Continuing my education into the work of director Ingmar Bergman, I picked Winter Light (1963; Nattvardsgästerna) to watch next. Mostly on the basis that it’s one of the big inspirations for Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. In that movie, it was a struggling priest dealing with a suicidal parishoner obsessed with climate change apocalypse – here, in Bergman’s original incarnation of the idea, it has to do with cold war fears of nuclear annihilation. However, while an inspiration to Schrader’s movie, it is also a different experience – just as heavy and philosophical, but there’s a different structure, a different tone. The priest, Pastor Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) finishes his sermon at the film’s opening, and the way Bergman and his cinematographer Sven Nykvist frame the parishoners and cut to their reactions, creates a small microcosm within this dwindling church attendance. The film’s structure takes place over one day and follows Tomas as he suffers from a cold, forever sweaty, and his own doubts over God while dealing with fisherman Jonas (Max Von Sydow) who despairs over his lack of faith and hope in the world. More devastating is the relationship Tomas has with his devoted lover, Marta (Ingrid Thulin), a school teacher who longs to take care of him but is coldly rejected. Beautiful imagery abounds in the black-and-white cinematography, the way light intrudes into the cold grey interiors. Several sequences are confronting in their emotional content such as Marta’s lengthy letter to Tomas delivered in a medium close up to the camera. It’s a depressing movie but striking in taking seriously the big questions over faith, doubt, human cruelty, and what might be left to believe in. All compacted into a 81 minute run time. While not as confronting to me as Cries and Whispers, I did marvel at its structural tightness and its characterisation, leaving its big questions unanswered and leaving it to the audiences to decide what the ending might mean or conclude. Available to stream on Kanopy. Recommended.
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