Film: Winter Light
Release date: 19th November 2001
Certificate: PG
Running time: 81 mins
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand, Gunnel Lindblom, Max von Sydow, Allan Edwall
Genre: Drama
Studio: Tartan
Format: DVD
Country: Sweden
Ingmar Bergman is considered to be the epitome of high brow art house cinema, combining human angst for the exploration of big themes such as faith, mortality and the meaning of life with a deeply innovative and sober auteurial style that has led to many labelling him as the antithesis of Hollywood. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the second of Bergman’s ‘faith’ trilogy, Winter Light.
Set in a rural and isolated part of Sweden, the film takes place in a three hour window between midday and 3pm on a winter’s Sunday, and revolves around the village pastor Tomas (Gunnar Bjrnstrand), who has been suffering from a crisis of faith since the death of his wife four years earlier.
The film opens with the end of midday mass for a tiny congregation, including an easily distracted child presumably dragged to church by his devout grandmother, an atheist schoolmistress (Ingrid Thulin) with an ulterior motive for attending, and a young fishing couple.
Following the congregation, Tomas coughs and splutters his way through preparations for his next mass in the neighbouring town of Frostnas, when the troubled young couple come to him for advice. He swiftly sends them away, advising Jonas Persson (Max Von Sydow) to return for a more in-depth chat later. Subsequently, Marta, the schoolmistress, slips into the pastor’s office to enquire about her unread letter, and declares her love for him before leaving.
When Tomas is finally alone, he reads her scathing letter that makes him doubt his faith, and finally has time to reflect before Jonas returns, anxiously seeking counsel for why God would allow global atrocities to take place. Tomas, however, cannot provide answers but merely more questions regarding God’s silence, and admits that his own faith wavered after the death of his wife. Jonas leaves more confused than when he arrived, whilst Marta is overjoyed that Tomas has finally decided to renounce God for love.
However, as they start to make their way towards Frostnas for the 3pm mass, some unforeseen events prove that God moves in mysterious ways…
The films sombre and austere mood is set right from the opening bleak shots and silence; only punctuated by ominous church bells. This is a special kind of film, in which all of its aspects - the camera work, desolate sound, lighting, script and acting - are restrained, working in shadows and low key to conversely create a spiritual exploration for a God greater than the sum of its parts.
This contrast is no more apparent than in the twelve minute long opening scene. Bergman juxtaposes large open spaces shot in wide frame and extreme long shots with the tiny congregation to highlight not only the isolated environment of his film but how isolated man is from God as well. Then this effect is recreated through image and sound as the confident church organ, hymns and Tomas’s laborious preachy words exclaim devotion, yet the tight and intense camera work focuses intimately on solemn faces that betray doubt, fear and anxiety.
The stark use of light and shade is another key element in the film. Reportedly Bergman and his cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, spent days studying how the natural Nordic light created shadows in the church before shooting the film. A key example of the use of light is in the pivotal scene where Tomas – at his most vulnerable and isolated from God - echoes Jesus on the crucifix with his question: “Why have you forsaken me?” In this scene, after being in shadows for the whole film, surrounding by questions, he finally renounces God and is bathed in sunlight, as if being baptised by the Pagan, and earthly god symbolises his choice of corporeal love.
Indeed this leads to another of the Bergman’s techniques that make this film a cerebral masterpiece; the use of symbolism. Bergman makes every one of his ‘believers’ in the film have some physical ailment and cause of pain - from Tomas’s cold and the loss of his wife and Marta’s eczema-ridden hands to Algot’s limping leg. Each of the believers are suffering, and the film subtly investigates how much humans will endure for their faith.
Concurrently, Bergman puts his viewers through this dense dreary and claustrophobic film to ask them: “How much will you endure for the sake of art?” Although this is a motif he uses more pertinently in later films such as Cries And Whispers, it’s brilliantly implemented here in Marta’s 6 minute monologue, when Ingrid Thulin talks directly to the viewer. Framed tight and in an unflattering fashion, she details her insecurities and thoughts towards Tomas directly at the audience, rendering the viewer to feel completely uncomfortable with no escape.
Whilst Winter Light is one of Bergman’s shortest and bleakest films, the beauty of its craftsmanship, profound subject matter and simplicity lends to repeat viewing, and gives it an ageless quality. Perhaps the film was best summed up by Bergman’s own wife, who said "Ingmar, it's a masterpiece. But it's a dreary masterpiece." QA
No comments:
Post a Comment