role she felt she must perform, composing herself with dignified grace while internally torn apart by fear and repulsion.
The traditionally uninspired shot / reverse shot film techniques finds new life in Bergman’s hands, mirroring a single monologue across the speaker and the listener. Even the lighting is inverted on both their faces.
The first time Bergman plays out this monologue, it is Elisabet’s face which we hang on, its left side cloaked entirely in shadow as she listens in subdued shame. When it comes to an end, a sudden, atonal bang on the piano throws us back in time by a few minutes, and repeats the exact same scene in the mirrored reverse shot. We sit now with Alma as she speaks, her face tightened in attentive focus, and its right side covered in darkness. The distinction of whose story is really being told barely matters at this point – like the two halves of the human brain, we are simply given conflicting perspectives of a single experience, visually expressed through the spliced close-ups of the left and right sides of their faces.
An eerie spliced close-ups of both women’s faces, emphasising their similarities and revealing both as equal halves of a whole.
Even by Bergman’s standards, this is unusually experimental filmmaking, though this profound interrogation of human duality asks for nothing less than intellectual patience. When it is time to pack up and leave the estate, there is notably one less woman in the household – has Alma’s decisive rejection of Elisabet pushed the manifestation of her insecurities deeper into her subconscious? Has she absorbed that alter ego into her own personality, and emerged a more balanced being? Or is Alma in fact the figment of Elisabet’s mind that has taken over her life, as we saw with her and Björnstrand’s romance?
The following montage of Elisabet on stages and sets doesn’t quiet help in any search for answers, but it does serve to remind us as Persona comes to its obscure end that these characters have always been little more than artificial constructs, holding no inner lives other than what Bergman instils in them. His film is both deceitful in its purposeful manipulations, but also intricately designed to evoke truths through bold, symbolic expressions, fully recognising the impossible task of creating any pure representation of reality. With the ubiquity of such pointed polarity, Bergman reaches deep into our psyches and exposes our greatest internal paradoxes, creating an avant-garde masterwork that is as entrancingly elusive as it is invasively intimate.
The camera pulls back in the final seconds to break the illusion of cinema for the last time, transporting us back to reality where Persona is just a film.
Persona is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.
By the time Ingmar Bergman had finished directing Winter Light, he claimed to have come to terms with his agnosticism and the unknowability of God’s existence. The third part of his unofficial Faith trilogy thus offers new dimensions to his long-running spiritual meditations, formally manifesting that existential fear which has run through so many of his films – the universe’s cold, unresponsive silence. It pervades Bergman’s screenplay and sound design with glacial repression, stifling the attempts of estranged sisters Ester and Anna to communicate with each other and their surrounding environment. Though God is not the focus here, His absence still lingers in occasional mentions of the deceased family patriarch.
“When Father died you said, ‘I don’t think want to go on living.’ So why are you still around?”
It is a brief, symbolic nod to a higher power, but a significant one when it comes to understanding the catalyst for The Silence’s modern malaise. Ester is severely ill both mentally and physically, and so when Anna directs this question towards her, it is virtually an attack on her weakened spirit that cannot embrace either life or death. Instead, she wastes away in the oppressive limbo of her hotel room, which resides in the fictional European city of Timoka. Meanwhile, Anna ventures outside in search of adventure, hoping that it might offer her some meaningful, reinvigorating connection with the world.
The Silence is Bergman’s most minimalist screenplay in his career, but this just leaves the door open for some wonderful visual storytelling as we see in the superb opening train scene.
The third member of this travelling party is Johan, Anna’s son, who quietly observes their unsettled relationship and wanders the hotel’s faded Baroque hallways. This architectural marvel is a decaying monument to another glorious era when it might have been populated with posh clientele, though now it is virtually empty to due to some encroaching war. One might almost think of The Shining in the way Bergman symmetrically lines his empty corridors with chandeliers, ornamentations, and embroidered carpets, creating an ornate maze for this young boy to lose himself within and encounter an odd assortment of characters. With little else to keep him entertained, he recklessly shoots off his toy pistol, and when he looks outside a window a military tank rolls aimlessly through quiet streets like a lost child. Maybe aimless violence is simply humanity’s most natural instinct when left to its own devices.
Surely the scenes of Johan wandering the hotel corridors inspired The Shining. The symmetrical framing, the random encounters, and the haunting atmosphere are very recognisable.A tank wanders a street like a lost child – a portrait of aimless violence.
Well, violence and sex at least. There’s not really any doubt that The Silence is Bergman’s most explicit film when it comes to matters of carnal desire. Being far more comfortable in her skin than her sister, Anna is often shot in the nude while in her hotel room, and there is a touch of Freudian intrigue on Johan’s part as he spies her through a door. When she goes out to the theatre, she reacts with both fascination and disgust at the couple having sex a few seats down from her, which subsequently inspires her to invite a waiter she has had innocent flirtations with back to her room. Meanwhile, Ester’s only form of sexual expression is masturbation, though for her this is barely even a form of self-love. She is wholly disgusted by sex on a sensory level, unable to form a healthy physical connection with anyone else, let alone herself.
The arrangement of faces in Bergman’s frames is remarkably in tune with his characters as always, here crafting an image of Freudian tension.
These are but the symptoms of a contemporary society which has slowly eroded clear lines of communications between its citizens, and left in its place an apathetic void of emotion. Violence persists without purpose, and sex without love. How ironic it is too that Ester herself works as a translator, and yet she is as stumped as Anna and Johan when it comes to speaking with any of the locals. Like the city of Timoka, their foreign language is entirely invented by Bergman, offering a tinge of surrealism to this setting which pushes us and our main characters even further away from any firm reality.
Three layers to Bergman’s depth of field in this one, illustrating a disconnection between each character through the blocking and set obstruction.
This language barrier is partially why so many characters choose to remain silent, and yet even within our Swedish-speaking cast, that quiet tension continues to dominate. Bergman’s sound design flourishes in the absence of dialogue, building out rich aural textures which sensitise us to the tiny movements of each scene, and then break them up with unexpected intrusions – jet planes flying overhead for instance, or the recurring disturbance of a ticking pocket watch. When conversations do unfold, they are often filled with deliberate lies, miscommunications, and purposeful ignorance. Even between Ester and Johan, a simple discussion over how to spend time together cannot settle on a single direction.
“How about you read to me?”
“I’ll show you my Punch and Judy instead.”
The puppet show he subsequently improvises is childish in its cartoonish violence and garbled nonsense, creating a crude reflection of the film’s dysfunctional modern culture. Clear parallels are also well-drawn in the following exchange.
“What’s he saying?”
“I don’t know. He’s scared, so he speaks in a funny language.”
Beautiful detail in the relationship between Ester and Johan, left alone in the hotel together when Anna goes into town. The division between them is helpless, despite the longing to connect.
The disconnect between strangers, neighbours, and family members is thoroughly illustrated in Bergman’s world, but even as he continues to delve even deeper into Ester and Anna’s strained relationship, we even discover a detachment between the human body and mind. These women and their respective Jungian archetypes are thus set in opposition to each other – one sharply intelligent and discerning of the outside world, the other seeking excitement and caring tenderly for her child.
Perhaps this study of a psychological, feminine duality could be read as a precursor to Persona which would come out three years later, though Bergman is not so opaque here with the emergence of his characters’ darker ‘shadow’ selves. Anna is intellectually dishonest, carelessly throwing out lies to torment her sister, and when pushed to answer why she holds so much resentment, she doesn’t hold back in exposing Ester’s cold, arrogant judgementalism.
“It’s just that you always harp on your principles, and drone on about how important everything is. But it’s all just hot air. You know why? I’ll tell you. Because everything centres around your ego. You can’t live without feeling superior. That’s the truth. Everything has to be desperately important and meaningful, and goodness knows what.”
The Silence marks staggering acting achievements for both Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom, especially in a year where both would also give excellent performances in Winter Light.
Bergman’s talents as a writer of cutting dialogue are evidently far from wasted in this film, and yet given the pervasive silence that hangs between characters, monologues like this are exceedingly rare. In fact, all the dialogue in the film’s first half hour might barely fill a single page, leaving Bergman to move this narrative forward and build out characters through rich visual direction. His camera’s deep focus is crucial to the magnificent blocking on display here, opening strong with a five-minute shot of our main trio shuffling in bored discomfort around a train carriage, and later arranging haunting compositions of the sisters’ faces like two parts of a whole.
Relationships illustrated in Bergman’s blocking – Ester lonely in the foreground, Anna and Johan caught together in the background in a wonderful composition.
The power that both Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom draw from Bergman’s shrewd framing in moments like these is considerable. Thulin carries herself with poise and control as Ester, and when her mental agony bursts forth he often catches her haunted expressions from high angles – at one point offering her gentle repose as the porter helps her back into bed, and later casting her in harsh light as she fearfully approaches death.
High angles often intensify the impact of Ester’s breakdowns, peering down at her face from above.
Lindblom too receives similar visual treatment when she probes Anna’s raw vulnerability. Her rendezvous with the waiter at the hotel is little more than an excuse to pour out her contempt on someone who cannot speak back (“How nice that we don’t understand each other”), but this is no substitute for real love. Raucous laughter quickly turns into sobbing as she hangs over the end of the bed, while Bergman shoots her contorted expression and posture from another high angle. Thulin’s acting may have beat out Lindblom’s in their other 1963 film Winter Light, but both are very much on equal footing here, desperately pushing past a mutual repression to uncover profound, existential terrors.
Similarly, Anna’s breakdown towards the end of The Silence hangs her on the end of the bed and diminishes her in the frame.
These noisy eruptions of honest emotion can never survive long in The Silence though. The next morning after Anna’s breakdown, that wordless impassivity she shares with her own family is back in place, even heavier with bitter sullenness. With Ester’s implied death and Anna’s abandonment of her in the hotel room, it appears that disintegration of humanity in an aimless modern society is inevitable. The train which brought these characters into Timoka now departs with one passenger less, and yet the atmosphere onboard sounds just as lifeless as it did at the start. In The Silence, civilisation will persist even in the absence of love and meaning – just as it did before Ester’s passing, and just as it will continue to do through a gradual, noiseless self-destruction of the human spirit.
The Silence is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.
In the 1950s, Ingmar Bergman directed three films with ‘Summer’ in their title, referring to the season of one’s life that blossoms with romance and vitality. Winter Light then clearly marks a drastic shift in the tone of his introspective meditations, isolating us in Father Thomas Ericsson’s lifeless, rural parish. His congregation at the Sunday noon mass is uninspiringly small, and as we sit through the last ten minutes of his service there is an overwhelming emptiness to the proceedings. The prayers, hymns, and liturgy of the Eucharist move by at a sluggish pace, while Bergman cuts between close-ups of the parishioners’ expressions ranging from deep in thought to downright bored. This church is not a sanctuary for Christians, as the minimalist beauty of its arched ceilings and rough stone walls rather mirrors the bleakness of the frozen landscapes outside, infusing Winter Light with a chilling severity that cuts right to the troubled hearts of its believers, sceptics, and doubters.
The first ten minutes of Winter Light is the most lifeless mass you have ever seen, and Bergman’s photography is at its bleakest.
The scope of this narrative is far narrower than many of Bergman’s previous films, taking place over the course of a few hours between two services on a frosty Sunday afternoon. Tomas’ spiritual crisis began a long time before we pick up on his story, and it will continue far beyond the point that we leave him, though this brief time frame applies an intensive focus to the point at which it cannot be contained any longer.
For the first time in his many collaborations with Bergman, Gunnar Björnstrand takes the leading role, bringing not just a brooding bitterness to Tomas’ ruminations, but also a common cold that plagued him throughout production. Rather than cutting around its interruptions, Bergman turns it into a part of his character, reflecting his spiritual sickness as a physical ailment. At one point after he echoes Christ’s words on the cross, “God, why have you forsaken me?”, a coughing fit even brings him to his knees in front of his altar, while Bergman shines a bright sun through the tall, arched window above him in a divine image of human frailty.
A divine composition from Bergman in Tomas’ church, his sickness bringing him to his knees at the altar.
In this moment, the only person there to hold him is his ex-mistress Märta, played by Ingrid Thulin with self-conscious modesty. She is deliberately dressed down here, drawing attention away from her natural looks and turning her into a figure who evokes pity, disdain, and occasionally affection from Tomas. She is a collection of contradictions that shouldn’t make sense from a strict religious perspective, being a firm atheist and yet believing more in the Christian virtue of compassion than any other character. Additionally, she is the most constant presence in Tomas’ masses besides his sexton and organist, driven to remain by his side out of a selfless love that he often pushes away.
To Björnstrand’s disillusioned priest though, she is a reminder of the material world he spurned to pursue a life of faith, which now seems to be worth little. Bergman offers both a pair of monologues which formally complement each other on either side of this ambivalent dynamic, holding a six-minute shot on Thulin as she laments a summer where Tomas reacted with disgust to her spreading rash, without once praying for her healing. Given Bergman’s usual talent for evocatively framed close-ups, this is far from his finest, though its breaking of the fourth wall does allow for a brutal honesty which only feeds Tomas’ insecurity.
“Your faith seems obscure and neurotic, somehow cruelly overwrought with emotion, primitive. One thing in particular I’ve never been able to fathom: your peculiar indifference to Jesus Christ.”
Ingrid Thulin gives one of her greatest performances as the atheistic Märta, offering immense warmth and compassion to Tomas’ doubting priest. The story of her rash even bears some resemblance to legends of stigmata affecting saints.
Throughout Winter Light he offers numerous reasons for his dwindling faith, including the horrors he witnessed during the Spanish Civil War, his wife’s premature death, and a recognition that he only took up this profession due to his father’s influence. And yet when it comes time for him to pour all of his disdain right back on her, he offers a far less sincere verbal assault, seeking to wound her for all his petty grievances.
“I’m tired of your loving care. Your fussing. Your good advice. Your candlesticks and table runners. I’m fed up with your short-sightedness. Your clumsy hands. Your anxiousness. Your timid displays of affection. You force me to occupy myself with your physical condition. Your poor digestion. Your rashes. Your periods. Your frostbitten cheeks. Once and for all I have to escape this junkyard of idiotic trivialities. I’m sick and tired of it all, of everything to do with you.”
Both Björnstrand and Thulin get a pair of monologues that feature some of Bergman’s best writing – one seeking truth, the other offering hate.
Björnstrand commands immense verbal power here, though it is Bergman’s savage pen which impresses most of all in this string of merciless barbs. Spouses have been tearing each other to pieces in his films ever since the 1940s, and while Tomas and Märta’s relationship is not the sole focus of Winter Light, this exchange goes toe to toe with Scenes from a Marriage as his quintessential depiction of undistilled resentment between lovers.
With the task of fostering his parish’s spiritual growth now seeming an impossible task, Tomas finds himself acting out in stubborn, angry protest. When one of his parishioners, Jonas Persson, confronts him after mass with concerns over an impending nuclear winter, Tomas cannot find the energy to offer the “benign answers and reassuring blessings” which his own “echo-god” keeps giving him. In an unsettling role reversal, it is the priest who starts confessing his lack of faith to the congregant, and all the while Bergman keeps underscoring the proximity between Tomas and the sculpture of a crucified Jesus hanging behind him on the wall. Christ’s tortured face looks down on his lost disciple with sorrow, and yet he remains as agonisingly silent as the God whose existence is being questioned.
“If there is no God, would it really make any difference? Life would become understandable. What a relief. And thus death would be a snuffing out of life. The dissolution of body and soul. Cruelty, loneliness, and fear… All these things would be straightforward and transparent. Suffering is incomprehensible, so it needs no explanation. There is no creator. No sustainer of life. No design.”
Bergman is one of cinema’s great blockers of faces – but just note the detail in placing Christ’s tortured face above Tomas’ here. He looks down at the priest, who is in turn distracted and looking at Jonas, who is similarly refusing to look at the person trying to reach him.A disconnection drawn between layers of the frame, fatefully distancing Tomas and Jonas.Light starts to shine in the window behind Tomas in this close-up – Bergman is a master of these subtle lighting alterations to change our perception of a character’s expression.
Tomas does not have the awareness of how extreme Jonas’ concerns are to comprehend the danger of what he is saying, and yet the disconnection that Bergman captures between them through his depth of field is just as inconsolable as the priest’s separation from God. Jonas silently exits, and as Bergman shines fresh sunlight through the window behind Tomas’s head, he is also struck with the despairing recognition of what he has done. No more than a few minutes later does he receive the devastating news – Jonas has shot himself in the head with a rifle, leaving behind a mourning family.
Bergman again emphasises the freezing winter exteriors when Tomas comes across Jonas’ body – a severe landscape to match the souls of these characters.
Tomas has little time to process his guilt and console Jonas’ family before pressing forward onto his 3 o’clock service. It is here that Winter Light’s position in Bergman’s unofficial Faith trilogy becomes most evident. This is the second film in a row that sees him refer to God as a “spider”, but even more significantly we find Fredrik the organist mockingly quoting Through a Glass Darkly’s thesis that “Love proves the existence of God.” No longer does this seem like enough evidence for Bergman, who now finds himself wrestling with the part of Tomas, Jonas, and himself so lost in existential dread that even love cannot be found.
A second mass a mere few hours after the first to bookend the film, sending Tomas to preach to an even emptier church than before.
Then again, who can empathise with this fear of total abandonment more than Christ himself, hanging on the cross? This is the allegory that the sexton Algot unknowingly draws to Tomas’ own plight as they prepare for a mass that no one has turned up to, forsaken by men and God alike in their holy mission. Specifically, Algot questions the biblical focus on the physical pain Jesus suffered leading up to his death given its brevity, while the betrayals at the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, and in Peter’s denial were far more torturous.
“He believes everything he’d ever preached was a lie. In the moments before he died, Christ was seized by doubt. Surely that must have been his greatest hardship – God’s silence.”
A voice on Märta’s shoulder, forcing her own reckoning with her love for Tomas.
As such, the question of why one must then continue with an empty mass is equated to Jesus’ own following through with a sacrifice for which he is not guaranteed any real reward. This endurance is posed as the very crux of Christian faith, which even Märta is shown to possess in spite of her atheism. A thin sliver of light illuminates her profile as she kneels and prays, consumed in darkness yet nonetheless imploring some higher power for understanding between neighbours.
“If only we could feel safe and dare to show each other tenderness. If only we had some truth to believe in. If only we could believe.”
Immaculate, minimalist lighting as Märta prays – a thin sliver of lighting illuminating her profile as she kneels in reverence.
The answer to Märta’s prayer comes not in some grand gesture of goodwill, but simply the start of the 3 o’clock service, persisting in the absence of any real congregation. It is impossible to fully penetrate the mind of Björnstrand’s lonely pastor in this moment, but Winter Light’s formal bookending of a pair of church services at least suggests the tiniest shred of persevering faith in his soul, offering a link between people and God despite the mutual silence. Who else will keep this hope for salvation alive, if not him?
Much like Tomas, Bergman ends his film with open-ended questions, finding resolution only in the ongoing acceptance that answers may never be found. Perhaps it is ironic that this it was during this production that he later claimed to have lost his faith, and yet the incredible spiritual patience that emerges in both the Christians and atheists of Winter Light uncovers an inerasable, universal belief in human goodness, transcending the most rigid boundaries of organised religion.
Winter Light is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.
Sin has taken on many forms in Ingmar Bergman’s films, from the creeping doubt of The Seventh Seal to the infidelity of Sawdust and Tinsel. The Virgin Spring marks the first time it manifests with such explicit violence though, deriving from bitter resentment and evolving into soul-crushing guilt. There is no undoing these physical actions the way one might deny an unclean thought, leaving this great shame to haunt every single character who manages to outlive the chaste, Christ-like Karin.
Tragically, it is her rape and murder which sets in motion everyone else’s reckoning with their own moral principles. After being sent off with her family’s servant Ingeri to deliver candles to a church about a day’s ride away, she is targeted by a trio of dubious herdsmen. One is simply a young boy, traumatically caught up in the devastating crime committed by his older companions. As witness to the incident, Ingeri is remorseful too, given that she had been jealously praying to Norse god Odin for Karin to be struck down. Even her mother and father bear heavy consciences, with Märeta confessing her own selfish desire to be the favoured parent, and the religious Töre being driven to commit a vicious act of vengeance upon discovering the identities of his daughter’s killers.
Christian and pagan faith is woven heavily into the iconography of The Virgin Spring, binding characters together by their strong convictions and guilty doubt.
It is no accident that Karin’s death lands on a Good Friday here. Much like The Seventh Seal, the setting of medieval Sweden brings connotations of Christianity and paganism fighting over the souls of common people, and Bergman’s symbolism is perfectly pointed in its references to both. The night before Karin and Ingeri’s departure, he sets the scene for a Last Supper in the family’s modest dining hall, framing them beneath the heavy weight a giant, gnarled trunk which stretches its way across the room.
Always one to pay attention to the significance of his religious symbolism, the Last Supper imagery here ties into the impending “crucifixion” of Karin.
Later, a bastardised version of that holy feast takes places when Karin sits down for a picnic with her soon-to-be attackers, turning them into Judas figures who will betray her trust. Bergman’s photography in this forest is sharp, and yet it is frequently obstructed by dense foliage and collapsed trees, turning the natural location into an unruly, godless environment. It is also the perfect habitat for the one-eyed, Odin-like hermit that Ingeri encounters on her journey, offering ominous answers to her prayers and eventually driving her away in terror.
Another Last Supper, though this one bastardised by the Judas figures planning to betray the Christ figure at the centre.These dead, slanted branches are constantly obstructing Bergman’s frames here, fragmenting shots into pieces that bring a poignant brokenness.
Karin’s shattering death effectively splits The Virgin Spring in half, leaving its second part to open with the herdsmen unsuspectingly taking refuge at her family’s home. It isn’t long before they figure out their hosts’ connection to their victim, and with this realisation comes a fresh guilt bearing down on their minds. When one of them foolishly hands over Karin’s ruined dress, their identities become apparent to Märeta and Töre as well, and at this moment the brooding concern that has quietly sunk into Max von Sydow’s performance mutates into a furious conviction of what must be done.
As he goes about preparing the vindictive murder of his guests by way of pagan rituals, he finds an unlikely ally in Ingeri. Bergman’s imagery is striking as Töre wrestles a thin birch tree to the ground, setting him against a vast, desolate landscape that swallows him up in its grey austerity. Inside, she offers him a hot bath, where he uses the snapped branches to flagellate his nude body in a violent cleansing of the soul, before approaching the sleeping men. Even the idolatrous knife he carries bears the visage of a skull and bones, thrusted menacingly into the table as he waits for them to wake up.
Max von Sydow gives the best performance in this ensemble as the furious, grieving father Töre, mutating the character’s sense of faith and justice.
As The Virgin Spring builds its two acts to a pair of climactic struggles, the intimacy that comes with Bergman’s piercing close-ups uncomfortably turns on us. There are certainly moments shared between Karin and Töre early on which bask in their gentle affection, but even more impassioned are those tight frames of faces furiously pressed against each other in conflict. Whether it is the helplessness felt during Karin’s rape or Töre’s fierce killings, Bergman makes violence feel truly claustrophobic, even burning up a pair of combatants in one composition which stages them behind a hellish fire.
The Virgin Spring is Bergman’s most violent work to date, pressing faces up against each other in displays of brutal power and vengeful fury.
If Karin’s death represents the crucifixion of Christ though, then there is salvation to be found in the death of an innocent. Perhaps it is a holy miracle, or maybe just a quirk of nature, but the moment her grieving family lift her head from the place she was left to die, a spring of fresh water bursts forth from the earth. As Ingeri kneels to wash her dirty face and drink from the small fountain, a path to redemption for each of these sinners is uncovered in his profoundly spiritual imagery, expressing communal prayer through a beautifully blocked tableau. His screenplay is just as eloquent too, with Töre pouring out the sorrow, frustration, and devotion of a grieving father.
“You see it, God. You see it. The innocent child’s death, and my revenge. You allowed it. I don’t understand You. I don’t understand You. Yet, I still ask your forgiveness. I know no other way to live. I promise You, God, here on the dead body of my only child, I promise you that, to cleanse my sins, here I shall build a church. On this spot. Of mortar and stone – and with these, my hands.”
An exceedingly handsome tableau of prayer and salvation, manifesting through Bergman’s depth of field and intricate blocking.
The Virgin Spring may be a fable of Christ’s death and gift of salvation, but in Töre’s journey we also partially recognise the Book of Job. The test of faith which rips away that which he holds dearest, plunges him into deep despair, and raises him up again higher than before lays out a rich theological arc that Bergman meditates on with stirring grace. Questions of faith, virtue, and atonement may be nothing new for him, but their manifestation here through such visceral violence is punishing even by his standards, considering with uncomfortable introspection how these lofty ideals might survive our most corrupt, godless instincts.
The Virgin Spring is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel and Kanopy, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.
Across the withering forests, squalid villages, and draughty castles of 14th century Sweden, there is resounding silence. It echoes through Ingmar Bergman’s sparse minimalism, emerging not from the peasants who dance and sing as distraction from their grim circumstances, nor from the religious zealots who preach portentous warnings of Judgment Day. It doesn’t even come from Death himself, who stalks the land and takes lives without discrimination. This silence belongs to an absent God, whose apparent withdrawal from His own creation brings omens of an unavoidable reckoning. Drawn from the Book of Revelations, the verse which opens this meditation on faith sets the scene for Bergman’s theological questions, leading us towards the end times with a pained longing for answers.
“And when the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour… And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.”
From this biblical quote also comes the title Bergman gives his film, The Seventh Seal, marking its events as the final catalyst for the Apocalypse. Seemingly every character from the cynics to the Christians acknowledges the dismal shift in the air too, as they spread rumours of supernatural occurrences and fearfully evade the Black Death.
Death, pestilence, madness, and torture infest the land in The Seventh Seal, and Bergman’s austere photography reflects that in its impeccable staging.
It isn’t hard to see why The Seventh Seal held immense cultural significance at the time of its release, speaking to audiences of 1957 who anticipated a nuclear winter during the early years of the Cold War. From a spiritual perspective though, it connects even more distinctly to Bergman’s own repressed upbringing as the son of a strict Lutheran minister. This did not inspire a rebellious attitude in him, but rather an instinct for curiosity, prompting him to search for traces of God in a world simultaneously obsessed with and disconnected from His holy virtues.
It makes sense then that Bergman gives his own philosophical quandaries in The Seventh Seal to disenchanted knight Antonius Block, played by Max von Sydow with intelligence, sorrow, and a desperate glimmer of hope. Having returned from the Crusades, Block is no stranger to serving the Catholic Church, and yet he has not found the spiritual fulfilment that was promised. “My life has been a futile pursuit, a wandering, a great deal of talk without meaning,”he laments, “But I will use my reprieve for one meaningful deed.” And yet where can one find such a purpose, if not from God?
Max von Sydow is served well by an all-time great script, but it takes a talented actor with a firm handle on such profound material to do it justice.
This paradox underlies Block’s journey in The Seventh Seal, driving him to seek wisdom from a mad woman who claims to have consorted with the Devil, as well as a priest who, as he eventually discovers, is in fact Death in disguise. When the knight first meets this mysterious, pale-faced entity on a rocky shoreline, he is told his time is up, and yet he is not ready. “My flesh is afraid, but I am not,” he confesses, before challenging Death to a game of chess – the stakes being his own life. Bergman pensively returns to this rich allegorical conceit throughout the film, with Death outsmarting Block at virtually every turn, and as such a timer is effectively placed on the knight’s uncertain quest to find meaning before his adversary checkmates him.
The first actors who should be praised for their work in The Seventh Seal are Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstand, and Bibi Andersson – but Bengt Ekerot’s literal embodiment of Death has become an icon in pop culture for good reason.The chess game that unfolds between Antonius Block and Death is a symbol of fate and futility, and Bergman uses it as a superb frame here for the knight’s travelling companions in the background.
Bergman’s indelible iconography is woven all through The Seventh Seal, and yet it is this infamous image of von Sydow challenging Death which effectively escaped its niche corner of world cinema and spread into mainstream culture at large. Though Bergman clearly identifies with the doubtful knight, perhaps he also sees a bit of himself in the church painter, who the cynical squire Jons finds illustrating a large fresco depicting the Dance of Death. “I’m only painting things as they are. Everyone else can do as he likes,” he explains, handing the power of interpretation over to viewers of his work.
Theological questions are on Bergman’s mind, taking visual form in this exquisite composition that von Sydow walks into early on.
For as long as the artwork remains in Bergman’s hands though, he is a perfectionistic craftsman, painstakingly shaping his blocking and lighting into expressions of profound wonder, and instilling his austere imagery with a razor-sharp depth of field. In close-ups and mid-shots, he studies the expansive emotional range that crosses his ensemble’s faces as they confront their impending deaths with terror, confusion, anger, and awe. In wides as well though, he imposes a stark, greyscale beauty on his medieval scenery, confining these characters to barren lands upon which nothing fruitful can grow.
Blocking faces is right in Bergman’s wheelhouse, and The Seventh Seal bears some of his strongest compositions in this aspect, turning them at angles, staggering them through his depth of field, and obstructing them with his mise-en-scène.
Everywhere that Block goes with his steadily growing band of companions, a disconcerting rot eats away at the minds and bodies of the common people. In one scene that has taken root in pop culture (most prevalently through Monty Python and the Holy Grail) a comical performance by jesters is interrupted by a procession of God-fearing flagellants and monks, carrying a giant cross through the village streets and whipping themselves as self-punishment. Bergman keeps his camera close to the ground as they trample over us, chanting their mournful ‘Dies Irae’ motif which continues to weave into the score like a harbinger of doom.
One of the great scenes of the film, which would later be parodied by Monty Python. We sit at a low angle as a procession of monks, preachers, and flagellants interrupt a comical performance, dampening spirits with a deathly gloom.
At this moment, an astonishingly composed cutaway to the expressions of Block, Jons, and a mute girl they have picked up reveals their utter disdain, staggering their faces into the background. Bergman then follows up this shot with his camera tracking along a line of villagers, one by one kneeling to the ground in fearful reverence. The sermonising preacher who takes the stage effectively shifts attention away from the troupe of performers entirely, though in case we are driven to sympathise with any of them, Bergman also draws our attention to the affair their leader Skat is conducting with the wife of the town blacksmith. Through local cheaters, thieves, and self-righteous evangelists, moral debasement runs deep in this setting, and The Seventh Seal never fails to match such austerity with an equally severe visual style.
During the procession of monks, Bergman lands one powerful image after another, cutting between the sceptics and the believers.
Each time we return to scenes with naïve actor Jof and his family though, small sparks of levity quietly emerge in this story. His glimpse of a woman walking with her child may be brushed off as a hallucination, but he is convinced that they represent the Mother Mary and an infant Jesus. His other visions aren’t so easily dismissed, and even appear prophetic in nature – after all, he seems to be the only one outside of Block who can see Death playing their fatal game of chess. Our wandering knight’s brief picnic with Jof’s family on a hillside is the first moment of serenity that he finds in his journey, and as they share in wild strawberries to the peaceful sound of a lyre, Block starts to uncover the meaning of life he has pursued for so long.
The meaning of life begins to dawn on our troubled knight, as he joins these representatives of Mary, Joseph, and Christ for a picnic on a hillside.
And therein lies one of Bergman’s most significant symbols of The Seventh Seal, turning Jof, Mia, and their baby into surrogates of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. Humanity’s salvation does not lie in dour warnings of doom, self-indulgence, or existential searches for purpose, as Block discovers, but in the birth and nourishment of new life. As for the one meaningful deed he wishes to accomplish, it presents itself as a selfless sacrifice during his last few rounds of chess. A clumsy toppling of the board may seem to his opponent a desperate way to try and escape his fate, and yet it is the first time Death has truly been outwitted. Not even he can comprehend total self-sacrifice as a strategic move, as he is distracted by Block’s deliberate blunder long enough for Jof and his family flee unnoticed.
“When we meet again, you and your companions’ time will be up,” Death informs his prey before departing, and indeed as Block finally returns home to his castle with his fellow travellers, a quiet recognition that they will not see the stormy night through settles over them. Recalling the peaceful meal he shared with Jof and his family, Block and his fellowship partake in a last supper together, while his wife reads out from the same chapter of Revelations which opened the film. Death enters the room silently but powerfully, his presence only revealed to us by the slow turning of faces towards a point just behind the camera, each one precisely arranged across the frame in expressions of disbelief. Only Block refuses Death eye contact, instead choosing to look up to the heavens and pray in the background. The window of light that Bergman frames right behind his head is the perfect finishing touch to this immaculate composition.
Bergman separates von Sydow from the rest of the ensemble in this shot, relegating him to the background and pouring in light above his head. He is the only one here not looking straight at Death, who stands just behind the camera.
Is it a flash of transcendent wonder which grants the mute girl Christ’s words as he hung on the cross, “It is finished,” or is her proclamation the result of some divine miracle, ending God’s crushing silence? There is beauty in this ambiguity, and all throughout his film Bergman deliberately balances such interpretations on a knife’s edge, denying us the comfort of conventional explanations. The Seventh Seal is a film of thought-provoking symbolism, but there should be no understating its achievement of screenwriting either, effectively reframing the classical hero’s journey within an expedition of biblical and philosophical significance. Its poetic dialogue too effortlessly flows from one existential contemplation to the next, delivering the sort of lines one might find quoted by theologians and sceptics alike. Especially as the surviving Jof spies their tiny silhouettes performing the Dance of Death atop a hill, he describes their movements with lyrical eloquence, allegorically detailing the transition from one life to the next.
“The strict master Death bids them dance. He wants them to hold hands and to tread the dance in a long line. At the head goes the strict master with the scythe and hourglass. But the Fool brings up the rear with his lute. They move away from the dawn in a solemn dance away towards the dark lands, while the rain cleanses their cheeks of the salt from their bitter tears.”
Perhaps those more religiously minded characters might view the parting clouds and fresh sunlight as a sign of Christ’s second coming. Bergman would never be so obvious though. The Seventh Seal stands among history’s greatest pieces of theological cinema, not for the moral lessons it imparts, but the questions it provokes, cutting to the core of our existential search for something larger than ourselves. Maybe there is also salvation in the opposite though – an acceptance of the “unknowing,” allowing one to graciously hand themselves over to the great equaliser of Death. Bergman remains torn between faith and doubt right to the end of his grand medieval fable, though only a director with as keen an eye for spiritual iconography as him could build both ideals to such a tender, hopeful resolution, recognising their essential place in humanity’s ever-expanding self-awareness.
The Dance of Death is an icon that stretches back to the Late Middle Ages, and Bergman wisely chooses to end his film on its image.
The Seventh Seal is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel and Kanopy, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.
