The first part of the trilogy, Through a Glass Darkly takes its title from a biblical reference "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." There in begins the first clue to the films theological aspirations. A minimalist chamber piece like only Bergman could write and direct. With a cast of four, a singular island bond location, a lean tightly bound screenplay which finished the film at just eighty-six minutes in length. Through a Glass Darkly like so much of Bergman’s work, capitalises on the potential simplicity of film, a simplicity which is often what provides much of the films power. The plot surrounds Karin, played by Harriet Anderson she is a young woman recently returned from hospital due to a mental illness which we assume is Schizophrenia although it is never explicitly stated as such. Her older husband Martin played by Max Von Sydow has fallen even deeper in love with since she’s fallen ill, his pity for her has increased his affection, or perhaps her altered and unpredictable mental state makes her more attractive to him. Her brother Minus played by Lars Passgard, in his first film appearance, is but a seventeen year old adolescent, becoming increasingly sexually aware. He lives with Karin and Martin on the island. As well as Karin returning from the hospital, their father, David, played by Gunnar Bjornstrand, also returns home after spending an extended period in Switzerland, he’s tried to escape the pain of his wife’s death and knowing that Karin has inherited her mother’s disorder. Although he promised last time he left that he’d stay for good upon his return, David has already planned his next trip, much to the dismay of his children. David is continually frustrated as a writer, he’s never had his creative breakthrough, and as Martin points out to him, this is in part because he’s never written the truth, he’s tried, but its always been filtered. David carelessly confesses in his diary that the he is compelled to write about Karin’s illness to track its progress for a potential theme for his next book, “to use her” as he puts it. Martin and Karin discover David’s morally dubious desire which leads to Martin criticising him about the clinical way he approaches his daughter’s problems. David believes that God is love, and that love is God, since the death of his wife and the worsening state of his daughters mental health, he has fled from his responsibilities and felt a massive void in his life, this void can only be filled with love, but the question then becomes if God is love and love is God and there is no love to be found which do you look for, God or love? Bergman makes a comment about this philosophical question: “A God descends into a human being and settles in her. First he is just an inner voice, a certain knowledge, or commandment. Threatening or pleading. Repulsive yet stimulating. Then he lets himself be more and more known to her, and the human being gets to test the strength of the god, learns to love him, sacrifices for him, and finds herself forced into the utmost devotion and then into complete emptiness. When this emptiness has been accomplished, the god takes possession of this human being and accomplishes his work through her hands. Then he leaves her empty and burned out, without any possibility of continuing to live in this world. That is what happens to Karin. And the borderline that she crosses is the bizarre pattern on the wallpaper. Through a Glass Darkly was a desperate attempt to present a simple philosophy: God is love and love is God. A person surrounded by love is also surrounded by God. That is what I… named ‘conquered certainty’. The terrible thing about the film is that it offers a horrendously revealing portrait of the creator and the condition he was in at the start of the film, both as a man and as an artist.” (P279) The other contradiction for David is that God has taken away in part what he loves and so without his wife and daughter, and detached from his son, how can he love again? David hopes that God and love are one and the same, it is the only solace he has in his ugly hollow existence. How can those around him pursue love when they are preoccupied with dilemmas of mental illness, early hormonal lust, or creative purity? Jesse Kalin comments about how distance is used by David to avoid the emptiness of these questions, in the book The Films of Ingmar Bergman: “Having been abandoned and left alone, we try to fill the silence with distractions – with the sensualism of sex and one-night stands and affairs, for instance… Such promiscuity keeps life going, while the distance kept from others ensures that one is safe from another abandonment. It is this distance that is important, life without contact. This is what David’s career as a writer is to him in Through a Glass Darkly – a life somewhere else with words and publishers that substitutes for trying to live with a “hopeless” wife and daughter. In these examples, intimacy is deflected, and one becomes preoccupied with something, almost anything, in order to avoid confronting any further the emptiness and loneliness into which one has been plunged.” (P9) Bergman through these films wants to find an answer to the question of the silent God, the absent God. Bergman wrestled with faith though his entire life and these films illustrate his sincere attempts to tackle the topic in all it magnitude. This not simply done through David alone, Karin’s take on faith and God is equally important, there is an empty dilapidated room in their house where Karin hears voices from behind the crumbling wall paper, Bergman sometimes presents this subjectively, we hear what Karin hears, this remains one of Bergman’s most unsettling and disturbing scenes in any of his films, but at other times we are presented an objective perspective and we see Karin talking to the wall but we hear no voices, we see no faces and in many respects this is even more disturbing than when we do hear the voices, raising questions about what they might me telling her? She rives in sexual pleasure when there is no one there that we can see, and no one is touching her, she is not even touching herself. Karin believes that God will arrive in this room, he will come through a door that leads nowhere, we don’t see God when he arrives, but Karin describes him as a stony faced spider, who climbs over her body and tries to penetrate her. This is the God that Bergman fears, the spider God being an image from one of his dreams, an arachnid, cold, silent and volatile. The scene of God’s attempted rape of Karin is perfectly performed by Harriet Anderson, her terror is totally believable, Anderson harnesses Karin’s fear and miraculously when there is nothing tangible to play off. Bergman’s earlier film Summer With Monika was Anderson’s break through as the unstable titular role but Through a Glass Darkly proved her strength to an even greater extend.
Through a Glass Darkly, is a restrained posing of theological questions, questions which it does not answer directly, it is unremittingly bleak with the exception of the films final scene which contains a kernel of hope for the future. Jesse Kalin considers the final scene of Through a Glass Darkly to be a continuation of Bergman’s 1950’s examinations of rebirth: “It continued to maintain the vision of the 1950s and reaffirmed a world in which the personal quest for rebirth and significance. Through a Glass Darkly is firmest in this regard (though, in retrospect, perhaps most desperate as well) and holds out at least the possibility of healing in David’s attempt to speak to his son and Minu’s joy.” (P114) The minimal cast of characters and the sombre and somewhat sober tone of the film is matched by every part of the films aesthetic. The music is restrained to the opening scene and a brief moment in the middle of the film, it is a subdued piece from a string section that hints at Bergman’s melancholy but never gets close to emotionally manipulative. The film’s look is dictated by two major factors, location and time of year, the Barren Island, dilapidated house and boat act as signifiers for Bergman’s take on modern spirituality, empty and broken. All three films share a similar empty bleakness, but none are as depressingly and paradoxically beautiful as the island in Through a Glass Darkly. Anderson’s performance is mesmerising, she effortlessly slips from coherent to outright hallucinatory madness, we never see the change within her, we never realise when the change has occurred but little signs, things she says and does, indicate her state of mind which frequently reverts. Bergman himself made this comment about the character, and his gradual approach to her insanity: “I thought I’d make a film about someone who floated quite naturally in and out of some wallpaper, and I must have seen Harriet Andersson before me as just that person. I saw a little door in the wall. Through this door she entered another world and then came out again. She lived quite happily in both worlds, but gradually the real world, the world of chairs and tables became more and more unreal to her and the other world progressively took over. That was my starting point. My idea must have been that she would suddenly be transformed into the faces in the wallpaper and disappear into its pattern.” (P227) Gunnar Bjornstrand’s performance as the absent patriarch David, is also worthy of note, an exceptionally strong performer, Bjonstrand conveys David’s emotional immaturity and fear of the history repeating itself, after David is chastised by his children for wanting to leave Sweden again he leaves the dinner table, hides in the house and breaks down into tears. This scene is one of the most emotionally effecting of the entire trilogy and it is no mean feat that Bjonstrand managed to out do his performance of David in Through a Glass Darkly with his next role in Winter Light. M.Dawson |
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At some point during Bergman’s career he referred to three of his films as a trilogy, The Faith Trilogy also known as The God and Man trilogy or the God’s silence Trilogy. Later in his career he denied having ever made such a cataloguing of his works, stating that the films were not a trilogy at all. The uncertainly about the trilogy’s name is indicative of the doubt around their connection. Whether they are or they are not a trilogy, one thing is certain, the three films when viewed together complete a compelling examination on the nature of faith, and the trouble of believing in a silent God in a post World War II Europe. The connections between the films are strictly thematic, indeed some actors play more than one role in the trilogy and there are no crossovers in terms of character and or location. Like Park Chan Wook’s Vengeance trilogy which was actually unintentional, Bergman’s faith trilogy and the mere fact of its existence speaks of concepts both theological, ideological and philosophical that Bergman was wrestling with at the time. The films are as follows, Through A Glass Darkly, released in 1961, Winter Light released in 1962 and finally The Silence released in 1963. Bergman wrote and directed all three films and would go on to direct numerous other excellent feature films and TV movies in the 1960’s, the decade which would later be considered by many to be strongest years. But of all the films he wrote and directed in that ten year period, The Faith Trilogy and in particular Winter Light were of the finest films he’d ever make.
Through a Glass Darkly’s edgier, riskier material comes in the form of an implied incestuous relationship between Minus and Karin, Minus becomes increasingly frustrated by exposure to her flirtatious alter egos, she sunbathes half naked in front of him, and they constantly hold hand and share uncomfortably close personal space, Minus is caught reading pornography by Karin, an act for which he feels ashamed, like he’d been caught by a lover instead of a sister, and in a play they put on for their returning father they do in fact play potential lovers like a fantasy projection onto the stage. When this relationship reaches its climax in a cinematically beautiful wrecked boat on the coast of the island, rain pours into the under cabin where the two embrace, a baptism for Karin perhaps as it is cruelly at this point that she regains some semblance of cogence and returns to reality enough to beg her father to send her away forever, she can’t live in both worlds any longer, she must choose one.
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