Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel)

Bergman on the set with cameraman Sven Nyqvist (left)

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY (Såsom i en spegel)                    A                    

Sweden  (89 mi)  1961 d:  Ingmar Bergman

It’s so horrible to see your own confusion and understand it.

―Karin (Harriet Andersson)

A film that explores the frail hopelessness of the human condition, particularly as society veers away from the help and sustenance of God, as standing on one’s own in the face of a bleak reality can be a cold and isolating existence, cut off from the world around them, as if left on an island, with no shelter from the storm.  This frightening reality grows darker and even more intense when viewed through the lens of mental illness, specifically schizophrenia, as one is drawn into real and unreal worlds, unable to distinguish between them, leaving others helpless in their utter futility to rescue those afflicted from their inner demons.  Curiously, the film is dedicated to Bergman’s wife, Käbi Larete, a concert pianist who was friends with Bartok and Stravinsky, though it provides one of the most extraordinary performances in any Bergman film, allowing Harriet Andersson (away from working class roles) to literally distinguish herself in ways few had ever seen before, baring her soul for cinema in an unflinching depiction of a mental breakdown, much of it described as it’s happening, offering a window to her soul, allowing viewers to see into the unknowable.  At the time, few films touched upon this subject, and fewer still did so with any degree of reflection, like THE THREE FACES OF EVE (1957), where actress Joanne Woodward won an Academy Award for playing a character with a multiple personality disorder, as others accentuated the crude treatment methods, including electro-shock treatments and even lobotomies, as in SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER (1959), an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, whose older sister Rose was diagnosed with schizophrenia at a young age, eventually subjected to a lobotomy.  In a Bergman film, it’s less reality based and more theatrically constructed, where a dysfunctional family environment contributes to the episodic reaction that slowly unravels before our eyes.  The first in the director’s Faith Trilogy that explores the implications of the absence of God, acknowledging human limitations in our ability to see clearly, delving into an existential void of despair, passionate in a preoccupation with deeply personal problems, this is less religious than overtly confessional, where precious secrets are continually revealed, with a family on holiday at a secluded island home, beautifully capturing the long Scandinavian summer days, with radiantly lit close-ups of faces (a predecessor to Persona), adding up to an extremely intimate chamber drama elegantly shot by Sven Nykvist, who he would work with for the rest of his career, the first Bergman film shot on Fårö Island, home to approximately 500 permanent residents, offering a rugged and distinctive landscape in a remote location that would become the setting of future films like Persona (1966), Shame (Skammen) (1968), The Passion of Anna (1969), and SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE (1973), as well as his permanent home for the next forty years (while keeping an apartment in Stockholm until 2003), building an expansive estate on the island (that remains open to artists and scholars after his death, Application – The Bergman Estate on Fårö), offering a sense of peace, inspiration, and freedom.     

Winning an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1962, the film opens to the music of a Bach Sarabande from his Cello Suite No. 2, Pablo Casals - 4. Sarabande from Cello Suite No.2 in D minor, BWV ... (YouTube 4:04), which plays intermittently throughout, as four characters are seen coming out of the sea, like a ritualized baptism, or a sense of renewal that offers a glimpse of hope, in stark contrast to the Dance of Death that it resembles at the end of The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) (1957).  Apparently invigorated from a morning swim in the Baltic Sea, we are quickly introduced to David (Gunnar Björnstrand), a mediocre novelist living with his two children, Karin (Harriet Andersson, taking the director’s mother’s name) and younger brother Minus (Lars Passgård), also including Martin (Max von Sydow), Karin’s husband who is a physician, each one fascinated by Karin’s psychic meltdown (like an accident where one can’t look away), drawn to her, wanting to help, yet each must face their own personal torment when realizing all outpourings of love can’t stop her mental decline.  The barren island reflects the emotional sterility of David, a self-absorbed writer who sacrifices a commitment to his children by hiding behind his work, acting as if his career is more important, but really it’s just easier for him to avoid communication with his children, which has major implications.  As David and Martin set out the morning fishing nets from a small boat, Martin confesses his increasing desperation with Karin, whose prognosis from a recent confinement in a sanatorium for schizophrenia was not good, fearing he was losing her, that she may be incurable.  Karin, however, is alert and vibrant, teasing her younger brother about his raging hormones and growing sense of alienation, especially from his aloof father, feeling they never have a conversation, as he’s always away on some work related assignment, having just returned from Switzerland, yet he’s heading off again for Yugoslavia.  What was supposed to be a celebratory dinner honoring his return quickly deteriorates in disappointment.  However, the kids liven things up performing a Shakespearean-style costume drama, a story-within-a-story that Minus wrote about sacrificing one’s ambitions for immortality.  While it’s cleverly amusing, literally blindfolding their father before the performance, with eye-opening suggestions that he may have fallen short of his ambitions, yet it playfully displays an artistic side of the family, with David feigning approval though he rightfully believes it consciously targets his own self-delusion as a writer.  At bedtime, Karin avoids Martin’s tender advances, which appears to be a matter of routine, as Martin’s patient devotion to her is unquestioned, yet she feels closer to her father than her husband, as if her father is in some way connected to the divine.  Karin awakes early, drawn to the attic where she hears voices behind the wallpaper, remaining ambiguous whether or not she is actually ill, yet clearly she is affected, claiming her illness makes her hearing more acute, picking up on sounds that others can’t hear.  Visiting her father in his study, after a hug he puts her to sleep on the couch, but steals away afterwards with Minus to go fishing, leaving Karin alone, exploring the contents of his desk, where she finds a journal that appears to push her over the edge, as he has written:  “Her illness is hopeless, but with occasional periods of lucidity.  I have long surmised it, but the certainty nevertheless is insufferable.  To my horror I discover my curiosity.  The compulsion to register the progress, concisely to note her gradual dissolution.  To utilize her.”

Bergman’s trilogy presents a male-dominated world in which women are silent, or forced into submission, viewed as sexual objects, yet routinely ignored otherwise.  Part of the problem for Karin, and for women in general, is that they are treated as if they have an affliction and are not listened to, as if there’s an excuse not to take them seriously.  Yet this is a breakthrough film, in some regard, as what Karin has to say is infinitely more compelling and heartfelt than anything either adult man offers in this film, yet she’s not even viewed as the lead character, which would be her father David, as the story actually revolves around him and his human shortcomings.  In this sense, he is a mirror image of Antonius Block in The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet), as the Crusader’s search for God is as futile as David’s search for artistic perfection.  Both are doomed to fail, yet David’s sins are even more egregious as he uses his daughter’s schizophrenia as material for his next book, not only neglecting her in the process, allowing her to be subjected to electro-shock, but contributing to her mental deterioration, as the discovery of his diary destroys what’s left of her mental equilibrium, leaving her utterly devoid of hope.  This mirrors Bergman’s own life, feeling the exact same guilt, as he “almost cannibalizes” according to film historian Peter Cowie, those closest to him, literally stripping them bare as fodder for his own films.  While David and Martin squabble together on the fishing boat over David’s misappropriation of her suffering, with Martin calling him a coward, they are clueless what’s taking place back on shore, as Karin initially flirts with her brother, catching him with pornography magazines, but then senses a storm is coming, retreating into the safety of a wrecked ship, literally huddling with her brother in fear during a heavy rain storm, with suggestions of incest, as Karin has a tendency to get overly affectionate with her brother, whose innocence is close to an unstained godliness, using him as an outlet for her love.  Her heightened fears and hallucinations become the central focus, however, showing rapid mood swings and clear psychological distress, yearning to see the face of God, which becomes a twisted erotic nightmare, emotionally steamrolling her family, leaving them grasping at straws, utterly helpless to stop her descent, intensified by the sound of the helicopter to take her back to the hospital, literally exhausted from the ordeal of straddling two worlds, where the film is unequalled throughout Bergman’s output in terms of dramatic intensity, as it dares to venture into difficult territory that remains largely unexplored by cinema.  Years later we witness a towering performance by Gena Rowlands in John Cassavetes’ masterful A Woman Under the Influence (1974), where the family response to silence and sedate what they view as a hysterical woman and then have her sent away is simply devastating.  Many Bergman followers found the film shocking, as they didn’t initially understand it, especially how starkly minimalist and severe the subject matter is, yet it’s one of the more beautifully edited and perfectly concise films of his career, packing a punch in just under 90-minutes.  While there are brief references to religion underlying the entire film, it’s never the focus until the finale when it takes center stage, prominently featured in an overly pat discussion between father and son trying to make sense of it all, with God (and father) becoming synonymous with the power of love.  While this verbal breakthrough is mildly revealing, by giving them the last words, it takes the focus away from Karin and the magnificence of Andersson, as she is the one person we truly care about, drawn to her honesty and the fragility of her weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  This is a special treat.  

Joy of Man's Desiring (Que ta joie demeure)

Director Denis Côté

JOY OF MAN’S DESIRING (Que ta joie demeure)       B-                

Canada  (70 mi)  2014  d:  Denis Côté       official facebook page

The work place is the place where those arriving cross paths with those who are leaving early.   —Georges Courteline, (June 25, 1858 – June 25, 1929)

Denis Côté remains something of a radical, underground Québécois filmmaker championing the unfamiliar, including small and unconventional films, where his most recent film Vic + Flo Saw a Bear  (2013) is perhaps his most accessible, through it remains provocatively disturbing, while this is closer to his earlier work Bestiaire (2012), a wordless and minimalist film essay shooting animals living in the closed quarters of an amusement park, observing human behavior through the unpretentious eyes of animals, and vice versa, both seemingly on equal footing.  Côté is himself a former film critic from Montreal, and what he brings to his films is a certain objective detachment, where the key is observing without judgment.  While this is a free associative and contemplative work that focuses upon the routine aspects of industrial work, accentuating machine operators in nine small factories in Montreal, he establishes a precise rhythm of noise and machine, where humans are simply intermediaries, but slowly introduces a fictional element that finalizes the film.  While it may be completely unpretentious, it is quite different from the meticulously austere group of Austrian documentarians, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, OUR DAILY BREAD (2005), Michael Glawogger, WORKINGMAN’S DEATH (2005), SLUMMING (2006), and Whore's Glory (2012), Ruth Mader, STRUGGLE (2003), and Hubert Sauper, DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE (2004), which have a near mathematical precision to them.  Instead it remains open ended and ambiguous, where the director intentionally makes no social comment, but simply shows various stages of people at work, including moments of absurdity when a union official, from an apparent approved distance where he is allowed to stand, yells slogans at the workers while they are working. 

Initially viewers are greeted by the pounding rhythm of a machine press, including a montage of machines in close-up, while also subjected to a curious opening monologue asking for support, where the audience never sees who the comments are directed to, another worker or a machine (the director?).  This schism between man and machine has been the subject of much conjecture since the advent of the industrial age, where the interplay has not always been compatible.  As we hear the workers talk to one another, we discover one machine operates at a level of speed that most find dangerous, but that’s what attracts one particular worker to that machine, preferring it to all others, where he is able to utilize his own dexterity to achieve maximum results.  Another grows disillusioned with the job, losing interest altogether, where he’s sitting around in a state of depression when he’s approached by a person that could easily be a ghost of the worker’s past, where another worker claims they’re ready to take his place, asking if he’s ready to relinquish his job.  This visual sequence may simply be a passing thought in the course of the working day.  While workers are routinely seen at their work stations, the presence of the camera in such close proximity would seem to be a distraction and highly intrusive, perhaps dangerously so, due to the precise nature of this kind of skilled work where machines are manipulated into exact positions, where the degree for error is minimal.  Certainly one thought about what we see is that we never see the final result of their labor, but only the one piece of the puzzle that each worker is assigned to perform, creating a feeling of incompleteness, as while they are part of the whole, they never seem to be connected to the finished product. 

For the filmmaker, he entered into this project without any written script, becoming an improvisational journey that reveals itself over time, an experimental alternative where we are taken on an observational tour of various factory settings—metal working, carpentry, industrial laundry, a garment shop, mattress factory, and coffee roasting.  Alternating between people and machines as well as the raw materials that surround them, many toil in a kind of solitary silence, while others remain talkative and gregarious throughout with other staff.  Côté catches many of them during their idle rest periods having a quick smoke, but also having extended conversations about their jobs, providing shop talk, including an amusing parable about a crooked employer, or comments about work fulfillment, where one changed workplaces as she was barely noticed at her previous job and felt invisible, but remains just as invisible here as well, offering views of alienation and a sense of demoralization, as they spend half their lives in this claustrophobic environment, while others find a kind of mystical satisfaction in the constant repetitiveness of their actions, as if it offers the opportunity to cleanse the mind.  This kind of emptyheaded blankness balances with the focused concentration needed for the more intricate nature of some of the work performed, supplemented by an intriguing sound design by Frédéric Cloutier and Clovis Gouaillier.  By introducing fictional characters, some seen offering prayers to their machines, Côté accentuates the kinds of thoughts that might come into play, while also introducing other significant images, where a partially constructed wooden piano is seen at one point, which later introduces the titular Bach chorale Myra Hess plays Bach/Hess "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" YouTube (3:41) heard somewhere off in the distance to the worker’s contemplative thoughts, where this musical reverie is perhaps the idealized sound of their completed work, a kind of sacred musical construction of perfection.  What is perhaps missing is the feeling of any joy in the work, amusingly remedied in the final shot.  Despite the multiple layers in play, the narrow scope never becomes particularly revelatory, where it doesn’t impress as much as some of the other work by this director.