Review of Winter Light (1963) by Mitch P — 15 Oct 2007

The best depiction in modern cinema of man's 20th century crisis of faith. Bergman's bleak existentialism is pitch perfect for the subject matter and the performances are uniformly fantastic. A true masterpiece among equals in the Bergman canon. This movie makes my all time top-ten list, and is probably my personal favorite Bergman. Bergman himself said it was the only film of his that he enjoyed. I certainly do not share Bergman's dislike for the rest of his body of work, but I too have always liked "Winter Light" as the best among equals. This film saw Bergman exploring for the first time not the mere crisis of faith - the questioning and doubting of God's existence and of life's meaning - but instead an embrace of the final abandonment of faith and the acceptance of a world without metaphysical meaning. "Winter Light" remains to this day one of the most profound and heartbreaking spiritual experiences of my life. To think that the medium for this experience was a motion picture speaks to so much of what film once was and can be again.

When I first saw the film, some three years ago, I was emerging from my own period of skepticism and doubt, and was ready to embrace for the first time the essential realities of my own mortality and the universe's callous indifference to my existence. In Bergman, I found a kindred soul, one who had gone through immense existential despair, but who had himself decided to find the small sweetness and beauty in the wonder of existence. "Winter Light" considers characters who have moved beyond spiritual doubt into the great unknown of a world without metaphysics. The response of one character to this world is pure tragedy. The response of another remains uncertain at the end of the film. And the response of yet another is to seek meaning in the uncertainties of love. Bergman's own response is implied in the humanism that colors the rest of his work. Seeing the film again earlier this summer, I was moved by how much the spiritual plight of the central character in the film paralleled my own life in recent years. And I was thankful to have Bergman as a guide as I continue my own journey into the uncertain.