Bergman goes straight for the soul. 

A black pit immersion into godless isolation. A watershed moment in his career, in which he asked, again and again, why God remains so silent, mysterious, absent. 

Very few films can reach back to scripture and level the distance between the ancient and the contemporary, the mythical and the real, in ways that make you feel like the artist is reaching out through the screen and whispering, pleading for you to listen. This is one of those films.

Bergman is asking enormous questions here related to the fear of dying, and seems to long for answers that might never come. He’s sending out a distress call to escape the inevitable jaws of death, or at least is helping others buy time to escape the things that haunt, curse, and afflict them. 

It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to what an atheist’s prayer might look, feel, and sound like.

As the tired, disillusioned knight point blank tells Death himself:

“My indifference has shut me out. I live in a world of ghosts, a prisoner of dreams. I want God to put out his hand, show his face, speak to me. I cry out to him in the dark but there is no one there.”

With these words the film walks a razor’s edge. It examines the problem of evil, the absence of God, while teetering on the precipice of full-blown nihilism, at the same time pointing to a violent, corrupt humanity that has debased worship and beclouded divine goodness. 

It feels in every way the kind a film only a religious atheist could make, Bergman having wrestled with both poles throughout his life. In short, this is some of the most raw, metaphysical yearning ever to soulfully plague a cinema screen.

Bergman Ranked