Winter Light (1963)

Not rated.  The core of the film involves the clergy when it comes to dealing with suicide.  While the suicide happens off-camera, that doesn't diminish how powerful the events leading up to the suicide are.  Besides the self-harm element,  I don't know what younger audience would want to watch a monochromatic Bergman film about the interior life of faith through a cynical lens...

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

I got one more Bergman in before we head off to Sweden.  (I'm pretty sure we have a stop in Sweden.  Honest to Pete?  I don't know my European countries as comfortably as I care to admit, even with a history minor.)   I'm in a place in the Bergman box set that is both incredibly genius and also a bit on the repetitive side.

The funny thing about me writing in this stagnant, non-committal way is that it doesn't make sense.  I'm so jazzed to write about faith.  Heck, I'm even excited to write about a cynical director's take on faith.  It just feels like I've been here before.  The one thing that Winter Light really has going for it is that it is more singularly minded than a lot of Bergman films.  While Bergman dances around religion from time-to-time, this is a movie that spends a lot of the film stock paying attention to a pastor of a church and there are issues of belief there.  It's Bergman allowing himself the freedom to speak about a singular issue while imbuing complexity into that singular issue.  I mean, Bergman ain't all about the faith.  I'm sure there aren't a ton of youth groups out there screaming about "Have you seen Winter Light?"  I get that Bergman is making a film about the futility of it all.

The problem is, for me, it's all a little exhausting.  

I've become a bit of a cynic myself.  We're in the dregs of it right now.  I don't want to say that the world is a terrible place --a phrase I've spouted many times before.  That almost diminishes how bad the world is right now.  Many of the world's problems have been caused by my fellow Christians in the name of Christianity.  When I try defending the faith, especially to myself, I find it hard to apologize for a lot of what I am seeing out there.  But the tiring part comes from the constant barrage of how stupid faith is.  I listen to You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes almost every day coming into work.  I'm still about eight years behind, so please bear with me if his format changes over time.  One of the key components that keeps bringing me back to listening is the faith issue.  Pete Holmes is a recovering Evangelical who describes himself as faith-seek / Christ-leaning.  While he has no definite position on faith, he often follows the teachings of Ram Dass and other spiritual gurus, acknowledging that he has no idea what the answer is when it comes to God.

But he interviews a lot of celebrities, often comedians.  And while Holmes has no problem with many of his guests being openly atheist, there is a weariness that comes with hearing that yet another guest is an atheist.  That's kind of my thing too.  I don't mind atheism.  Often, I'm fighting those urges within me.  It all makes a lot more sense that there's nothing out there.  Part of me is always grappling with the okayness that comes with knowing that there might and probably is nothing out there.  My life has no greater meaning than its existence on this planet right now and the fact that the religious on Earth tend to make the planet a tough place to exist is something that I have to make peace with.  It's the exhaustion to write about something like this.  I embrace filmmakers writing stories about the absurdity of faith.  It is a universal feeling and a valid criticism.  It's just that...of course this is a story that is pretty darned cynical.

But if it is a cynical take on faith, it's a cynical take on faith that I have to embrace because that was the film in front of me.  Bergman starts off the film in the gutsiest fashion imaginable.  If I did the math right because I only had the epiphany towards the end of the scene, the opening sequence is about eleven minutes of uninterrupted liturgy.  (It's a Protestant service of some kind that is very close to a Catholic mass.  The only reason it isn't a Catholic Mass is because much of the movie is about Rev. Ericsson's dead wife and the woman who would like to marry him.) The opening shows instead of tells.  The liturgy goes like any other liturgy.  Every point is hit.  The limited congregation knows what to do and when to do it.  There is no inciting incident.  Instead, everything goes like clockwork.  The existential crisis doesn't come from something waking up the reverend.  It comes from the fact that every day is the same in this incredibly small town.

Ericsson's crisis of faith comes from the paradoxical reality between the divine and the mundane.  There's a lot we have to assume about Ericsson.  Ericsson got into the clergy because he had a sure faih about the role of God in his life.  He was willing to devote himself to being a chaplain of the tiniest church ever, where three parishioners would attend daily services.  Yet, the words become rote to him.  He imagined that he would be saving souls and bringing both himself and his congregation closer to God.  However, with only three people out there with their dead-eyes, it's only natural to think that this entire thing is a waste of everyone's time.  I cite the end of the movie, where the organist is boasting about the empty church, excited that he doesn't have to play.  

But, see, there's the kicker!  Ericsson says the liturgy as if it was a full church.  This is the stuff I'm excited to write about because it has two different meanings.  The cynical part of me says that Ericsson is so locked into routine, it's as if he's been saying the liturgy to an empty church the entire time.  By this logic, he's so stuck in his routine that there is no hope for a greater faith life.  That is a read that is completely valid (even if I wrote it myself!).  But it's also a read that I completely disagree with.  The reason being is that there's something that a cynic wouldn't believe about the faith.  I picked up something at a Catholic retreat that I actually value quite a bit. (If it makes you feel better, I was forced to go this retreat through work...)  The priest giving the talk compared the Mass to theater.  After all, ritual and theatre share a long line of historical precedent, so I'm not totally crazy.  With theatre, you have the performer, the backstage crew, and the audience.  With Mass, you have the officiant, God, and the congregation.  Now, most people would compare those two in that order.  The performer is the officiant; the backstage crew is God; the audience is the congregation.  However, there's something far more beautiful about the Mass when the following is true: The performer is the congregation; the backstage crew is the officiant; the audience is God.  When the organist gives a big hullaballoo about the congregation being empty so they don't have to have liturgy, he misses the point of the whole thing.  

Now, I don't think that the rest of the movie supports this read.  If anything, Ericsson is left more despondent by his actions in the film.  The reason why this day is more important than any of Ericsson's other days is that his apathy led to a man killing himself.  I don't want to say this lightly and maybe a lot of this applies to the world of the movie.  Depression and suicide can't normally be attributed to one action in one time.  It's a disease that might have claimed Persson regardless of Ericsson's influence.  But for the sake of shorthand, Ericsson blames himself and his distanced view of God for Persson's suicide.  The idea that he is celebrating God at the end of the movie doesn't read.  But maybe Bergman is either incredibly open-minded (I'm real skeptical about that read) or that there are layers to faith that Bergman is exploring.

One of the things that I tend not to like in these movies are women who chase after toxic men.  Ericsson kind of sucks.  But he sucks in a realistic way.  His wife died three years back.  He's not over it.  He's at a low point spiritually.  While Marta comes across as a perfectly lovely --if not low-self esteemed --woman who is interested in Ericsson, he makes his intentions pretty clear.  Again, we're kind of running into the narrative fiction personification of someone versus the real grounded reality of what it means to be in love.  But I find a lot of Marta's advances and confessions in poor taste.  I should be siding with Marta.  She makes a lot of good points.  But Ericsson makes himself clear that he does not want to pursue a relationship with her.  It doesn't matter if he's attracted to her.  There should be some understanding that some of his wishes may be conflicted.  But if he says clearly "I'm not interested", I don't know why that's not the end of that story.

My earnest wish is that I had more fun with this one.  I like it a lot.  But it's such a bummer movie.  I know.  I'm going into Bergman movies looking to have a good time.  I suppose maybe the notion that a cynical take on faith no longer seems revolutionary.  But for what it is, it really works.