Opiniones de usuarios

The coldest thing you'll ever hold, a heart of stone within warm folds, impenetrable and dark, extreme, devoid of hope, bereft of theme.

You should wear a pair of thick socks and a woolly hat to avoid the icy tendrils that permeate throughout, and keep your gloved fingers crossed you never reach the depths of doubt and despair portrayed through the remarkable performance of Gunnar Björnstrand who, as Pastor Tomas Ericsson, has misplaced the vital elements that brought him to the pulpit. And if that isn't enough Ingrid Thulin delivers the most persistent and resilient performance of a woman who won't let go.

This is a captivating film, one of Bergman's most inward-looking and cold pieces.

The performances are terrific. Gunnar Bjornstrand is at his excellent best, Max von Syndow is predictably good. I would single out the women performers for particular praise in this film: Ingrid Thulin is outstanding as the spinster who cannot break the ice that encloses Bjornstrand's pastor. Gunnel Lindblom plays a small but superb part as the desperate wife of the suicidal von Syndow.

This is not plot and action stuff, nor is it any good for you if seeing depression in others makes you depressed. It is a microscope study of desperation and depression. It is a small canvas film – my personal preference is for Bergman's larger canvas work such as The Seventh Seal and especially Wild Strawberries. Of his darker, psychological work, again I would express a preference for Persona and also Through a Glass Darkly. But I'm comparing greatness with greatness – if you like Bergman's work this one's a must see.

After watching this film 4 or 5 times over the years, it has moved into the top spot on my Bergman list and is one of my all time favorite movies. There is not a wasted moment in this film. It consists of one great set piece after another. What a cast! Gunnar Bjornstrand gives the best performance of a clergyman since Claude Laydu in Diary of a Country Priest and even outshines him due to the interaction with the rest of the cast. Ingrid Thulin is just outstanding as his former mistress, not only in the long closeup where she bares her soul to Bjornstrand through a letter she has written, but in several scenes where she endures humiliation after humiliation from him in an effort to cut through the wall he has built around his emotions. We also have the little community of church inhabitants--the cynical organist, the hunchbacked handyman, the stern rector. Each one challenges Bjornstrand's faith in a different way. Above all, we have Max von Sydow as a depressed parishioner, looking to the pastor for a reason to continue living and finding none. As we learn in the supplementary material to the Criterion DVD, Bjornstrand was quite sick with bronchitis during filming and this adds to the credibility of his performance. This is absolutely a 10 out of 10. A great,great film.

possibly my absolute favorite Bergman film. Gorgeous, the way a fresh blanket of snow on a frigidly cold winter night is.

Brutally bleak, "Winter Light" may be about losing religious faith, but I don't think you have to have a religious faith to identity with Gunnar Bjornstrand's character, the pastor of a small town. His "faith" is as much a will to live as anything else.

Bjornstrand and Ingrid Thulin are amazingly good, and Max von Sydow does more with a few subtle expressions, and very little dialog, than most any actor is capable of.

Not a film to watch in the dead of winter if you suffer from SAD, unless you're like me and get a perverse type of therapy from confronting the hopelessness head first.

I watched this film the other night, and this struck me as perhaps the most profound and "real" movie that I have ever seen. It deals with the silence of god, and meaning of life. With the brilliant photo by Sven Nykvist, the surroundings comes alive unlike most other movies with color! If you've ever lived in that scenery (cold pine-forested northerly countries) It appears almost as if it were in color, as if one is there at that moment.

Needless to say, the actors makes fantastic performances.

I find it pointless to say much about the plot, it is well summarized on this site, it is also a very personal movie to watch and therefore any type of "analysis" that is revealed to the viewer before he or she has seen the movie, may interfere with their own personal view on things.

Truly a masterpiece among movies, completely free from unimportant elements, a clear, uncompromising questioning of ones faith in god and life.

10/10

"I think I have made just one picture that I really like, and that is Winter Light…Everything is exactly as I wanted to have it, in every second of this picture." – Ingmar Bergman

"Winter Light" concentrates around the middle-aged priest named Thomas (extraordinarilly played by Gunnar Björnstrand) of a small Swedish church and his spiritual and emotional struggles during the one winter afternoon.

Tomas founds himself as a non-believer. He realized that he actually became a priest because he was weak, anxious and neurotic and not because of his faith. As a young man, not knowing the REAL world and its TRUE nature, Tomas became a priest. His wife was everything to him, yes. She encouraged his "believes". With her, his believes (or self-deceptions) were stable, steady. After her death, they were shaken (so were his whole life and its purposes) because he encountered the "real world".

After his wife's death he met Marta, schoolteacher – simple and realistic woman (played by brilliant Ingrid Thulin). Marta is in love with him. But he is bored with her and avoids her. Reasons for that are not very clear to the viewer or Tomas himself. He feels isolated and detached from the rest of the world. All the meanings and purposes of his life suddenly disappeared. Whole his life was one big – LIE.

So, why is he avoiding Marta? She is the real representation of the ''real world'' since being an atheist. Marta is the symbol of his failure, she ''reminds'' him that he dedicated whole his life to – nothing.

This is not, however, a religious film. It's a lot more exploring the real human nature and its possible ''faults''. It raises some universal issues like: ''Am I doing good things because I am a good person (because I have a good character) or because I am afraid of the consequences (because I am weak, fearful)''?

"Winter Light" is also masterfully crafted movie with formal elements absolutely supporting (and adding to) the issues of the script. It is a very cold movie with no music (intentionally). Sven Nykvist, Bergman's cinematographer did excellent job with his contrasted black and white photography, focuses and mise-en-scene conjuring up the emotional isolation and distances between the characters.

In the cold winter in the countryside of Sweden, the pastor Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand) is a bitter man living a crisis of lack of faith in God after the death of his beloved wife two years ago. After the mass, Karin Persson (Gunnel Lindblom) seeks out the pastor with her husband, the fisherman Jonas Persson (Max von Sydow), and tells that Jonas is tormented by an existential crisis when he learns that China has an atomic bomb and intends to commit suicide. Tomas unsuccessfully attempts to comfort Jonas but he is not convincing due to his lack of faith and Jonas kills himself with a shot of rifle in his head. Meanwhile, the schoolteacher Märta Lundberg (Ingrid Thulin) is in love with Tomas, but the widowed pastor rejects her love with bitter and tough words. In the end, Tomas discusses with the sacristan the true suffering of Jesus Christ in the Passion of Christ.

"Nattvardsgästerna" is the second part of Bergman's Trilogy of Silence with an unpleasant story of unrequited love, lack of communication and lack of faith on God. The pastor Tomas Ericsson is one of the bitterest characters that I have ever seen, and his speech to Märta Lundberg is one of the cruelest and coldest of a man to a woman in love. The performances are awesome as usual in a Bergman's film, with wonderful black-and-white cinematography, and this cold film does not have soundtrack. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Luz de Inverno" ("Light of Winter")

With this one Bergman touches the inner soul like no one ever did on film. The movie is about depression, how to deal with your principal beliefs when you don't believe in them anymore, "God's escaping me..." We feel the priest running out of strenght and slowly fading away in his disbeliefs, he then finds a man who he can relate to (Due to the depression he has, as heard about the bomb which the Chinese are creating, they are learnt to hate) He kind of uses him to give himself the power to get on with his own life, he doesn't listen to the man, but he explains his own problems, due to this the man kills himself, it's now the task of the priest to tell his wife, and by this he finds himself again, feeling again what his role in this so cruel world is. "What's the meaning of life" he says, "we can only know if we fight against ourself and our inner soul which leads us to suicide" that's why we live. Everything fits together so perfect, it's almost like I was living the movie. The characters play excellent, the cold winter settings make part of the mood the film was made for, make you feel, and that's why this movie is so excellent. It's a not so easy one but once you understand what it tells you realise why this movie exceeds storytelling of today's crap we get to see in theatres. Few films are so true and realistic.

I haven't seen all of Bergman's films, but for now this is the masterpiece 10/10

In his not-to-be-missed, detailed interviews to Scandinavian filmmakers/critics Jonas Simas, Torsten Manns and Stig Björkman published in France as "Le Cinéma Selon Bergman" (1973) -- inspired by the Hitchcock/Truffaut/Chabrol interviews, and with material selected from over 50 hours of conversations in the span of 5 years -- Bergman reassesses "Winter..." in affectionate but moderately critical terms. He quotes his wife (as of 1962) Käbi Laretei's comment about it: "Yes, Ingmar, it's a masterpiece, but a boring one!" (or "dreary one", according to another translation).

Not that it is really boring, at least not for IB's fans (as myself); and not that it's REALLY a masterpiece. It IS one of his driest, grimmest, most depressing films along with "Shame". As usual, there are magnificent scenes: every one Max Von Sydow is in (what an actor -- with barely a single line to speak he builds a very complex character); Åke Fridell's character, who's got the best lines; the argument between Gunnar Björnstrand and Ingrid Thulin at the cottage. Bergman's and Nykvist's visual conception is riveting: you can FEEL the cold of the bleak Swedish winter. However, there are other scenes that seem to drag longer than necessary (even for Bergman), especially the opening church service, and, yes, the letter scene (which is the source of the great letter scene in "Persona"). But I think the main difficulty with "Winter Light" is that Bergman paints his protagonist (Pastor Tomas Ericsson, played by Björnstrand) mercilessly, making it hard for us to make any connection with the selfish bastard, whether you're religious or not. The question of faith -- that should be the important issue here -- is compromised by the incredible level of egotism of Pastor Ericsson; it's hard to believe that man has ever experienced Christian compassion. Bergman despises him and makes us despise him too; I, for one, couldn't manage to feel the smallest degree of sympathy for the man.

In those interviews, Bergman talks about how difficult shooting "Winter Light" was, with Gunnar Björnstrand ill and detesting his role (no wonder!!) and the influence of Bergman's traumatic religious upbringing (his father was a strict Lutheran pastor), which made it hard for him to convey sympathy for Björnstrand's character. The idea for the film came when a bishop of a small-town church told Bergman of his failure in preventing a fisherman in anguish from committing suicide. Bergman also said that Thulin's character was partly based on his second wife, who had serious eczema in her face and hands.

Christian faith has been the subject of superior films by great filmmakers -- Dreyer, Rossellini, Bresson, Buñuel, Pialat, Melville, Pasolini, and, of course, Bergman himself. With "Winter Light", I found myself thinking a lot about Bresson's masterpiece "Diary of a Country Priest". Both "Winter..." and "Diary..." deal with lonely, depressed Christian clergymen who struggle to come to terms with faith-shattering issues within themselves and the ones around them. Both live in small, bleak, grim villages and cannot find solace in people around them, or give them sound advice. Both strive for an evidence of God — a signal, a word, an inspiration to help comfort people. Both face the peak of their religious crisis in winter time (no wonder!!) and when faced with suicide (the doctor in "Diary", the fisherman in "Winter..."). But the major difference is that Bresson's priest ultimately finds a way to trust his God, while Bergman's pastor is abandoned by his ("God's silence in an empty church"). And, of course, that Bresson's priest is impossible to dislike whereas Bergman's pastor is a s.o.b. Bergman himself had been very impressed by Bresson's movie, which, in my opinion, is superior and "thicker" than "Winter....", although both display some of the most magnificent b&w cinematography the movies have ever shown (and Bergman talks proudly about the great amount of work it took to reach the right lighting for the film).

The second of the so-called "Silence Trilogy" (it was never planned as such, but you know, it was the trilogy fad -- S.Ray, Antonioni etc), "Winter Light" is, IMHO, the least satisfying of the three, overshadowed by the powerful study in schizophrenia and incest with richly elaborated characters of "Through a Glass Darkly" and the incredibly daring, close-up approach of female sexuality, childhood innocence, war threat and terminal sickness of "The Silence". Anyway, "Winter Light" is film by Ingmar Bergman — stratospheres above most mortal filmmakers. My vote: 6 out of 10 (considering it's Bergman!).

This bleak, sparse film from Ingmar Bergman focuses on a disillusioned, increasingly skeptic Lutheran priest called Thomas (Gunnar Bjorstrand, who's excellent) administering the gospel in a Swedish village to a very small congregation. He's unable to accept the love offered him by the plain school teacher Marta (Ingrid Thulin, also very good), and incapable to offer the conviction of his faith to save from suicide a fisherman called Jonas (Max von Sydow) troubled by the prospect of a nuclear war(incidentally, this was filmed just before the Cuban missile crisis).

This must have been a very personal film by Bergman (the son of a stern Lutheran priest, the director lost his religious faith as a young man). There are a lot of biblical allusions and religious discussions (we have a doubting Thomas, a fisherman called Jonas). One can nitpick here and there (one could wonder why the younger Marta is so attracted to the middle aged, aloof Thomas, or whether Jonas motivation to kill himself is credible), but if you are willing to suspend your disbelief, the minimalist direction and the great acting made for a powerful movie. Reportedly this was Ingmar Bergman choice as the favorite film he made.

God, give me a break Ingmar Bergman!!

This middle film in his "Silence" trilogy is unbearably depressing, bleak and hopeless. I've heard that Bergman had a disdain for film-making and didn't like it as a medium for telling his stories. One has to wonder, then, why he felt compelled to make so many films, especially when they all pound the same point into the ground over and over again.

He obviously had the same disdain for his audiences, as he decided to inflict his depressing frame of mind on all of us. "Winter Light" isn't a bad film technically, and I know I'm being a petulant reviewer here, but sometimes my gut emotional reaction completely outweighs any artistic considerations when looking at a film, and I just couldn't stand this, in my mind, nearly unwatchable movie.

Grade: D

"Winter Light" (Swedish, 1962): Just prepare yourself. Bergman is at his depressive best here. If you've ever lived in an environment that is perpetually cold, wet, and gray, you'll understand. If not, well, this film will illustrate it for you. A preacher, in serious depression himself, is losing his flock. His flock has rampant depression too. He tries to help, but it's useless. He starts looking for answers from them. No one has answers. Things happen. Nothing happens. It's the same old thing today, and tomorrow. This film requires patience. Expect no action. Even a scene change begins to seem like excitement – which is exactly what Bergman wanted for you. One scene, in which a major character "narrates" a letter she wrote to the preacher, is amazing. With a blank background, she stares into the lens of the camera, and talks "at" you – for pages. What a gutsy thing to do in a MOVING PICTURE. Avoid this film if you want more than thinking and feeling as results.

Everything is exactly as I wanted to have it, in every second of this picture." – Ingmar Bergman

"Winter Light", the second film in the writer/director Ingmar Bergman's trilogy of "faith" or "Silence of God" (it follows "Såsom i en spegel" (1961) ... aka "Through a Glass Darkly" and precedes "Tystnaden" (1963) aka The Silence) is a masterpiece of minimalism with great performances and appropriate static, dark and gloomy "wintery" cinematography. This is a very personal and important for Bergman film for it deals with the loss of Faith - the master was very proud of this work. Bergman, aided by his regular cinematographer Sven Nykvist and performances by Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom and Max von Sydow had created a compelling, tragic, and thought-provoking film about a village priest (Gunnar Bjornstrand) who can't give much comfort and hope to those who need them as he feels none for himself. Ingrid Thulin plays Martha, a local school teacher, the woman who loves him and tries to reach him through the wall of desperation and depression that surrounds him.

WINTER LIGHT is a comparatively weak Bergman film. It is a testament to Bergman's craft that even a weak film of his contains excellent acting and photography. However the characters in this film are not as well drawn or sympathetic as Bergman's better films and the plot feels stretched and sparse even at a meagre eighty minute runtime. There is also a distinct feeling of "be here, done that", if you have seen other Bergman films from this period. In fact it almost feels like a parody of Bergman's public persona - slow, unrelentingly grim and Max von Sydow. Max von Sydow is an exceptional actor but his role here is a mere extended cameo in a role that Bergman must have written as a self-parody - a fisherman on the brink of suicide because he believes the Chinese will bring about a nuclear apocalypse. If not, WTF Ingmar? WINTER LIGHT is for Bergman completists and Criterion toadies only. The next best reason to watch is is Ingrid Thulin's excellent performance.

This Silence trilogy isn't easy movie watching, but it's very rewarding.

Tomas, a minister in the Church of Sweden, is finishing a service at a small country church with only a handful of congregants. He speaks the words of the communion rite seriously, but dryly. We can tell by the solemn by detached manner in which he speaks that Tomas is somewhat removed from this thing that takes up his life.

With the service ended, we begin to see Tomas's relationships with some of his congregants. There is the school teacher, his lover, who's an atheist and took communion as a challenge to him. There's the married couple with the husband who's consumed by apocalyptic visions stemming from the idea of China's combination of saber rattling and nuclear ambitions (what he would do with Kum Jong Un fires the imagination a bit). We also see the hunchback who prepares each little isolated church for service and the bored organist who's leaving before he's finished playing the final song.

Tomas's doubt about God's existence, his consumption with the idea of God's silence, is overtaking his faith. He can't say anything to comfort Jonah's visions, offering nothing but pablum. He can't counter the school teachers barbs. He's lost, begging for guidance from God, but God says nothing to him. There are subtle implications that God may be trying to speak to him through other ways (a window brightening with light as Tomas takes his first large step to rejecting his own faith, for instance).

The key to understanding the film, though, really is Through a Glass Darkly. According to the essay in the Criterion book, Bergman wrote this movie as a direct response to his own previous film. Even without the essay, the connections are stark. There are no shared characters, but we hear the same repeated image of a Spider God, which should send up flags from every audience member. There's also the continued references to the idea that God is love. The two different manifestations of God are now at war with the idea that there simply isn't a God. A two front war has become three.

Which vision of God wins is actually a bit unclear, and I lean towards Bergman saying that the God is Love manifestation is the dominant one, an interesting counter to Through a Glass Darkly where the Spider God obviously won. There are key moments in the final minutes of the film that point to it. Tomas has traveled to a second church to say the service, but no one else but the hunchback, the school teacher, and the organist have shown. Will they even do it without a congregation? Tomas ultimately decides yes. Tomas has broken things off with the school teacher minutes before as Tomas has rejected both the Spider God and the God is Love visions, rejecting love itself. Just before Tomas begins the service, Marta, the atheistic school teacher, falls to her knees to pray, presumably to the God of Love.

And yet, there is still a literal silence, much like the hunchback describes must have been Jesus' experience in his final moments. His apostles had abandoned or betrayed Him, and Jesus calls out to God asking why He had been forsaken. It wasn't the physical suffering, the hunchback concludes, that took the greatest toll on Jesus, for it lasted no more than four hours and he'd survived years in different states of agony because of his condition. No, it was the silence that Jesus seems to have faced that must have been the worst.

Is God working through these people, or is there no God at all? Is God merely silent, or does he not exist? The ending suggests no solid answer, but a desire for the God of Love to be real.

These movies are intelligent, touching, and difficult, but they are also extremely rewarding to the patient viewer willing to give the films a chance.

I have always wondered what is it about Bergman that so many people acclaimed. After watching many of his films I'm still wondering as I haven't got a response yet. To those who like the technical aspects of his film making, I'll say I have seen many better ones. There's very little ingenuity to his camera movement, which is always too slow to impress me, his use of light is no better than that of silent movies made decades before and he always seems to abuse the length of many of his close-ups that are unnecessarily eternal. The acting in most of his movies is simply adequate, never of an Oscar-winning quality. And, as for his stories, well...that's probably the worst part. In Winter Light there's really no story, or is there? All we see is a man who's lost his faith fighting his inner demons in a self-destructive manner. I don't recall ever having drawn any positive pointers from any of Bergman's movies. His world is a desperate one where not even the slightest glimmer of hope is ever offered. His characters are always tortured and never seem able to find a solution or relief to their inner anguish. What's his message? That we may as well either kill ourselves or continue to live a pointless life? That no matter how hard we search our soul there's never gonna be an answer to our questions and doubts? I don't recall ever finding a light moment in his films. There's never a respite, a funny moment, a shadow of a better future. With Bergman there's never a light at the end of the tunnel. I, for one, really despise Bergman's hopeless universe and refuse to allow myself to be drawn into it. It's great to watch a movie that makes you think, but when it ends abruptly, as is the case with Winter Light, leaving everything unsolved after little or no consequential storytelling, what can you gain from that? There's not even the hint of a moral to this story, it's just another depressing, pointless exercise by a guy that must have had a very sorry life indeed. Don't watch it unless you're looking for another reason to commit suicide!