Review of Winter Light (1963) by Simeon D — 24 Nov 2010

After watching The Seventh Seal and La Strada, I urged myself to step deeper into the realm of European cinema. But how to begin? I had 8 1/2, La Avventura, and Through a Glass Darkly lined up on a table, and this one looked like an easy one to start out with. I was originally persuaded to see this while reading the Pulitzer Prize winning novel "A Confederacy of Dunces", where the main character mentions a Swedish film about a preacher who loses his soul; which he heard was quite good. Out of the four movies, Winter Light was the shortest, and so I decided to watch it. Here's what I though:

Winter Light is a Swedish film directed by Igmar Bergmann, the director of The Seventh Seal, and it builds off of the same theme and philosophy as the latter. That idea being "God is not tangible, hence he does not exist". In The Seventh Seal, that philosophy is shown through an imaginative and crafty medieval story, but here it's shown through a very small scale character piece. It seemed like there wasn't much of anything new that was added onto the whole concept of having an existentialist crisis, and in a whole it simply reiterated everything that happened in The Seventh Seal, just without the creativity.

Gunnar Bjornstrand stars as a preacher who has lost his faith in God. Over the course of a day, he finds that he must convince a man (Max Von Sidow) of the existence of God, argue with his lover (Ingrid Thulin) about his feelings towards existence, and battle the flu. The central focus is on the preacher, who you can tell, in the beginning as he's giving a sermon, that he has something on his mind which makes him uneasy. After the sermon he sort of awkwardly states that he doesn't believe in God, and from there he finds himself tormented with that thought. The ending (not to give anything away) was extremely abrupt and anything but satisfying. It's a very quiet, small, uneventful character piece that relies heavily on Bjornstrand's acting. He delivers some visible inner turmoil, and appears to be scolding everything. He seemed unfamiliar with any other emotions, which matched his character, but almost to an inhuman extent. Max Von Sidow doesn't do much and acts very timid. Ingrid Thulin gives an all-out performance that dominates the screen and captures the essence of the film.

On a technical standpoint, I was surprised at how utterly dull and dreary everything was. The nearly the entire film took place in a church and consisted of several characters delivering monologues, and that being said; Bergmann's camera-work did manage to do a lot with very little; though there wasn't anything visually poignant, the frequent use of close-ups, angles, shadows, and detailed scenery made it a compelling experience. To add to this atmosphere, there isn't a musical score or any yelling, so the entire film is very quiet. If you're prone to falling asleep while watching films, then I definitely would not recommend this. This dismalness brings me onto my next point:

The films starts out very slow, and it continues that pace until the very end, and I have to say: it bugged me. The existential crisis was somewhat predictable and there were no philosophical points made that made me gasp. In a sense I could say that it was "though-provoking", but everything said in Winter Light is covering ground already tread on by The Seventh Seal. One thing I do have to praise Bergmann on is the tension: every character seems to be suppressing some hidden scar, and then when they finally burst with confession, it describes their character perfectly. The silent atmosphere, the close-ups, the deep performances, and the glacial pace all benefit this aspect of the film, and in that light make Winter Light succeed.

Igmar Bergmann's bleak and depressing character piece about a preacher without faith in God is artistically resonate and obtusely paced, and is with a subtle existentialist wrath. 78/100.