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Rating: If there is anyone who considers Bergman, even the most classic one, a difficult or even tedious director, they are unlikely to change their mind by watching Winter Light (1963): the original title, Nattvardsgästerna, actually translates to "The Communicants," and it is precisely with a ten-minute mass that the film opens. Tomas (Gunnar Bjornstrand), a Protestant pastor whose faith is now in crisis, performs his duties with great composure; among the few present is the atheist Marta (the wonderful Ingrid Thulin), a former lover of the pastor trying to rekindle their relationship.
The stylistic hallmark of the film, yet another masterpiece, is naturally one that has set a standard, namely the typical chamber drama rich with intense close-ups and tormented dialogues/monologues, with black and white crafted to perfection by Sven Nykvist; but Winter Light stands out for its absolute sobriety, the abandonment of experimentation, controversy, and symbolism: think, for example, of the fragmentation of identity in Persona, the morbid surrealism of Hour of the Wolf, the loneliness of souls wandering the blood-red corridors of Cries and Whispers, or even just the infamous dream in Wild Strawberries. Not to mention the monumental artistic testament of Fanny & Alexander. Certainly, each is genius and unrepeatable in its own way, but the greatness of the director is also measured in being able to convey the message with as few devices as possible, and Winter Light thus represents the coldest and most cramped corner of his entire body of work, not less evocative for this.
The screenplay, as always dense with emotions even in its silences, outlines and explores the characters with masterful depth: Tomas has lost his wife, his heart is cold and desolate like the environments he moves in; he is incapable of comforting his faithful, of reciprocating the physical, clingy, almost pathetic love that Marta offers him. A love that even disgusts and repels him with brutal cynicism. And yet only Marta, with her straightforward yet humble and devoted nature, seems like the only salvation, at least earthly, from the chill of the soul: unforgettable and piercing is the scene where she reads her letter on a fixed close-up. It is a light that follows Tomas insistently, only to dim in the suspended finale.
Religion, Bergman's obsession and autobiographical trace (scar), is an excuse to talk about human relationships, and the picture that emerges is not the happiest. Tomas creates a void around himself, the wait for a sign of divine love that once obsessed him has ended up making him barren. In retrospect, a suicide victim on the banks of a raging river, a destroyed family, an empty church, and a lover lonelier than before seem to constitute the only sinister answer to the questions raised during the brief eighty minutes of the film. And if the initial mass may have intimidated a bit due to its severity, the second mass with which the story (does not) conclude reveals all the emptiness of the gestures that will follow from that moment on.
In the painful trilogy on the silence of God, Winter Light stands in the middle: between the schizophrenia of Through a Glass Darkly and the indecipherable closure of The Silence, Bergman opens up a chasm, once again laying bare the fragility and complexity of the human soul.
4.5
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