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Rating: The Absence of GOD.
The idea for “Winter Light” came to Bergman after seeing Bresson’s film “Diary of a Country Priest”. However, the original idea occurred several years earlier, when he imagined a man entering a secluded and deserted church in winter, sitting near the altar, and addressing Christ: “I will stay here until you speak to me.” “Winter Light” features four central characters: the priest, the teacher, the fisherman, and his wife. The fisherman knows that the Chinese have an atomic bomb and that a despicable amount of hatred has been accumulated between them and the rest of the world. The man cannot rid himself of this obsessive thought. He is petrified in the closed shell of his fear. His wife convinces him to see the priest after mass, to seek help and advice. The priest is also a very troubled and unhappy man. He mourns his deceased wife and is unable to feel tenderness towards his friend the teacher, who adores him, desires him, and follows him like a shadow. The pastor also falls into a deep crisis, a great isolation from others, from the world, from himself: in the most complete and perfect “silence of God”. In the most complete “absence of God”. The fisherman commits suicide. It’s the priest’s duty to tell the wife before leaving to provide the customary service in the nearby church. The teacher accompanies him and finds the church empty. The priest wants to perform the religious rite regardless. When the winter twilight falls, he moves toward the altar in front of a “congregation” made up of only one person: his friend and admirer, the teacher. Another rigorous, ruthless, surgical “chamber” drama by the Master. Constrained within a skeletal, essential scenography that spans (so to speak) between a cold, desolate church and the few houses of a village forgotten by God and men. The certainty of God’s existence is (re)questioned by Pastor Thomas, who, after his wife’s loss, has completely lost faith, is tormented by doubts, and can no longer find meaning in his own existence. Everything is beautiful and intense, but the best part of the film, the most successful and meaningful, is undoubtedly the ending. The Master leaves the viewer in suspense with the ambiguous and difficult choice: will the pastor (re)find God, accepting His silence as natural and at the same time eloquent testimony of His existence, or will he continue to be consumed by his pain and loss of faith, leading a life now devoid of any meaning and significance? It is not known if the pastor will indeed regain faith in God. In reality, the true issue for the Master is not to establish whether lost or never found faith can be regained but to trace the human path through which it is lost and/or found. Bergman’s goal is to portray in the best cinematic way possible the existential doubts of people, the crises of their conscience, the irresistible temptation to refuse transcendence because it is not understood or incomprehensible. Bergman does not aspire to narrate the conquest of faith but only to tell the difficult, arduous, uncertain journey each person undertakes in seeking faith. In short, the film is yet another Bergmanian stimulus for philosophical speculation about the meaning of existence. Which, moreover, continues to elude.
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