The Facade

Ingmar Bergman kept me engaged tonight as AJ and I watched Persona. We were a bit uncertain that we could manage another Bergman film after viewing the trilogy of Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and then the killer, The Silence. We were in agony after three Monday's in a row of suffering souls. Should we go again? Could we handle so much agony? Well, we did. Who could miss Persona, the ninth film in the ninth week in the Bergman retrospective at the Charles Theater?

The weird vampire-like, lesbian over toned, Freudian laced film was worth the watch and a big relief from the sodden, god trilogy that preceded it, nearly causing these two fans to give up Bergman all together.

Simply, a nurse takes care of an actress who has stopped talking after confronting a trauma on the stage while performing Elektra. I think it is pivotal that the role of Elektra caused the trauma. In Greek mythology, Eleckta is an assassin, in cahoots with her brother Orestes, to the avenge the death of their father, the great Agamemnon.

In the Elktra play one witnesses the rapid changes of the characters' sentiments - tension, hatred, fear, joy, ecstasy; not unlike Persona, only in reverse. Elektra finally kills herself, having avenged, with her brother Orestes, her father's murder. One believes, in the most operatic sense, that it is with some joy that Elektra kills herself after years of rage, yearning for her murdered father and the terrible treatment by her step family. So one must ask why Elektra, the play, traumatizes Elizabeth Vogler---the speechless, hospitalized actress?

Here is my read. Elizabeth Vogler has mastered the artful facade to such an extent that she has no idea who she is. This is not unique to anyone who lives in the world. We all play so many roles that we have difficulty sorting our our real selves from all the roles we play to please all the players in our lives; hopefully, we differ by degrees from the actor. The actor must become very confused. While we, the non-professional actors, are playing roles to survive amongst the plethora of people with whom we must interact, there is purpose to our roles, albeit sometimes groveling; the actor on the other hand, chooses and masters roles, for a livelihood. Some would say it is a livelihood driven by narcissism. Though narcissism is not my issue, it is pertinent to the extent that it drives the facade in a way entirely different from the "facade" of the work-a-day life most of us lead.

The turning point for me in the film was the moment when the silent Elizabeth passes a TV that is showing footage of the war in Vietnam. On the screen is Thich Quang Duc, the Buddhist monk who self-immolated to protest the torture of Buddhist monks and nuns by the unmerciful, American-backed, Diem regime. Elizabeth is horrified and trembles. She lets out a sound of fear. Some critics attribute this reaction to the sensitivity of the great actress. They posit that her vulnerability to the world is what contributes to the intelligence of a performance. Nonsense.

I think this act by the monk mirrors the traumatizing aspects of the Elektra play. Both the monk and the character Elektra were moved to perform authentic acts. Repeat: authentic acts. They wore no masks. They carried out horrific acts with authentic behavior and authentic courage. These acts required an innate self-knowledge and self-confidence that empowered them to carry out their roles.

Elizabeth on the the other hand is empty of an authentic personality. I think that while she is playing the role of Elektra, she is forced to confront her inauthentic existence. Who IS Elizabeth? The only reaction she can take, in light of her profound Elektra epiphany, is to stop acting. Say nothing. Play no role. Purify her being.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth is unable to realize an authentic self, because, even in silence, she is compelled in the most cynical way to cannibalize the nurse, Alma, whose name translates as "soul." Actor as monster / inauthenticity as destruction of the soul---that's my read. It was the astonishing appearance of the footage of Thich Quang Duc in the midst of this solemn film that lead me to this thinking.

The Silence | Ingmar Bergman

Johan, The Silence | Ingemar Bergman

"The director also reveals that ..." I received an anonymous letter, containing filthy toilet paper; so one could say the treatment accorded to this film, which by today's standards was pretty innocuous, was rather fierce. There were even people who rang up and threatened both my own life and the life of my wife...So the sexual trauma in Sweden must have been acute. One is always glad when a film is a success. But then, when I discovered why it was a success, and how many of the people who were going to see it were saying furiously they'd never again go and see a Bergman film, I was terrified.'"

The Bergman retrospective at the beloved Charles Theater here in Baltimore showed the final film in a trilogy: Through A Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence. This was the eighth week of Monday night Bergman films and I'm not handling it well.

The Silence was so deathly tedious, I almost tore my hair out after the first hour. I leaned over to A., my Bergman film companion and said, "I am dying!" In this film Bergman shows the audience his idea of how the world looks without god in it. The loneliness portrayed in the film is unbearable. The close ups and the unmoving camera each adds to this feeling of stillness and alienation.

Throw two sisters, one a scholar, dying of alcoholic deterioration, the other a hedonistic, whoring, thoughtless person (she will leave her sister alone to die), together with a lonely, unloved young son of one of the sisters, an approaching war outside the hotel windows, where the three have stopped, and things get pretty awful. Then all you have to do is add a troupe of midgets, which Bergman does, and my sense of dread arises from the depths of my psyche screaming.

Bergman thinks that people were critical of this film because of the taboos it broke around sexuality. I don't think so. It was the assault by silence, emptiness, inability to commuicate, and the excessive use of symbols that drove this viewer crazy. I can tell I am going to be stewing over this film for a couple of days, at least. Talk about your nihilism.

Next week...Persona.

Bergman is Dead.

OF "Winter Light", its Director, Ingemar Bergman says that one of the meanings of the film is "that at all costs one must do what it is one's duty to do, even if it can seem meaningless." This dreary film, referred to as a masterpiece, is elusive. Its simple storyline is sodden and pondering. Bergman seems to confirm his film's meaning about persisting, by finishing this film in the face of so much meaninglessness.

So goes the seventh of twelve films in the Monday night Bergman film retrospective at the Charles Theater! This one was not over soon enough. So far it is the only unsatisfying film in the series for me.

Bergman has told us at other times that where there's love then there's God. I think of the Seventh Seal, where the man and woman proceed through the frightening woods in their fragile wagon, trusting themselves to each other's love. The winds howl, creatures lurk, they are afraid and nearly blown away, but they come out on the other side of the forest at peace and more surely in love.

So in "Winter's Night" we have Marta's declared love, which Tomas, the Pastor, cruelly rejects. It is seemingly a love that is just not enough. Then there is Jonas (gorgeous Max von Sydow), severely depressed, who agrees to seek Thomas' counsel, only to be assured by Thomas that god is, er, sort of dead. Fortified with these words, Jonas leaves the pastor and kills himself at a river's edge. After helping load the dead body into a vehicle for removal, Tomas returns to his church and begins his regular service. Agony.

The film does not hint of light at any time. All is dark, gray. cold. One must imagine what winter light could be.

The filmmaker, Sergio Trasatti, points out how "Tomas can't accept Marta's love and he cannot save Jonas' life because he can't give love to them; and this lack of love is the real silence of God".

Amen.

(click on pictures to enlarge them)

Wild Strawberries

AJ and I have been attending the Monday night Bergman retrospective at the Charles. I want to jump up and down and praise him. So far we've seen Secrets of Women, Seventh Seal and tonight, Wild Strawberries.

It is a struggle to get over the archaic quality of the film. I know this is the wrong issue to gnaw on, just look at the frame and lighting on the son and father above. I know Bergman was doing things in film that no one else had imagined. I really, really liked Seventh Seal. Who else thought of playing chess with Death? Brilliant. Aren't we all going to live forever if we just make the right moves? Aren't we always going to be here? Alive? The images of the Seventh Seal are forever in my mind. Thank you. Thank you.

But, it is hard to hang in there with these early movies. The pace, the somberness lull me towards sleep. I fought sleep tonight during Wild Strawberries. AJ lost the fight and snored softly to my left. Again, I liked the film, this simple tale of a man coming to terms with his life and finding infinite support in the happiness of his childhood memories. The three young travelers were a terrific contrast. And, there was the wise and angry daughter-in-law who helped him to begin the move toward a deeper understanding of the harm his pompous indifference has caused.

The man who plays the part of the professor is so vulnerable and fragile by virtue of his age, this viewer could feel only sympathy for him. Here he was on this epiphanic car trip to receive his scholarly award. Each time the old man dozes off, a nightmare awaits him. Each nightmare shocks him into a deeper encounter with consequences of his actions. We should all be so lucky, earlier!