Friday, November 02, 2007

Viskningar och rop (Cries and Whispers)

Ingmar Bergman, 1973
Starring Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullman, Kari Sylwan

Being my first Bergman film, Viskningar och rop (Cries and Whispers) holds a special place in my heart. It was a VCD copy Raphæl had gifted me. When I first watched it it seemed so confusing, the story seemed to pursue so many different directions. (I was naive back then: September 2005, and I hadn't seen many good films, excepting those by Andrei Tarkovsky). Today (Nov 03, 2007) I watched it again, and find it to be one of the best by Ingmar Bergman.1 It felt refreshing and wholesome (not least because I had got hold of a new copy) , the film revealed a focus and compactness that I had not felt two years ago.

I don't intend to take the film apart - quite a futile exercise, as Bergman is not technically sophisticated, preferring to say a story straight, and he concentrates on the human side (specialising in the feeling of guilt). He manages to pick holes in the most "bulletproof" vesture, and in this particular film the (spiritual) raiment is especially flimsy. In any case it simply doesn't pay to dissect a film in a way which was never intended by the maker of the film. What I feel to be the crux of the film is the awkward situation it puts the sisters in, the situation which is absurd precisely because religion is rashly called into play at a most inopportune moment. Religion is thrust upon the proceedings, and it fares poorly. We start from there, because that is where the film changes aspect (folding completely back on itself in the penultimate scene).


The Last Service
Midway through the film, we face the situation where the movie is delicately balanced, and Bergman puts the authenticity of Christianity to the test. It evolves through the priest's service at Agnes' deathbed.

The priest begins conventionally, with the following:
God, our Father, in His infinite wisdom...
has called you home to Him...
still in the bloom of your youth.
In your life He found you worthy...
of bearing a long and torturous agony.
You submitted to it patiently and without complaint...
in the certain knowledge that your sins would be forgiven..
through the death on the cross of your Lord, Jesus Christ.
May your Father in Heaven...
when you step into His presence...
have mercy on your soul.
May He let His angels remove from you the memory...
of your earthly pain.

At this point, as the priest falteringly delivers the service, himself doubting, and at times baffled by the seeming lack of reason to the entire situation, the shot pans across the faces of the sisters and the maid. The sisters are not believers, and they find the situation comically pitiful. The speech is distracted, shallow, and the religious verses seem much farther away from the human condition than can even be suspected. It seems mechanical, made-to-order, and awfully out of depth. Not only is it not helping, but it is making the mourners look comically out-of-place, as if they are indeed play-acting. Suddenly the priest comes to his senses, realising that he is manufacturing that stifling artificial mood himself. He comes to Agnes' side. The words he utters are personal, not from any book. It is from his heart, it is a call that is not answered. It falls on the deaf walls of human emptiness, but is refreshing nevertheless, and perhaps more agreeable and appropriate to Agnes:
Should it be...
that you gathered up our suffering in agony...
into your body.
Should it be you bore with you...
this hardship through death.
Should it be that you meet with God...
as you come to that other land.
Should it be that you find his countenance...
turned toward you then.
Should it be that you know the language to speak...
so this God may hear and understand.
Should it be that you then talk with this God...
and he hear you out.
Should it be so...
pray for us.

Agnes, dear child, please listen.
Listen to what I have to tell you now.
Pray for us who have been left in darkness...
left behind on this miserable Earth...
with the sky above us, grim and empty.
Lay your burden at God's feet...
the whole of all your suffering...
and plead with Him to pardon us.
Plead with Him that He may free us...
of our anxiety and of our weariness...
of our misgivings and fears.
Plead with Him that He may make...
sense and meaning of our lives.
Agnes, you who have borne...
your anguish and suffering so long...
are most surely worthy...
of advocating our cause.

We can immediately understand why the priest is moved, because we are ourselves moved. But there is another, personal reason, which he reveals:
"She was my confirmation child. We often had talks together through all these years. Her faith...was stronger than mine."
This confirms our suspicions. The priest is obviously thinking of his own death, which probably doesn't move him, but strikes him as significant: the whole of existence - even his, as a spokesman of God - is doomed to incomprehensibility. At this point, as well as anywhere else in the movie, we come to terms with the absurdity and meaninglessness of human existence.

And at that moment, probably everyone is thinking of death. The invalid has been in her deathbed for over 12 years2; everyone was expecting her to die. But when one takes so long to die, when death lives among you and finally does the inevitable, then it shocks us in a most subtle manner. We are not outraged, it doesn't strike us down, but somehow we find ourselves in a most ridiculous situation, and the piety of the deceased makes us all look like outsiders. This happens to the sisters, and they are thrown off-track. Karin - usually reserved and businesslike - loses her inhibitions and reveals to us why she came to be so; Maria - seemingly simple, friendless, and fragile - reveals her cheerfulness as quite hollow but finally comes on her own; the pious maid sees through the subterfuge, and, remaining an outside, she comprehends all there is to know. She alone probably does not think about death, but watches.

A Soul in Torment

This is the significant event which gives the film a different aspect and drives home Bergman's philosophy: you find your own peace.3 No matter how pious you are or libertine, you find it yourself. You find it not in others, but by suitably positioning yourself, so that only you can make your passage easy or difficult. And in the end, when it comes, nothing matters, least of all religion. The most kindly act a human being can perform is to be with the dying soul when it makes the final journey.

Anna hears the cries on the night after Agnes' death. Agnes's soul is in torment, she has things to settle with before her soul is delivered. By turns she calls her sisters. Karin is eager to go in, and fairly marches in - Karin has a score to settle, she despises Agnes, and says as much. She refuses even to hold her hand, she is repelled by Agnes, not by her death. (As in the rest of the movie, this action of Karin could also be a pose.) Even after she's dead, Karin's hatred is all-consuming, and she does not forget or forgive. (Somehow Karin sees Agnes as one of the reasons why she's so unhappy.)

When her turn comes, Maria is terrified - for she is a frivolous woman given to common pleasures, always doing things on the sly, cheating on her husband, cheating on herself, and with a lot of worthless secrets. She tries to bluff the dead woman, saying it reminds her of the time they spent as children. She gives herself away, because the incident she chooses to share is when they were both frightened when the twilight came as they were playing outside. Agnes puts her faith to the test and asks Maria to come closer. When she reluctantly comes closer, Agnes grips her with all the force she could muster. Maria screams and breaks free. Her professed love is proved to be hollow, quite like the everything else in the superficial life she is living.

Anna chooses to remain with the rejected dead sister. When Karin and Maria had composed themselves, they open the door to see Agnes peacefully lying on the lap of Anna, in a tableau of motherly love and companionship. The outsider had wedged herself in, there was nothing more to stay back for. Their sister had seen through them, and chosen a good companion before she left.4

Ending

At least one person comes through with her experience enriched and her soul not belittled: Anna. At least she has nothing to reproach herself for. At the end of the film, when Anna flips through the pages of Agnes' diary, we suddenly realize why she is genuine whereas the others are not. She alone realised5 that the sickly invalid was a living creature, needing the comforts and the warmth everyone else needed, and that she was also entitled to it as anyone else. Anna knew Agnes lived while she could, soaking up life and the sunshine as she went out with her sisters (who visited her but rarely), and carefully recording these occasions in her diary and treasuring it.

As Anna takes possession of the diary, she is also taking possession of the only life she had had. Her life was with Agnes, who was now dead, and that life of devotion and suffering - and observing the deepest torments at close quarters - had steeled her resolve and taught her all the things she knew about life and love and faith and death. It had taught her all there is to know. And with her death, Anna was effectively dead, and she realises it. As she would read the diary again and again, she lives that life again and again, the only life she knew and cherished. It is a life that has been rendered fruitful by her own devotion, and the fickleness and opportunism of Agnes' self-centred sisters.

Notes

1 Though, it must be said, I haven't watched many of his films in full. I have "browsed through" more than a dozen of his films, and it doesn't do justice to Bergman at all, but still I feel that this film is one of the best, when he was at the height of his powers. I have found some scenes in his acclaimed Smultronstallet and Det sjunde inseglet to be comical, when the intended meaning was something deeper and symbolic. I feel that his artifices all seem natural in this film, whereas in the other two, for example, they stick out like barn-poles.

2 Which probably explains her simplicity and her faith. The invalid's condition - and the inevitability of death - is a redeeming feature of her life. It endows her doomed life with meaning, and adds a sense of purpose and fullness to every little thing she manages to accomplish. Harriet Andersson has given a stunning performance.

3 All things considered - the language, the setting, the cinematographer, and the theme - I feel that Andrei Tarkovsky's Offret to be the best Bergman film ever made, but not made by Bergman. He has improved on Bergman in all respects in that film, which I also consider Tarkovsky's worst. (If the term 'worst' could be meaningfully applied to someone like Tarkovsky.)

4 The scene is perhaps reminiscent of Jesus' crucifixion. It is not an exact parallel, it is perhaps Bergman's version of a modern parallel.

5 Though it is her duty to tend to the invalid - she's paid to do so - she could have done it indifferently. Though colored by servitude, Anna stand in a much closer relationship with Agnes. Agnes depended on her absolutely for everything, and Anna depended on Agnes absolutely for her livelihood. Anyone else could have done it, but Anna was doing it, and with great devotion. She knew Agnes closely and shared her life completely.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

I hope to discuss some important films of the 20th Century in this film page. Especially, the works of these notable directors:
  • Andrei Tarkovsky
  • Sergey Eisenstein
  • Ingmar Bergman
  • Akira Kurosawa
  • Bernardo Bertolucci
  • Robert Bresson
  • Jean Renoir
  • Francois Truffaut
  • Orson Welles
  • David W Griffith
  • Krzysztof Kieslowski
  • Krzysztof Zanussi
  • Alfred Hitchcock
  • Stanley Kubrick
among others. I have already published a few blogs and reviews, so I shall be collecting these together. This page will serve probably as a guide, serving out relatively small-sized appreciations of master works.