Ingmar Bergman: Enigma, Master, Humanist
I try to watch Ingmar Bergman's films whenever they come on TCM. They fascinate me, although they do not conform to any of my world view and they would probably bore most people I know to tears.
Below I've listed the ones I've seen and a few thoughts on each. I welcome input.
The Seventh Seal - the first I ever saw, but I didn't really get it. It was early in my foray into serious cinema watching. I need to watch it again. It's about death in medieval Scandinvian; that's all I can say here.
Wild Strawberries - the first I watched and understood. Such a beautiful portrayal of memory and aging and reviewing one's life work. It's about a professor who is traveling by car to a ceremony where he will receive an award, and what happens on the way, his dreams, the young people he meets, and his memories of young love. Sounds random in my description, but it is anything but. This one made me want to watch all the rest.
Winter Light - I watched this soon after watching First Reformed and saw they were identical to a certain point in the story. A minister struggles with faith and encounters a young idealist who has even greater struggles and commits suicide, leaving a young pregnant wife. Unforgettable. My favorite.
Persona - Major horror movie with no horror, all psychological. A talkative, somewhat naive nurse is assigned to watch over an actress with selective mutism and starts to become her, since she is having to provide all the language for the actress. Creepy as all get out.
Scenes from a Marriage - A lot of truth here, about relationships and marriage and how a marriae breaks up but doesn't really end, although the sexual content (that is, that they are having all kinds of lovers) makes it hard for me to totally relate. I wonder how much people have sex in these movies just for something to do and a kind of release rather than for true affection.
Autumn Sonata - Oh, my. Ingrid Bergman faces her past is how I remember this. She plays a narcissistic concert pianist trying to (or maybe trying not to) deal with her adult daughter who suffers from depression and who cares for her disabled sister, Bergman's daughter. Bergman had rejected her children and husband to run off with a lover years before. A lot of emotion and yelling and no real resolution, but really, really cathartic.
Fanny and Alexander - Interesting; I didn't get into this one as much. It's about a rich, multi-generational Swedish family with a lot of weird sexual things, like a twelve-year-old boy still sleeping with his nanny. The story about the widow marrying the mean pastor was disturbing, but the children escaped.
I prefer the ones that are about philosophy, male characters, faith/doubt, or aging. His characters are secular even when people of faith. (The daughter in Autumn Sonata is married to a minister.) His stories are about humans living in a world without a spiritual center or even spiritual surrounding; people can look for God and meaning but they won't really find it. Yet somehow they are not nihilistic, at least not completely.
Below I've listed the ones I've seen and a few thoughts on each. I welcome input.
The Seventh Seal - the first I ever saw, but I didn't really get it. It was early in my foray into serious cinema watching. I need to watch it again. It's about death in medieval Scandinvian; that's all I can say here.
Wild Strawberries - the first I watched and understood. Such a beautiful portrayal of memory and aging and reviewing one's life work. It's about a professor who is traveling by car to a ceremony where he will receive an award, and what happens on the way, his dreams, the young people he meets, and his memories of young love. Sounds random in my description, but it is anything but. This one made me want to watch all the rest.
Winter Light - I watched this soon after watching First Reformed and saw they were identical to a certain point in the story. A minister struggles with faith and encounters a young idealist who has even greater struggles and commits suicide, leaving a young pregnant wife. Unforgettable. My favorite.
Persona - Major horror movie with no horror, all psychological. A talkative, somewhat naive nurse is assigned to watch over an actress with selective mutism and starts to become her, since she is having to provide all the language for the actress. Creepy as all get out.
Scenes from a Marriage - A lot of truth here, about relationships and marriage and how a marriae breaks up but doesn't really end, although the sexual content (that is, that they are having all kinds of lovers) makes it hard for me to totally relate. I wonder how much people have sex in these movies just for something to do and a kind of release rather than for true affection.
Autumn Sonata - Oh, my. Ingrid Bergman faces her past is how I remember this. She plays a narcissistic concert pianist trying to (or maybe trying not to) deal with her adult daughter who suffers from depression and who cares for her disabled sister, Bergman's daughter. Bergman had rejected her children and husband to run off with a lover years before. A lot of emotion and yelling and no real resolution, but really, really cathartic.
Fanny and Alexander - Interesting; I didn't get into this one as much. It's about a rich, multi-generational Swedish family with a lot of weird sexual things, like a twelve-year-old boy still sleeping with his nanny. The story about the widow marrying the mean pastor was disturbing, but the children escaped.
I prefer the ones that are about philosophy, male characters, faith/doubt, or aging. His characters are secular even when people of faith. (The daughter in Autumn Sonata is married to a minister.) His stories are about humans living in a world without a spiritual center or even spiritual surrounding; people can look for God and meaning but they won't really find it. Yet somehow they are not nihilistic, at least not completely.
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