God and the Cinema Part 1: Ingmar Bergman
In the last week or so, I have been thinking a lot about God. This may seem strange as those who know me, know that at best, I am agnostic, and at worst I am an atheist. But in the last 18 months or so, I have begun to think more seriously about God. I am not becoming a religious person – even if one day I break down and start believing in God, I don’t think I will ever identify myself as a member of any organized religion. There is too much hypocrisy and corruption in every organized religion for me. But that’s a post for someone else to write on another blog.
What got me thinking about God again were two things: Zack Snyder’s Watchmen adaptation and
The Shack William P. Young, a novel that my mother somehow convinced me to read. Both films got me thinking about God for different reasons – Snyder’s because it closely resembles what I think God may be like if he is real. Who is to say that if God exists, he isn’t someone like Dr. Manhattan – who created life not for some greater purpose, but simply because he could. If there is a God, there is no reason why he has to be a benevolent one. The Shack represents the flip side of the coin as it presents God in a way that I would like to think is real, but cannot. In the book, God is not interested in people following a bunch of antiquated rules, but rather, he wants to focus on the relationship that people have with God. He wants people to trust in and love God, and in return, God will return that love and trust. The truth is, I want to believe in God, but at this point in my life, I can’t. It really is that simple.
I envision this to be a series of posts on God and the Cinema. In each one, I
will go through one director and their work to show how they have expressed their religious thoughts, and how those films have helped to shape my religious worldview. It is folly to get your religious ideals from movies – I know that – but great films by great artists, or even awful films by awful artists, can sometimes help you to see things in a different way. I have no idea how many parts this series will be. Already, I think I could do posts about Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Robert Bresson, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Kevin Smith and perhaps many more. I plan to do one a week for as long as I am still interested in doing so. As to the ultimate purpose of this exercise, I’m not quite sure. But at the very least, it will be me thinking about it.
Of them the directors listed, my religious worldview is probably closest to Ingmar Bergman’s, which is why it seems like he is the most natural place to start. Throughout his career, Bergman returned time and again to the idea of “God’s silence” – his characters reach out to God looking for answers, and receive none. This doesn’t necessarily mean in Bergman’s films there is no God – just that God doesn’t provide much comfort to the people on earth. If God does exist in Bergman’s world, he’s abandoned us.
I could go into detail about many of Bergman’s film, and the ideas they express, but I will not do that. Instead I’ll concentrate on what he called his “Silence of God” trilogy – Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence.
Through a Glass Darkly is probably the most hopeful film of the trilogy, in a religious sense. At its core is Karin (Harriet Anderson), a woman with schizophrenia, who hears voices calling her into the attic.
She believes the voice is God’s, wants to believe it. Her family believes she is having a relapse. Later, she sees a spider, and says that the spider is God. When a helicopter arrives on the island where she and her family are staying, she becomes convinced – God is a spider. Whatever hope religion offered us in the past, the consolation it provided, it was no longer enough in the modern era. God may be real, but he is no more comforting than a spider (and remember, this is the most hopeful of the trilogy).
In Winter Light, the silence of God is more underlined. A pastor (Gunnar Bjornstrand) who has been struggling with his faith for years has finally completely lost it. He admits that not believing in God is probably easier to
reconcile with the darkness of humanity – because then the violence men do needs no explanation. He is simply going through the motions of his job because he must. He is cruel to his former mistress, uncaring to a parishioner who comes to him in spiritual crisis (and will kill himself when he offers no guidance or comfort to him). His congregation has pretty much abandoned him. At the end of the film, when a hunchbacked man asks about the Passion, and why everyone concentrates on the physical pain Jesus went through, and not the fact that God didn’t answer him on the cross, the pastor admits that God’s silence was worse than the physical pain inflicted on Jesus. Once again in the film, it’s not necessary that God doesn’t exist that tortures Bergman, but that God doesn’t respond to us, and offers us no comfort, no sign that he still cares what happens to us.
The Silence is the bleakest of the three films. There is no big spiritual debate going on in the film – just a world devoid of God. Three people – two sisters and the son of one of the two – arrive in a foreign country where they don’t understand the language. One of them is defined by her sex
uality – she watches people have sex in public, and picks up a man for sex in her hotel room. The other is defined by language, she is a translator who is slowly dying, and views sex as mechanical and perfunctory. She masturbates without feeling or emotion. The child simply wonders the halls of the grand old hotel where they are staying, not really understanding anything that is going on around him. Outside the hotel, tanks rumble past – they world is at war, for what reason we never know. This is Bergman’s vision of hell on earth. There is no need to discuss God in the film – because in this place, he simply does not exist.
Taken as a loosely related trilogy, Bergman’s films express sorrow about the world and God’s place in it. He was raised by a strict Lutheran minister father, and found it stifling. His films express the whole in humans that has been left by God’s absence. This trilogy kind was the apex of Bergman’s exploration of the theme of God’s Silence. After this film, he started making films that concentrated much more on the human’s in them, and not really their spiritual side. Of course, there will elements of that in many of his films, but it wasn’t as pronounced as it was here, or in earlier films like The Virgin Spring and The Seventh Seal.
Bergman, I believe, wanted to believe in God. He wanted to believe that there was some sort of higher being out there, but in the end, he couldn’t do it. In a world where everyone seems so certain of their beliefs – where people are willing to fight and die for them, Bergman represents a rare case. He didn’t know what to believe. And that is why Bergman represents the closest to my religious outlook than any director in history. I may not believe in the God, but I want to. I want that comfort that religion seems to provide so many. That I cannot find it, saddens me.
What got me thinking about God again were two things: Zack Snyder’s Watchmen adaptation and
The Shack William P. Young, a novel that my mother somehow convinced me to read. Both films got me thinking about God for different reasons – Snyder’s because it closely resembles what I think God may be like if he is real. Who is to say that if God exists, he isn’t someone like Dr. Manhattan – who created life not for some greater purpose, but simply because he could. If there is a God, there is no reason why he has to be a benevolent one. The Shack represents the flip side of the coin as it presents God in a way that I would like to think is real, but cannot. In the book, God is not interested in people following a bunch of antiquated rules, but rather, he wants to focus on the relationship that people have with God. He wants people to trust in and love God, and in return, God will return that love and trust. The truth is, I want to believe in God, but at this point in my life, I can’t. It really is that simple.I envision this to be a series of posts on God and the Cinema. In each one, I
will go through one director and their work to show how they have expressed their religious thoughts, and how those films have helped to shape my religious worldview. It is folly to get your religious ideals from movies – I know that – but great films by great artists, or even awful films by awful artists, can sometimes help you to see things in a different way. I have no idea how many parts this series will be. Already, I think I could do posts about Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Robert Bresson, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Kevin Smith and perhaps many more. I plan to do one a week for as long as I am still interested in doing so. As to the ultimate purpose of this exercise, I’m not quite sure. But at the very least, it will be me thinking about it.Of them the directors listed, my religious worldview is probably closest to Ingmar Bergman’s, which is why it seems like he is the most natural place to start. Throughout his career, Bergman returned time and again to the idea of “God’s silence” – his characters reach out to God looking for answers, and receive none. This doesn’t necessarily mean in Bergman’s films there is no God – just that God doesn’t provide much comfort to the people on earth. If God does exist in Bergman’s world, he’s abandoned us.
I could go into detail about many of Bergman’s film, and the ideas they express, but I will not do that. Instead I’ll concentrate on what he called his “Silence of God” trilogy – Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence.
Through a Glass Darkly is probably the most hopeful film of the trilogy, in a religious sense. At its core is Karin (Harriet Anderson), a woman with schizophrenia, who hears voices calling her into the attic.
She believes the voice is God’s, wants to believe it. Her family believes she is having a relapse. Later, she sees a spider, and says that the spider is God. When a helicopter arrives on the island where she and her family are staying, she becomes convinced – God is a spider. Whatever hope religion offered us in the past, the consolation it provided, it was no longer enough in the modern era. God may be real, but he is no more comforting than a spider (and remember, this is the most hopeful of the trilogy).In Winter Light, the silence of God is more underlined. A pastor (Gunnar Bjornstrand) who has been struggling with his faith for years has finally completely lost it. He admits that not believing in God is probably easier to
reconcile with the darkness of humanity – because then the violence men do needs no explanation. He is simply going through the motions of his job because he must. He is cruel to his former mistress, uncaring to a parishioner who comes to him in spiritual crisis (and will kill himself when he offers no guidance or comfort to him). His congregation has pretty much abandoned him. At the end of the film, when a hunchbacked man asks about the Passion, and why everyone concentrates on the physical pain Jesus went through, and not the fact that God didn’t answer him on the cross, the pastor admits that God’s silence was worse than the physical pain inflicted on Jesus. Once again in the film, it’s not necessary that God doesn’t exist that tortures Bergman, but that God doesn’t respond to us, and offers us no comfort, no sign that he still cares what happens to us.The Silence is the bleakest of the three films. There is no big spiritual debate going on in the film – just a world devoid of God. Three people – two sisters and the son of one of the two – arrive in a foreign country where they don’t understand the language. One of them is defined by her sex
uality – she watches people have sex in public, and picks up a man for sex in her hotel room. The other is defined by language, she is a translator who is slowly dying, and views sex as mechanical and perfunctory. She masturbates without feeling or emotion. The child simply wonders the halls of the grand old hotel where they are staying, not really understanding anything that is going on around him. Outside the hotel, tanks rumble past – they world is at war, for what reason we never know. This is Bergman’s vision of hell on earth. There is no need to discuss God in the film – because in this place, he simply does not exist.Taken as a loosely related trilogy, Bergman’s films express sorrow about the world and God’s place in it. He was raised by a strict Lutheran minister father, and found it stifling. His films express the whole in humans that has been left by God’s absence. This trilogy kind was the apex of Bergman’s exploration of the theme of God’s Silence. After this film, he started making films that concentrated much more on the human’s in them, and not really their spiritual side. Of course, there will elements of that in many of his films, but it wasn’t as pronounced as it was here, or in earlier films like The Virgin Spring and The Seventh Seal.
Bergman, I believe, wanted to believe in God. He wanted to believe that there was some sort of higher being out there, but in the end, he couldn’t do it. In a world where everyone seems so certain of their beliefs – where people are willing to fight and die for them, Bergman represents a rare case. He didn’t know what to believe. And that is why Bergman represents the closest to my religious outlook than any director in history. I may not believe in the God, but I want to. I want that comfort that religion seems to provide so many. That I cannot find it, saddens me.
No comments:
Post a Comment