Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

Not rated, but this one can mostly be condensed into one scene that is wildly uncomfortable.  While the way that people deal with mental illness can be upsetting for some viewers, the real scene that is troublesome is a scene of incest.  While most of this happens off-camera, the scene is still extremely uncomfortable.  Otherwise, this is a small story that is meant to mirror the format of a stage play.  Ultimately, there's a little bit of cruelty between characters, but what can you expect from Ingmar Bergman?

DIRECTOR: Ingmar Bergman

Guys!  Guys!  I'm in the section of the Ingmar Bergman set where there is only one movie per disc.  That means I'm in the classics.  It's almost a prestige thing, I think.  The big movies are allowed the cinemartic real estate to have their own discs.  That's exciting for me.  As much as I've been slowly moving through the Bergman box / compared to how much effort I've put into moving through the Bergman box, I'm thrilled that I only get one movie per disc.  I get quality films in small doses.

I also have a delay in my flight at the airport so I have time to catch up on some writing.  I have 41 minutes before the flight begins boarding (fingers crossed!) and I'm going to try to clear off my blogging list!

Two things can be true.  I probably have seen this movie and I don't remember it at all.  I mean, I own this movie in two formats now.  I own it on DVD and I own it in the Criterion Bergman Blu-Ray.  The crazy thing is that I kind of like this one.  I mean, this is something very specific for Bergman.  The second that the movie starts up, you get this aura of quality.  Sure, the other Bergmans have quality.  I know someone out there probably hates all my reads on the Bergman films.  But honestly, there is something absolutely gorgeous about Through a Glass Darkly.  And I mentioned the play thing.  While the play thing gives the film an avant-garde quality, what it also does is focus primarily on performances.  

Maybe that's something that I haven't been giving the Bergman movies a lot of credit for in the past.  While they have all been artistic as get out, I haven't really paid attention to a lot of the performances.  Part of that comes from the fact that I don't speak the language.  That's a real thing.  I simply assume performances are functional because I'm so trying to wrap my head around the bigger ideas.  You can't fault me for this.  It's part and parcel of watching Bergman movies.  But what I'm not exactly used to in Bergman films is a straightforward character drama.  Yeah, we got a little bit of that in the early Bergman stuff.  The early Bergman era tended to lean towards melodrama.  Instead, Through a Glass Darkly sacrifices complex plots for focusing on a unsolvable problem.

I like when a problem is both internal and unsolvable.  There's something heartwrenching about Karin's situation.  Like most of my blogs, I'm always in a state of unpacking the films, so bear with me while I do some of that here.  Karin is a woman who oddly seems divorced from her medical condition.  The first act of the film acknowledges that Karin is dealing with schizophrenia.  However, much like many first acts throughout art, we're seeing what life is like before the conflict becomes too much of an issue.  Karin's life is focused outwards on her father.  The movie seems to mirror much of Bergman's other work, making it seem like about an absentee father obsessed with his art.  It's not surprising that Bergman is making a movie about a father who can't remember his own priorities when it comes to his art.  Bergman even admitted that much of this movie was a reflection on his own life.  

But the further that this movie progresses, the more we understand that little of David's obsession with having his novel published (note: the flight I'm waiting for is to Las Vegas, where I'm attending a writer's conference to pitch my novel to agents...so, like, I get it?) is the central conflict.  If anything, it seems like David might be mirroring Bergman's own impotence to balance real world problems with his own artistic agenda.  The movie only embraces its central conflict when Karin discovers that David is pessimistic about her treatment.  That's when she spirals and the schizophrenia takes center stage.  She has a full on manic state (I'm not even sure if I'm using that correctly) and the movie places her as the protagonist of the piece, despite the fact that she has little control over her own actions.

I don't want to take agency away from Karin as protagonist.  One of the few things that I don't want to let go of is that this is a woman's story written by a man.  I really do believe that he wanted to give Harriet Andersson an acting challenge through Karin.  It's who we care about through the story.  But I can't help but attach to the male perspective of this story.  It is written by Bergman.  As much as we root for Karin's health, the real meat comes from how the three separate men relate to Karin.  Again, I'm the worst and I hate myself for making this about the male gaze.  But it's what my brain does and I can't stop that.

The three men in the house all start the film as caretakers of Karin, even if they define themselves initally from the perspective of David.  David is a father who acknowledges that he's kind of a turd when it comes to being a caretaker.  His daughter is floundering through mental illness and that impotence enables him to hide away in his work.  It's almost a crutch.  When he wants to, he abdicates his responsibility to Martin, Karin's husband.  Martin might be the healthiest of the men.  Part of that seems to come from the fact that he signed up for this as opposed to was relegated to caretaker.  As a husband, he sees Karin for the woman first and then as relation second.  Honestly, Martin's perspective on Karin is the most sympathetic.  (I'm basing this all on a shot toward the end of the movie where they all hold her down and inject her with a sedative.)   

But Minus?  PRONOUNCED MEE-NUS?  Come on, Minus.  What is going on with you?  The dumbest read that I can offer is that Bergman created a character based on sexual repression coupled with a loose condemnation of pornography.  Minus rapes his sister.  And on top of that, Karin blames herself for it happening.  There's a lot to unpack here. 

Now, here's me swinging for the fences.  Without a proper understanding of psychology, I can't help but think of id, ego, and superego for these three characters.  It's a stretch.  I know.  Everything about Minus screams "id."  Here's a character who makes plays about his father's failures.  He looks at smut.  He denies any kind of control when it comes to being attracted to his sister.  David, as superego, is about being proper.  He's obsessed with art and obsession with his own status.  He can't balance two different elements of his life, so he retreats into his own sense of propriety.  Martin, however, is attracted to his wife.  Sure, it was uncomfortable that he referred to his wife as "child", but I'm going to ignore that to make my stupid idea work.  He's the one who is both sexually attracted to his wife, but is also able to care for her health and reprimand misbehavior.

Now, the image I was talking about in the end of the movie almost encapsulates the perversion of caretaker to sexual object.  I can't help  but see Karin as a woman who is being held down against her will.  For the sake of a narrative, she is being "helped" so she can make it to the hospital to treat her mania.  But that image is three men holding her down, two of whom have had a sexual experience with this character.  It feels morally gross.  Yeah, there was no other option to get Karin on that helicopter.  She was screaming and clawing at walls. But because two of those characters have uncouth motives with her, it taints the whole experience.  

Sure, I'm really adding a lot of my analysis to something that may be straight-forward.  This could just be a story of a family dealing with a family member spiraling out of control under her own mental illness.  But Bergman is a smart dude and I have this opportunity to unpack something rich and deep.  This is the Bergman I signed up for.  

Yeah, it's not the greatest of the Bergmans.  But we're in the good stuff now, guys.