Having finished all 44 of his feature films, I can say Bergman speaks my language. He gets at things that matter to me most, and does it in the most uncompromising, soul-searching of ways.
Disillusioned by religion, he always found a way to translate religious mythology into the language of existential-humanist philosophy. This is big for me, especially when so few spiritual filmmakers can effectively tow the line between faith and doubt, belief and disbelief, without pandering to one side over the other.
I'd never classify him as a religious filmmaker per se, but I would say he really understands how religious yearning can be cinematically reborn into a new secularized context, free of sentiment and creedal baggage.
His films…
Having finished all 44 of his feature films, I can say Bergman speaks my language. He gets at things that matter to me most, and does it in the most uncompromising, soul-searching of ways.
Disillusioned by religion, he always found a way to translate religious mythology into the language of existential-humanist philosophy. This is big for me, especially when so few spiritual filmmakers can effectively tow the line between faith and doubt, belief and disbelief, without pandering to one side over the other.
I'd never classify him as a religious filmmaker per se, but I would say he really understands how religious yearning can be cinematically reborn into a new secularized context, free of sentiment and creedal baggage.
His films are not object lessons for those who doubt. They're revelations for those who believe and those willing to confront the true challenges of faith, rather than glibly push them under the rug.
"Why can't I kill God within me?" the medieval knight asks Death in THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957) forms the strange foundational dynamic for how his films perfectly careen through sacred and profane hallways. They expose God's silence at the same time open on to something divine.
His worldview can often be profoundly dark and alienating, but never without a glimmer of the strangest kind of hope or insight.
In short, Bergman found a way to take all of life's grand paradoxes and poetically seal, reveal and conceal them in the most fascinating of ways. These were the ones that haunted him the most:
Life & Death
Light & Darkness
Hope & Despair
Love & Misery
Family & Careerism
Piety & Hypocrisy
Comedy & Tragedy
Faith & Doubt
God & Absence
