The Evolving Ontology of Ingmar Bergman
It was early July on Fårö, an isolated island east of Sweden, stuck in the impasse of the Baltic Sea and home to Ingmar Bergman, the unchallenged master of Swedish cinema for the better part of the 20th Century. The weather that day was probably not unlike the unusually hot summer weather documented in his film Through A Glass Darkly, which was shot on the very same island in 1961. Fitting, then, that this was the film being discussed there forty-five years later at the annual Bergman Week festival.
Afterward, Bishop Lennart Koskinen of Visby took the stage to address the religious themes brought up by the film, but was interrupted from the audience by an uncharacteristically outspoken Ingmar Bergman, perhaps encouraged by a continuous week of unsung praise, led to inquire the specific and private ontological leanings of the Bishop, publicly. For his part, Koskinen replied that he did, in fact believe in God (which seems to offer him a minor dose of job security), which, of course, drove someone in the audience to turn the question back on Mr. Bergman himself- they had him this time! But Bergman stoically returned to his interrogator a steadfast belief that he would one day be reunited with his late wife Ingrid, and added a strange coda describing Christ as a “philosopher who gives testimony to the existence of other worlds, just as Bach does.”
It is entirely possible that Bergman was speaking in hyperbole, but his answer nonetheless caught the quickest ship out of Fårö and showed up on the doorsteps of Bergman’s most devoted followers around the world, who were dumbfounded that cinemas most outspoken Atheist seemed now to be at odds with himself and his rich body of work.
The reality, though, must be much more complex than that. For Bergman, the son of a stern, overbearing Lutheran minister, God was not the strict moral-compass illusion of Nietzsche, nor was He the American Midwest political creation of the late 20th century. Bergman’s God seemed much more complex- tied to his notions of fatherhood and love (or lack of love), or of guilt and shame. And while his films certainly paint a bleak picture of the transcendental, the fact that Bergman returned time and again to this idea, tells us as viewers that he had difficultly answering The Question for himself, even as his films seem a succession of failed attempts to do just that. Each film between 1957’s seminal The Seventh Seal and his self-described Faith Trilogy of 1961 deeply explores the confines of religious faith and doubt, often repeating not only themes, but lines of dialogue and setting.
By the 1970’s, Bergman had exhausted himself both creatively and emotionally, embittered by complacent critics and the deterioration of his relationship with Liv Ullmann, an event which led him to burn a small black cross into a door at his home on Fårö. After undergoing anesthesia for a minor operation, he claimed to at once finally and fully overcome his fear of death- perhaps because for once he was able to conceptualize and understand the literal state of not-being. These hours lost from his consciousness would prove to be some of the most important hours of his entire life. It is after this that Bergman started to effectively create a new ontology in his films- turning his ever watchful gaze from the heavens above to the people surrounding him- an ontology where “God” is within the connections we as humans make with one another- and He is either destroyed or manifested within us by the beauty and truth of our actions.
Bergman conducted an interview for Canadian television in 1970, apparently in the middle of this important shift in his focus. He appears emphatically confident throughout, seemingly encouraged by his recent discovery and interrupting his excellent English with the occasional Swedish word, as if his brain is working faster than his tongue. He repeatedly speaks of his chief desire, human contact, and offers mildly presumptuous advice for the modern church (which apparently needs to abandon the idea of God altogether). But most importantly he talks about art itself- its social utility, and the progress of his changing conceptions of it.
“At first you are very optimistic- you are building a cathedral, and then you are very pessimistic- you are inside of a snake. And then you just are…alive (2).”
This shift would mark the culminating peak of the questions Bergman asked throughout the fifties and sixties, but The God Question always seemed to rear its head one way or another until the end of his career. But clearly for Bergman, the path ahead was a convoluted and confusing one, and this process was ever changing. It is only in that fluid state that his evolving religiosity makes sense, and most importantly, humanizes him.
Building A Cathedral
(Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Magician, The Virgin Spring)
Ingmar Bergman emerged as a powerful force in European cinema from the most unlikely place- sitting on the toilet, reading of the success of an unnamed Swedish film at Cannes that year. The year was 1955 and the film was his own, Smiles of a Summer Night, submitted to the festival without his knowledge. Smiles was not unlike the films he had previously been making for the Svensk Filmindustri- a robust and boisterous comedy that kept a moderate distance from any pressing social insight, but stood as a tightly scripted and brilliantly shot piece of cinema. When Smiles was premiering, Bergman had ten years of experience under his belt, crafting light films that often dabbled in the dramatic-usually featuring actors and directors as characters, but mostly reflected the world around the young theatre director- a world finally apart from his unhappy childhood, one that must have seemed a lark to him at the time. With the arrival of The Seventh Seal in 1957, however Bergman began to flex muscles he had yet to use- taking advantage of the newfound artistic freedom awarded to him after the success of Smiles to begin addressing conflicts raging from within himself as opposed to conjured for the stage.
While The Seventh Seal found Bergman meditating on death (quite literally) and the search for God, many critics tend to overlook the film’s comedic elements that tie it together quite neatly with Smiles and his previous films. Max Von Sydow’s pensive yearning for Truth is balanced with Bergman’s inclusion of a group of traveling actors to soften the melodrama and provide fodder for Bergman’s tendency to rehash themes and character archetypes. And while many of the films most famous sequences have given the film an overwhelmingly bleak reputation, such as the brooding face of Bengt Ekerot as Death embodied or the dance he leads many of the characters on at the film’s conclusion, The Seventh Seal fits nicely in this early era of Bergman’s religious questioning.
It seems wholly appropriate that Bergman’s introduction to existential motifs begins on a beach that seems to exist out of time, almost as if the characters themselves were simply washed up out of the sea, wholly created and emblematic of two sides of Bergman himself, embodied by the religious yearning of Antonius Block, and the confident materialism found in his squire, Jöns. This newfound desire to attain truth informs this era of Bergman’s career with an ambitious focus on abstract ideas like truth, with Block’s pursuit of God in Seal, or the inner redemption sought by Isak Borg in Wild Strawberries and Töre in The Virgin Spring (It almost seems ironic that Töre, who finds redemption through an offering to God, would be played by Max Von Sydow, the same actor that was so abruptly scratching at His face in Seal.).
With a few minor exceptions, Bergman would never again revisit the archetypal the way he did in this period of his filmmaking, and if these notions seem ambitious, it clearly attests to the springing well of creativity that began to burst from within him. Even as Bergman begins to question God or allude to the damning emotional effects of His silence, these early characters remain steadfast in their devotion to an idea, or notions of purity, right, and wrong. Even those carrying deep human faults are easily forgiven by Bergman because of their quest toward these abstract ideas. The aforementioned Isak Borg from Wild Strawberries comes to mind here- as he sees the effects of his life’s failings spread bare, finding redemption only through his desire to be redeemed. This seems an extremely optimistic position, and one which attests to Bergman’s inability to tackle the idea of God head on.
The aesthetic similarities of these early films reflects much of Bergman’s evolving religious thought as well, utilizing a variety of locations, detailed and grandiose sets, and casts that often tripled the size of the production crews- ambitious yearnings from a filmmaker starting to experiment and express himself for the first time. The Seventh Seal seemingly roams the entirety of medieval Sweden, from the insides of local pubs to the most obscure forests, beaches, and far off castles. The Magician seems fascinated with the fantastical, giving Bergman yet another opportunity to write for a troupe of performers. Locations come and go in these early films, and while they can often be complicated, they are almost always completely linear, and abide neatly to act structures that Bergman must have been familiar with in the Theatre. These eager yearnings seem to mirror Bergman’s youthful interest in The Big Question, as if he were a twenty-something reading Kierkegaard for the first time and totally getting it, man.
Fischer’s cinematography attests to this ever evolving religious consciousness as well. With the exception of The Virgin Spring, Fischer was Bergman’s choice DP of the era, and created a series of films that look nothing like any of the other films in Bergman’s ouvre. If Bergman was trying to show his audience how he saw the world, then these films might suggest the world he saw had very little to do with the cold and bleak reality that he would explore with Sven Nykvist in the decades to come. It is as if Bergman had yet to truly grapple with the bleak reality of a world without God, so instead he would surround himself with an overlit, theatrical atmosphere, one suitable for conceptualizing the abstract notions swirling around in his consciousness.
But it is with Nykvist that Bergman enters this new era, leaving the ambitious refining of these early films, and opens the door to the most fruitful and prolific era of his career- instigated by looking back at that original burning Question, and finally addressing it head on. Interviewed on the set of The Virgin Spring in 1960, he began to look forward into his career, contextualizing his art as a form of “worship,” eerily echoing the words he would speak ten years later:
“Regardless of my own beliefs and doubts…I think that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship…Regardless of whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral (5).”
That cathedral’s foundation was about to be tested, however, and even Bergman had no idea what would be left standing once he started to tear holes in its walls.
Inside the Snake
(The Faith Trilogy, Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Shame, Passion of Anna)
Sven Nykvist gave Bergman a new vision with The Virgin Spring, and while the film was based off old an Swedish legend, Bergman decided he wanted to dive deeper into the religious questions the film rose with his new piece, entitled Through A Glass Darkly. His personal life was abundant with hope at this time as well- happily married to his wife Käbi and experiencing a rich and powerful love that began to seep into every aspect of his life, especially into old wounds he seemed to be trying to patch up. Inspired by this love, he set out to write a thematic sequel to The Virgin Spring, a smaller and economically filmed play where he could test and prove his new theory- God is love, and because love now seems so abundant, God must be real.
This mysticism quickly fell apart during the shooting of Glass, and Bergman began to realize his proof failed- if even he could not buy his own words, they must be in error. And although the film was awarded with an Oscar in the United States, Bergman’s gaze was fixated firmly on his next project- one where he would finally stare straight into the abyss without averting his gaze.
Winter Light was filmed in the bleak winter of Sweden’s Dalarna County, an environment not entirely alien to Bergman himself, who recounted traveling to congregations with his minister father as a child. His films often went through a lengthy and flummoxing writing period, but Winter Light is notable exception for a number of reasons, most notably- his shooting script is almost an entirely different film than his original outline for the story. In his production notes, Bergman writes of his core concept of the film- a minister locking himself up in a church, waiting for God to finally reveal himself. Here, Bergman almost becomes the minister himself, finally making the decision to devote every fiber of his being to tackle his most insecure doubts face to face. In Winter Light, as with his following film The Silence, which would push The Virgin Spring out of the trilogy, God is no longer tied to the abstract ideals of his youthful yearning. In fact, abstract and “higher” notions of truth and justice seem almost entirely absent. Instead, Bergman dissects his characters in front of the viewer’s eyes, piece by piece, until we are left with only one immutable truth that connects the three narratives together- a burning loneliness from within each protagonist. Karin, in Glass, sees God in disturbing and violent images, leaving her loved ones to grapple with an inability to actually communicate with her or each other. Winter Light gives us Tomas, Bergman’s minister, alone in a desolate and godless world, covered in snow and ice, devoid of human contact save for one solitary voice, seemingly inaudible to him. The Silence paints a grim portrait of the residual effects of Tomas’ narcissism and lack of human contact- giving the journey narrative a much different spin than Wild Strawberries, and placing his characters destination at a strange, inhuman town named Timoka, an Estonian word pertaining to “The Executioner.” If the films of the fifties constituted Bergman attempting to build a cathedral of religious understanding, these three certainly baptize the sixties as Bergman’s bleakest, where that understanding is destroyed completely, and each spire of his cathedral at once appears as a rib from within the belly of the snake.
It is here that Bergman’s output transforms from a complex questioning of God and Being into an awareness of human interaction- but his journey would still be a long one. For although these films shadow the Humanistic undertones of his seventies films and focus on relationships and notions of personal identity, an underlying current of The Big Question still runs deep within each script.
Persona and Hour of the Wolf deeply explore notions of identity in a seemingly complex and hostile world- specifically, one without the comprehensible moral anchor of a knowable God. And while the characters depicted in these films look to each other for comfort and salvation, the overwhelming and buckling force of reality itself is enough to fully break them, and trite notions of love are not powerful enough to bring Elizabeth Vogler back to sanity in Persona or save Johan Borg from unraveling down the spires of shame in Hour of the Wolf. Interestingly, Bergman gives his character of Borg a haunting, Jungian vision of manifested repression, ever waiting as a little man from some place like Borg’s closet door, waiting to return to him tenfold. The emotional baggage Bergman carried within himself from his early childhood as a minister’s son must have appeared to Bergman like this image- and for the duration of the film, he gives Borg absolutely no escape or reprieve from these inner demons manifested externally. Shame and The Passion of Anna both follow this same concept, where a couple’s life together (played by Max Von Sydow and Bergman’s muse Liv Ullmann in both films) is dramatically and violently destroyed from the inside out by external forces seemingly beyond their control.
These films constitute the darkest period of Bergman’s work, and sit in deep contrast to the warm character studies he was so accustomed to in the fifties. The arrival of Nykvist as DP fit perfectly with Bergman’s changing ethos, and the two were inseparable for the rest of their careers- deftly combining a mutually shared artistic vision. In the sixties, Bergman’s world was extremely cold and starkly naturalistic- the two expunged Fischer’s love of theatre lights and replaced it with the shy face of the Scandinavian sun. Bergman shot at night more in this period. This all seems to echo the dark insecurity of this period in his life, one where he has managed to destroy the notion of the traditional Christian God, but is left with the unruly task of trying to find a foundation upon which to rebuild his conception of reality. As he probes into his actors subconscious, he even starts to move the camera obtrusively into their personal space, filling the entire screen with nothing more than a face, or framing shots with odd angles from non traditional camera positions, even letting speaking roles exist off screen. By using an active camera, Bergman makes it clear that his raison d’être is within these people themselves, not with a choreographed and blocked morality play, filmed with a passive camera. It also suggests that with an inward gaze, his search for God and meaning has found a new home apart from the lofty abstraction of his younger days- toward the confines of the human condition.
Alive
(Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage, Autumn Sonata, Fanny and Alexander, Saraband)
In 1970, when Ingmar Bergman sat down with Canadian television to recount the past years of his life and his artistic achievement, he appeared to be a completely different person than the insecure artist of the past decade. His experience under anesthesia helped him to conquer his fear of death and meaninglessness, and he seemed ultimately at peace with the world around him- surprising coming from the mouth of the man who had, ten years previously, thrown a camera in Gunnar Björnstrand’s face, crying, “God…my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Just as Sven Nykvist’s arrival echoed Ingmar Bergman’s growing religious pessimism, the arrival of color film stock to Bergman’s catalog reflected a sharp turn in material realism- all the more ironic considering it’s difference from black and white photography. While Passion was Bergman’s first color piece, it was not until Cries and Whispers that he utilized this new tool to its full advantage, even superseding the results of other directors who had more experience with the film stock. Cries echoes the bleak human interactions that Shame and Passion had suggested, but for the first time, Bergman keeps the story grounded solely in the confines of the world the characters create. For while the films of the sixties ultimately focused on the outward force of a godless or meaningless universe inflicting misery onto his characters, Cries remains interested only in the effect the sisters have on one another, as if they are the only tangible forces within their universe. And like Seal, death is waiting fervently behind the corner. But this is a different world, one where emotional and interpersonal redemption shouts for attainment before death’s advance, where Seal focused only on Block’s inner existential redemption.
Scenes From a Marriage and Autumn Sonata followed Cries, and further attested to Bergman’s growing humanistic bent. If he found confidence that God is not above by looking within his characters, his gaze in this period remains firmly planted inside, more fascinated by the idiosyncrasies of his characters, the damaging effects of their selfishness, and the poisonous result of unreturned love. This focus seems all the more clear when imagining Bergman emerging from out of the belly of the snake of his doubt, reborn and left to face the world with nothing but his own life and work in his hands. He is, as he says, just alive. So he begins to find his hope in others.
This is not to say Scenes and Sonata are optimistic films. Both are concerned thematically with relationships crumbling from the inside out, plagued by one character’s inability to return love given to them. This theme began in the faith trilogy, but becomes his primary and driving concern in this decade- because those relationships are, to Bergman, all we have.
This narrative thread continues throughout the rest of Bergman’s career as a filmmaker. But its culminating peak ends with Fanny and Alexander (1982), the director’s emblematic return to Sweden after years in self imposed exile. Fanny and Alexander at once seems a tightly organized and linear summary of Bergman’s entire career- opening with a rambunctious first act filled with the gaudy sexuality of Bergman’s early days, a sparse and titan second act flirting with religion and the effects of dogmatic thought not unlike the faith trilogy, and finally an opulent and mysterious third act, dealing with strange twists of reality that hold close shades to Persona. But importantly, Bergman addresses religion and the faithful throughout Fanny and Alexander in much a different way than he had previously. Instead of being the harbinger of all doubt and shame, the longstanding religious traditions that so threaten his protagonists seem ultimately weak and archaic, crumbling apart under the power of a mother’s love for her children. Their faults are human faults- the Bishop seems at first terrifying and powerful, but ends up rolling around the floor like a child, frozen in the fear that he would never be loved- even though he cannot truly give his wife that same love (yet again, the same theme). Through Bishop Vergerus, Bergman seems to have finally put his years of religious shame and doubt into one easy symbol, and he burns it alive in the high towers of a dreary and lifeless castle.
But Bergman is not one to be easily put into a box. Atheists assuredly were eager to claim Bergman as one of their own until his comments at Bergman week on Fårö in 2005. Yet it seems apparent that Bergman has simply replaced his faith in the otherworldly within the Human consciousness, finding a sort of “God Within,” as he describes in the same interview with Canadian television he brought his snake/cathedral metaphor. And by 2003, the last stage of Bergman’s evolving religious consciousness seems utterly apparent. Facing death, that grim spectre he once feared so greatly, Bergman stands from within his humanistic ontology to give us one of his most upsetting and pathetic creations- Henrik, played effortlessly by Björe Ahlstedt. Henrik longs for the communion found within Bergman’s new clean ontology, but cannot let go of his daughter, the one person he loves more than life itself. It might be a love that fills the void of his dead wife, but ultimately, it seems a new archetype for Bergman, and an extremely interesting one to focus on so late in his career, facing death as he was.
There might be some of Bergman’s regret over his life within Henrik. As a director that put parts of himself within each of his characters, it is not a far stretch to assume that Henrik’s self-loathing and insecurities might reflect some of Bergman’s own through his life- possibly losing faith in the clean cut and easy validations that “love” bring us.
Sitting in the audience that day, Bergman probably felt Bengt Ekerot’s Deathly presence looming close behind him- how could a man so easily go to the grave peacefully, after such years of extreme and utter torment? No matter what- even his latter-day flirtations with the otherworldly attest to the fact that Ingmar Bergman was always reaching beyond himself, at whatever state he found himself in. His hand often grasped different notions and paths of thinking, but he was never content to remain complacent.
