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Sexylocher Masterful Movie

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

oOoBarracuda The sound of a church bell fills the air with as much resonance as the crippling doubt of questioning one's faith. The way the sound reverberates in the air is reminiscent of the debilitating blow of a thought that one can't release from their mind. When that thought is doubting the faith you vowed to protect and project, it becomes nearly crippling. This conundrum is exactly what Ingmar Bergman presents in his 1963 film Winter Light. Starring Gunnar Björnstrand as Tomas Ericsson, the small town priest in the throes of a crisis of faith, and Ingrid Thulin as a school teacher willing to substitute her love in exchange for God's in Tomas' life. In a deeply moving and powerful film, Winter Light is just one of the prime examples in Bergman's oeuvre that cement him as the filmmaking giant he is.On a cold day, in the heart of winter, Pastor Thomas Ericsson finds himself preaching to a nearly empty church. One of the members of the congregation, sure to always be in attendance, is schoolteacher Märta Lundberg. Märta is in love with Tomas, but the death of his wife two years prior has left him unable to love another person and has left him in a bitter state towards God, as well. Also among the attendees are Karin Persson (Gunnel Lindblom) and Jonas Persson (Max von Sydow). Karin seeks out Tomas to counsel her husband who has recently been consumed by an existential crisis after learning that China has atomic bomb capabilities. Desperate to ease her husband's anxiety, Karin begs Tomas to renew Jonas' faith in God and talk him away from the suicide he has been contemplating. Unfortunately for all involved, the only lens Tomas can see through is his own doubt and fractured relationship with religion. Jonas, sensing this lack of faith, leaves Tomas with more anxiety than he came to him with. The weight of doubt brings Tomas, who is expected to be the leader of the church, to a point where he is discussing the future of his theological pursuits with those charged with maintaining the church.Winter Light was a film I wasn't ready for. Ingmar Bergman has over a dozen classics tied to his name, but this wasn't one that I had personally heard of in that group. Obviously, it sticks out as a part of Bergman's religious trilogy, the films in which he deals most with man's relationship to God. The barren dismal landscape of the winter outdoors is echoed inside the church as the bodies lining the pews are topped with desperate faces, bored and lacking interest in the church service. Bergman's blocking is fantastic, often photographing his distraught priest standing in doorways, much as he's standing at a precipice regarding faith in his own life. For believers, God is a welcome sight, the actualization of an idea that fills one with hope and purpose, no matter how. There is much symbolism in Christianity regarding hands. The hands of man are to do the work of Christ, as often alluded to, especially in regards to Joseph (the husband of Mary, Mother of Jesus) and his profession as a carpenter. Likewise, in Winter Light, hands are the focus of Bergman's camera throughout the entire film. It is Märta's hands that are attacked by a rash that disgusts Tomas so much, he avoids her. Tomas's hands shake and falter as he goes about this day, much like his faith has been shaken so much that he is hopeful no one will attend church services at his dwindling congregation so he doesn't have to perform mass. Every time Tomas's hands are interacting with God, he is unable to perform his task. Thomas's hands visibly shake when he is attempting to counsel Jonas. His hands also shake so badly he is unable to put the letter Märta sent to him back in the envelope after reading its heartbreaking content. The intentional focus on hands is carried on as we see the hands of Märta as she dries the tears of regret falling from Tomas's eyes. Bringing such focused religious symbolism to a film that questions the limits of faith shows not only the incredible directorial prowess of Ingmar Bergman but also reveals a tenderness of his toward a subject he questions. Winter Light is a methodically beautiful look at one of the biggest questions in life by perhaps the perfect person to use his camera to search for the answers.

kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** One of Ingmar Beregman's most depressing films has everyone in it on the brink of doing themselves in and in one case fisherman Jonas Persson, Max von Sydow, does. The movie has to do in a day in the life of Lutheran Pastor Thomas Ericsson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, who's just about had it with the church whom he feels after all these years of being part of it let him and the world at large down. This all started some 25 years ago when he was involved-preaching for peace-in the Spanish Civil War and witnessed the horrors in it. Now in 1962 he's confronted with a gaunt and suicidal looking Jonas who's terrified that the Communist Chines well soon detonate-they did in 1964- an atomic bomb that will lead to WWIII.After giving Jonas his usual BS story about love and peace, that he in fact doesn't at all believe in, being the way to go the poor man leaves his chapel and on his way home sits down by a tree and blows his brains out. This is nothing compared to what Thomas is later confronted with in middle age spinster & substitute teacher Marta Lundberg, Ingrid Thulin, who was hiding behind the curtains who shows up and gives him this long and boring story about how much she loves the guy and wants him to marry her, in a letter she mailed him, before he himself who's in danger of contracting pneumonia kicks off.It's here in regard to the sobbing Marta that Thomas, who looked like he had already one foot in the grave, suddenly comes alive and lets all his feeling about God and Marta as well as the world situation come to the surface. In that the man of God doesn't believe in anything good anymore and just wants to start a new life as a carpenter or druggist in town and forget all that he was thought in divinity school that he now feel was total BS. Marta for her part instead of getting more depressed sees that the man she's in love with and wants his support is in fact far more screwed up in the head then she ever was or even possibly will be.***SPOILERS*** The by now totally out of it Thomas after letting it all out in the wash now goes back to give his speech to those assembled in his church, about a half dozen, about the glory of God and how the entire world is filled with it. Which earlier he had totally rejected as a by now understanding Marta realizes just how off the wall he is being one of the few listening in on his sermon. The world is what we not God makes it which is why we were given free will to do good or bad without his-God's-interference or influence in our actions. Strak black & white photography as well as bleak wintry scenery makes this Bergman film far more depressing then it really is. After seeing it you feel that there's no hope for the world and mankind. But it's Thomas suddenly realizing that's the way it's supposed to be in order to overcome one's depressions, like it seemed that Marta did, that it makes life worth both living as well as suffering through it.

dan-pryce26 "Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought."– St Augustine, ConfessionsAfter he had finished this film, Bergman showed it to his wife. She merely stated, apparently: 'Yes, Ingmar, it's a masterpiece. But it's a dreary masterpiece.' The director himself thought it was the best thing he had ever done: "Everything is exactly as I wanted to have it, in every second of this picture." It is true that there is not a wasted second. It is an utterly controlled monument to martyred genius. And we must pour over it, in the hope of finding what Bergman, the cruelest of directors, once tried to convey.He was captivated by the 'mystery' of the self, of our inabilities to communicate with even our own understandings of existence. His later work clambers endlessly towards what this film promises, in embryonic state; the possibility, however unlikely, of some simple human warmth, and connection (the Swedish title for the film means literally The Communicants). But he is thwarted, repeatedly, and must purge himself of all those things that are decaying within him. And so there is the silence of God, and there is the silence of Man. Woman, it seems, has the enviable power of perfect verbal clarity. They always do in Bergman. If there is no creator, we may turn to the female monologue for some comfort (just don't, for Christ's sake, watch Persona). Even the priest, like Bresson's, is full of this deep silence, despite his attempts to overcome. He cannot control his words or his thoughts, and his own body battles against him. His wife has died, caught in the silence of the grave, and God, or at least the impression of God, has vanished with her. All that remains is doubt, so that he cannot even prevent a man from shooting himself in the empty quiet of a Swedish forest.And so the desire to hate, so evident in the duality of Catholicism, fills this man like a vessel, until bile spews from his lips and those around him fall vacant and broken. Finally, only Marta, the lovely Ingrid Thulin, can encapsulate this most profound faith; she does not believe, and God is nothing to her. His deathly silence is of no consequence. But she, even, is covered in sores. And the priest can only see, in true and ugly Catholic style, her disgusting physicality, her sins. We are reminded, all of a sudden, that this is the same monotheistic religion that governed cruelly and brutally for so many long years. Only the sexton presents solace, rising above his own suffering to argue that Christ also was betrayed, and felt his Father's silence. Does the priest hear this most empathetic and beautiful reasoning? That is for us to decide. Bergman probably had no answer.Perhaps doubt is not the right word here. I'd go for 'suspicion'; the belief that God, if He is there, is toying viciously with us. How else could God appear, but as a spider, echoing Harriet Andersson's horrifying vision (never seen) in Through A Glass Darkly? And so if God is empty, or malicious, or merely distracted, we have only each other. And there lies Bergman's endless clamber, and the aspect of his work that is most ignored: it is a masterpiece, yes, and, Christ, is it a dreary one, but only because Bergman is attempting to convince us that our grubby, groping humanity, probably, hopefully, is enough.

Andres Salama This bleak, sparse film from Ingmar Bergman focuses on a disillusioned, increasingly skeptic Lutheran priest called Thomas (Gunnar Bjorstrand, who's excellent) administering the gospel in a Swedish village to a very small congregation. He's unable to accept the love offered him by the plain school teacher Marta (Ingrid Thulin, also very good), and incapable to offer the conviction of his faith to save from suicide a fisherman called Jonas (Max von Sydow) troubled by the prospect of a nuclear war(incidentally, this was filmed just before the Cuban missile crisis).This must have been a very personal film by Bergman (the son of a stern Lutheran priest, the director lost his religious faith as a young man). There are a lot of biblical allusions and religious discussions (we have a doubting Thomas, a fisherman called Jonas). One can nitpick here and there (one could wonder why the younger Marta is so attracted to the middle aged, aloof Thomas, or whether Jonas motivation to kill himself is credible), but if you are willing to suspend your disbelief, the minimalist direction and the great acting made for a powerful movie. Reportedly this was Ingmar Bergman choice as the favorite film he made.