A Swedish pastor fails a loving woman, a suicidal fisherman and God.
冬之光, Luz de Invierno, De Avondmaalsgasten, The Communicants, Les Communiants, Kış Işığı, 겨울 빛, ضوء الشتا, Talven valoa, Luci d'inverno, Los comulgantes, 冬日之光, Licht im Winter, Úrvacsora, Luz de Inverno, Goście Wieczerzy Pańskiej, Причастието, Причастие, Hosté večeře Páně, Χειμωνιάτικο φως, Luz de invierno, 冬の光, Els combregants, אור בחורף, Oaspeții împărtășaniei, Armulaualised, Зимове світло / Причастя, Зимско светло
Sweden15 Stockholm 
Denmark15 Sweden15 
Germany16 
FinlandK-16 
PortugalM/12 
France France 
Greece 
Netherlands12 
USA Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Netherlands Portugal Sweden USA 
"Suffering is incomprehensible,
So it needs no explanation."
And neither does this film.
It shouldn't be explained.
It should be experienced.
Possibly Bergman's finest.
A cinematic crisis of faith.
That letter.
Those eyes.
I am going to ramble until I make sense of my thoughts on this:
It is no coincidence, I think, that the one person in this film to have a deeper understanding of Jesus and his own faith does so through open compassion. Algot, who is apparently physically disabled, dismisses the physical pain of Jesus in favor of the spiritual and emotional pain of being abandoned, citing it as the more severe form of pain suffered during the Passion. His insight into Jesus' suffering is in contrast to the faithless and broken Tomas, who has failed (in a manner that is, to me, a personally devastating manner) to reach out with compassion to anyone (in the course of the film).…
Local pastor having an existential crisis while simultaneously being an asshole for 80 minutes, a great way to spend your time if you want to feel miserable. Shit rocked
While Schrader's film was heavily influenced by this I think they're on two completely different pages. For one, this doesn't have a magical mystery tour. Secondly, I'm tired and am gonna go to bed, actually.
Lying beneath the arches and mosaics of the moderately decorated architecture, the dusty half empty pews, and the flooded natural sun leaking down over the congregation is a clandestine struggle quietly waging war within us. In a Bergman film, this is merely setting the stage.
Winter Light is an example of a perfect film, at least in the Bergman vocabulary sense. For a film designed almost in a theatrical concept for its minimalism, it remains largely cinematic, and achieves a great deal over the course of a hour in real time and only an afternoon in film time. In the space between morning congregation and afternoon ceremonies, the lives of a small group of individuals is tested in the most…
“It’s a hideous parody when you ape her.”
“I never knew her.”
the issues of man conflated with the issues of God. spending your life praying for something you don’t believe in, a fate worse than hell. a film haunted by the silence.
God is going. Winter Light is a very personal film for Ingmar Bergman, whose father was a priest. It's a very small scale film, even for Bergman, but about the largest of all things: God and creation itself. Made in the 1960s, Winter Light slots into an era when Bergman spent years making thematically connected films, as opposed to the somewhat unpredictable genre jumping of his late 50s output (religious - The Seventh Seal, social realist - Brink of Life, historical - The Magician, sentimental drama - Wild Strawberries). Winter Light is the middle and best of Bergman's Silent God Trilogy (or Faith Trilogy), and grapples with faith on a very powerful individual level.
Scandinavia, like much of Europe, has turned increasingly secular…
Bergman really evokes existential dread and the human condition like no one else
There is a dog named "Jim" in this movie. That's weird right?
89/100
As the light reaches in through the windows, those who pray cower in their respective pews. Although the sun shines, everyone understands that the outside world is one of shivering bitterness and modern gasps of fear. Clinging, clinging, clinging to someone who will listen, quietly hoping for a reply within the shattered chambers of the church. The silence gives way to hardened spouts of regret and anguishing periods of hopelessness, but then again, does that even matter when one still happens to listen and the snow continues to descend?
“If there is no God, would it really make a difference? Life would become understandable. What a relief. ... Cruelty, loneliness and fear – all of these would be straightforward and understandable. Suffering is incomprehensible so it needs no explanation."
*
"I’m tired of your loving care, your fussing, your good advice, your candlesticks and table runners. I’m fed up with your shortsightedness, your clumsy hands, your anxiousness, your timid displays of affection. You force me to occupy myself with your physical condition – your poor digestion, your rashes, your periods, your frostbitten cheeks. Once and for all I have to escape this junkyard of idiotic trivialities."
We all look for a meaning in life, when we do not find it in different places, we begin to doubt our own beliefs, and this film by the majestic Ingmar Bergman delves into this subject like no one else, the existential themes and the search for meaning in a seemingly indifferent world is demonstrated in each frame. Philosophically, I would say that the film particularly explores themes of existentialism, but also the silence of God and the human struggle with faith. Reflect on the condition we live in, the nature of suffering, and the absence of clear answers to such deep questions. The way the film contemplates the confrontation of the individual with the emptiness and the search for…
