The Silence

I saw my first Ingmar Bergman film a little more than a month ago. I then proceeded to watch a lot more. I stuck to the drama rather than the comedy and mostly to stuff recommended to me. So granted I might have gotten a slice of the great and missed all the mediocre. But his films are filled with these great contrasts of faith and doubt and often a profound sadness with just the barest moments of redemptive hope that seems just about right. Still I guess no director can have a perfect track record.

The Silence is the third in Bergman's so called trilogy of faith. Through A Glass Darkly and Winter Light were both dark chamber pieces. The former ended on a tone of optimism: god is love. The latter ended on a tone of pessimism: a priest giving a sermon to an empty church. The Silence could also be said to be a chamber piece. It follows two sisters as they travel and stop at a hotel because one of them is sick.

Ester (Ingrid Thulin) is a translator and an intellectual who is slowly dying. Her sister, Anna (Gunnel Lindblom), is her more hedonistic sister. The two are clearly not close and the only thing that seems to keep them cordial is Anna's son. The film just follows each of them for periods of time as they interact in the hotel. There are a some other characters who show up such as a troupe of dwarfs and a hotel porter who can only communicate in charades due to a language barrier.

I basically think that was the plot. I confess this movie was hard to watch. Long, long scenes punctuated by no sound except the ambient sound of the room. Seriously one lasted almost 7 minutes with just the sound of a train. I was tired and tried to watch it several days ago and just fell asleep. Once I was fully awake several days later, I wish I had fallen asleep.

Bergman's characters are often symbolic but that works in a tale of religion or morality. In a film designed to not even talk about religion it honestly just comes off as pretentious and heavy handed. Not that the film isn't flooded with Bergman's characteristic good performances and at times amazing visuals but this time the story just bore me to no end. Bergman is more interesting when he is struggling with faith even if he is more miserable.