could rather believe in God as well. If by some rational explanation, God has to be completely ruled out, then by a similar reasoning there should be no reason for love either. A world without belief in God could be as dreadful to some as would be the world without any love, trust or friendship.At the end of the movie, David asks his son, to stay calm and tells him that "God exists, because we all love Karin... Love is God! " We don't have anything to define our existence and so we have to pick up something and hold it to our heart. Whenever our holdings are gone, we pick something else up and hold that to ourselves. That is how we define ourselves - "Everything would be alright. Just keep faith in something".
I don't think anyone else can present existentialism better than the way Bergman does. He repeatedly makes me think that cinema is the best, most true, and most efficient form of art known to humanity.
Again, like in many other Bergman movies, I might not have understood all the connotations in the movie, including the title - Through a glass darkly, which is from a Biblical verse. In many of the dialogs there could be (and I am sure there were) allusions to Bible and some other writings, like a few by Dostoyevsky. Unfortunately, I am not too much aware of the literature that Bergman was expecting his viewers to be building the thoughts upon.
Nevertheless, the movie was terrific. It went boring for a while, especially the part after when the fact of protagonist's illness was known. But in around 20 minutes, the story picked up again and climaxed magnificently.
The performance by the protagonist was excellent. I don't know if anyone else could have done such a job. Harriet Anderson (Karin, in movie) suits very well to the character. Gunnar Bjornstrand played his role of the detached writer just perfectly.
The climax is magnificent, it rolls the whole movie into a few dialogs. All the chaos of the movie- Karin's pain, Minus's troubled juvenility and David's disconnection from it all, everything seems to survive just through faith - for faith is indeed such a powerful thing - the central theme of Bergman's movies.
2 comments:
Schizophrenia and gods. This movie was deeply disturbing. Not to be watched when you are low. It was close to Cries and Whispers when it comes to the anguish. I watched The Virgin Spring some time ago too. But I didn't find it as powerful as the rest of bergman movies. The only thing i remember was gunnel lindblom praying to odin, and how by the end of the movie that kept haunting me. Also it had one the most memorable shots I had watched on screen, where one of the brothers run up a small hill to watch the girl.
I was talking to smik about Virgin spring, and he didn't find it so interesting either. Somehow, I liked virgin spring very much, next to Wild strawberries.
My pains seem to be more like that of Ingari in Virgin-spring. I liked the way she sought forgiveness through the miraculous spring in the movie. Matter of fact, the last scene was very touching for me. Berman's way of presenting Lutheran perspective was truly amazing.
I found that the contradictions of paganism and christianity were subtle yet persistent in the movie. Guess all that made it appear a very special movie for me.
By the way, I just watched an interview interview and bibi anderson, and was amazed to see how dearly bibi could understand bergman and his movies :)
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