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Såsom i en Spegel (Through a Glass Darkly) is a 1961 film, winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, directed by Ingmar Bergman.
The title is taken from the First Letter to the Corinthians by St. Paul, which reads:
“Nu se vi ju på ett dunkelt sätt, såsom i en spegel, men då skola vi se ansikte mot ansikte.”
«Now we see through a glass, darkly; then we shall see face to face»
This film is the first of the so-called "religious trilogy," comprised of Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence, in which the Swedish master addresses one of the great issues that has always troubled him: God.
Plot
On a Swedish island, Karin (Harriett Andersson), her brother Minus (Lars Passgård), her husband Martin (Max von Sydow), and her father David (Gunnar Björnstrand) are spending their vacation.
The girl is mentally ill and has just been released from a psychiatric hospital, while the father, who is a writer, sees his daughter's problem as a great inspiration for his novel.
The young Minus has a very close relationship with his sister, who confides all her mystical-religious visions to him and with whom he seems at times to have incestuous relations.
Martin, a doctor, is a simple and positivist person who cannot see his own marital problems.
The characters, during the story, look within each other and "through a glass darkly" manage to glimpse each other's thoughts and problems, such as the malaise of living, the sense of discomfort, misunderstanding, the problem of God's existence, and the purpose of illness.
One evening, awakened during her sleep, Karin goes to David's study, who is revising his novel. Here, the father puts her on his bed to rest. Minus arrives and, from the window, asks his father if he wants to join him and Martin for fishing. David leaves the room to go with the other two men.
Karin awakens and peeks inside her father's desk, where she finds his diary and discovers a secret:
With horror, I note my curiosity, the impulse to record symptoms, to note the gradual disintegration of my daughter, to exploit and take advantage of it.
This is the trigger for Karin's relapse into madness. Madness that will lead to the collapse of the already fragile stability of the family and which will once again lead the girl to the asylum.
Commentary
I must admit that commenting on this film is particularly complicated because the film has a multitude of meanings, symbols, themes, and points of reflection that it would require writing a dissertation to discuss it almost exhaustively.
From a technical point of view, it is almost perfect, as is typical of Bergman, though there are a couple of fairly significant mistakes: in one case, the lighting changes over the length of a reverse shot (in the scene where Karin and Minus go to get milk and Minus sits on the floor: during the brother and sister’s discussion there's a noticeable error in the position of the light source), while in another, during a cut, characters change position (in the scene where Karin and Martin are on the bed, after she has read her father's diary).
Otherwise, some shots are aesthetically wonderful and capable of bringing us into the minds of the characters as if they were a gateway into the human psyche, making us part of the protagonists' suffering. Others, instead, are "only" a masterpiece of aesthetics.
The direction, understood as the placement of actors in space and their movements, is heavily influenced by theatrical influence (let's not forget that Bergman was a theater director before being a film director).
The lighting helps the viewer investigate the minds of the characters.
Now, let’s move to the interpretative part: as mentioned, the main theme is the search for God. Bergman poses a question that all of us, at some point, have asked ourselves: Does God exist?
But this theme is effectively present only at the end of the film (although it hovers in the protagonists' minds like a ghost throughout the film): Karin, after her last hallucination, claims to have seen God in the form of a spider. And I wondered: what kind of image is that? It's very strange. And I tried to interpret it: what is a spider? An insect often a symbol of fear. So does this mean that God is a "being" (if He can be defined as such) wicked, who instills fear and doesn’t care for His creatures? Or that God is everything? Or rather, that everything is God? That He hides everywhere? Or, more simply, that God doesn’t exist?
Later, Minus and David have a brief conversation during which the boy seeks comfort in his father's words: initially, he does not believe in God, but gradually begins to consider His existence, especially when David states that God might coincide with love. But from the tone of the father's words, one can sense a sadness: maybe even he doesn’t much believe in his words. Perhaps what he said was only meant to console his son after Karin is taken back to the asylum.
I don’t know if love proves the existence of God or whether love is God itself… this thought is the only comfort for my misery and despair.
The other main theme of this masterpiece is madness, which then results in a kind of "revelation."
The room where Karin often withdraws, where she hears the voices, where she has her visions, is completely empty, except for the wallpaper, torn at some points: why? Why is it precisely in such a sterile and barren place that Karin claims to see the face of God (at least, that's what she believes)? In my opinion, it represents Karin's spiritual void and, as the story approaches the end, that of all four characters, who indeed gather in this room in the final scenes. They are all like jars: at first, they are full, but life, with its hardships, slowly empties them until they reach the bottom.
And why is there that tear in the wall? Clearly, it symbolizes Karin’s compromised psyche, corrupted by madness.
The same thing, if you will, can be found in Repulsion by Roman Polański, chronologically not far from this, being from 1965, in which the narrow walls of the protagonist's house become almost demonic entities and crack in an attempt to capture her.
Perhaps it is better to stop here; otherwise, I might end up actually writing a dissertation. Here, I've only managed to scratch the surface of this wonderful piece, which I, of course, recommend to everyone.
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