The Rite (1969)

Not rated, but --if you couldn't guess --this movie is a movie about vulgarity.  It's tackling that line between art and filth.  As such, it really tries pushing that line as much as it can.  The entire last scene is pretty darn in-your-face. Per usual, Bergman uses infidelity as a form of passive cruelty and that is something that happens all throughout.  There's nudity in this film, coupled with what is meant to interpreted as a rape scene.  The movie is trying to push limits, which only makes me roll my eyes.

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

Guys, I'm so tired. Like, so tired.  I don't want to be writing about this.  I'm reading this really fascinating novel right now that is incredibly dense.  It's long and it isn't a fast read.  As such, I've been trying to find a few moments to knock this blog out.  It's not like I have nothing to say about this movie.  It's just that I'm starting to actively dislike Ingmar Bergman.  I know.  It's blasphemy.  Ingmar Bergman is one of the greatest auteurs of all time.  He's unimpeachable.  But The Rite almost encapsulates everything that frustrates me about Bergman.  And my takeaway about the man is that he is incredibly insecure.

To a certain extent, The Rite is almost an attack on me. It's almost in response to what I've been writing on this blog for the stretch of watching this box set.  Bergman is in that place where he, as a filmmaker, has crossed a societal line.  Bergman, with a streak of movies, has toyed with sexuality in both explicit and implied ways.  In some of these cases, I can see why sex has played such a forward and obvious role.  It isn't often, but some of his movies are shattering barriers and using the taboo to get there.  But my frustration is that it kind of became a bag of tricks.  When I am teaching either writing or acting, I say that the creative's worst enemy is their bag of tricks.  When I say that, I mean, that the artist knows what gets applause.  The problem with a bag of tricks is that it gets really repetitive.  My biggest criticism is that Bergman keeps returning to the same bag of tricks.  With the case of Bergman, his bag of tricks is infidelity and sex to push his audience out of their comfort zones.

But when sex becomes unsurprising, there might be a problem.  The conceit of The Rite is that an acting troupe is under investigation for performing lewd acts in their routine.  It's vague until the final reel of the movie.  Even in that case, barring the erotic costuming, the acts are more described than enacted.  Still, the point of the movie is that this is a movie that puts art on the stand. If there was ever a metacontext, it's this.  It's not very subtle to make a literal interrogation room as the alternating scenes in the story.  After all, if Bergman feels under attack (I know I'm doing the laziest form of analysis right now, but it's a miracle that I'm upright right now), the notion of being dragged in front of the interrogator is something that probably resonates quite a bit right now.

This is where it gets a little bit self-indulgent.  I mean, it's the part of the movie I like.  I won't even deny that I like self-indulgent stuff from time-to-time.  A lot of the movie is almost painfully cryptic, playing on the nature of reality.  After all, we see Sebastian set himself on fire in his Black-Box-style hotel room.  We also have a rape sequence that is treated so non-chalantly that we're not even sure what we saw in those moments.  But the final sequence flips the notion of the interrogation on its head.  As much as this entire film has been a brow-beating of the perverted artists, the real criminal is the interrogator.  And that's where society is put on the stand.  Yeah, when I say that this is self-indulgent, it's that Bergman makes his metaphor "Society is the real pervert" in this situation.  As much as Abrahamson is this bastion of morality and purity, going even as far tearing up a bribe given to him, he instead fetishizes the entire experience.  He goes into a prolonged confession, promising not to interrupt the performance at the end...only to continue to wedge himself into the story over-and-over.  

It's Abrahamson who sentences himself to death.  It's a really weird moment in a really weird moment, so we kind of forgive it.  If anything, the ritual that the trio perform, shy of being clothed in perversion, is fairly tame.  I actually give props to Bergman for this choice because, at this point in the film, nothing that Bergman can describe can live up to the expectations that society's perversion has already crafted for this final scene.  If anything, it is evokative of The Aristocrats, being something so ribald that anything that Bergman could have described would have only disappointed.  When he dies of a heart attack, the lewdness almost becomes symbolic of some greater imaginary horror that doesn't really affect the artists.  Yeah, the afterword tells that the artists were not allowed to perform those acts domestically.  But the almost apathetic tone that the final section offers is more of a commentary on Abrahamson than it is the artists.

There is the title.  And the costumes.  The title, juxtaposed to the costumes. I know that this was a TV movie in 1969.  From what I understand about the cultural zeitgeist, I don't think that The Rite was exactly one of those really impactful films that changed the way that we talked about art and sex.  But I can't help but make the connection to Eyes Wide Shut, the combination of the outfits with the masks and the acts involved.   As part of all that, the notion that this is something beyond the performance element that the movie says, but doesn't seem to believe is something that should be explored.  Honestly, the more noble and heady version of myself wants to preach that all art is a form of creation that mirrors God's relationship to the universe.  But if I'm grounding myself, as I should, that final sequence reads more like a religious ritual more than it does a stage performance.  After all, the performance doesn't happen in a theater.  The time of the performance is during the sunrise in a spot that offers sacrifice.  Couple this with all the fact that the actions that the trio performs is without narrative story, instead evoking a sense of a relationship with a higher being.  

Why does Bergman go to religious lengths?  I do think that he views art as the closest thing to spiritual ecstacy.  While there are a handful of his films that show moderate respect towards the religious, the canon of his films scream of a frustrated atheism.  When he creates a work, often one where he has to treat something that could be considered uncouth as a form of entertainment, there is a sacrificial element to that.  Yeah, I think that sacrifice loses all meaning because I'm binging all of his films over the course of a year.  But from his perspective, that's what's going on.  He is the artist and he is willing to sacrifice his audience for the sheer messy act of creation.

It doesn't change the fact that I don't like this one.  The Black-Box Theatre style of design isn't helping.  The fact that we're now tapping a much-drained well is also frustrating.  Maybe it's that I am more guarded getting behind the avant-garde, but this movie doesn't really do it for me.  Yeah, it's interesting exploring Bergman's relationship to his art, but it's all a bit on the nose for me.