El silencio

The title of a dark and erotic final chapter of "faith" trilogy may sum up Bergman's own philosophy regarding religion and God – "God has never spoken because He does not exist". Bergman mentioned that he wanted to make a film with as little dialog as possible because "he had made many films with a lot of talking". He wanted "The Silence" to be a pure cinematographic experience where the images do all the talking. The films centers on two sisters, Ester (Ingrid Thulin) and Anna, (Gunnel Lindblom) to whom Ester is physically attracted. Esther, Anna and her 10-year-old son travel together and had to stop in a hotel located in an unnamed European country due to Esther's serious illness.

The film may be viewed on several levels -as the story of two sisters who apparently used to be close but are not able to communicate and understand one another anymore. Or it can be interpreted as a parable of Sensuality, Intellect, and Innocence, that cannot coexist in the world where God does not exist. As with every great and intelligent work of art, "The Silence" has so much to offer to its viewer, it's got so many questions to ask and it does not provide the easy answers.

Complex, suffocating, screaming through the silence, poignant, passionate, harrowing yet strangely hopeful and even funny sometimes - this is an unforgettable film, a masterpiece, a hidden treasure that has to be rediscovered and to receive as much praise and admiration as "Persona" and "Cries and Whispers" - for both of which "The Silence" was an inspiration. The acting by two Bergman's actresses is a miracle (as usual) as well as Sven Nykvist's camera work in creating the claustrophobic world where silence cries, whispers, and kills...

Ester, Anna and her little son, Johan. They arrive in a strange city in a strange country. The two sisters have a long-standing love-hate relationship covered by the veneer of a fragile truce. Johan (Jörgen Lindstrom) tries to hold on to his mother Anna (Gunnel Lindblom) but she's too busy with her own desires and resentments to pay him much attention. Ester (Ingrid Thulin), Anna's older sister, is very sick - she represents for Anna an authority figure (once feared and respected).

Ester, Anna and Johan are in a city whose language they don't understand and no one understands their language. Isolation, silence.

There's something surreal, almost buñuelesque, in "The Silence". Johan sees and feels many things, but he can't really understand them. The train is arriving in the city and Johan stares out of the train window - he sees many war tanks heading somewhere. He doesn't know what to do with himself... he wanders through the corridors of the hotel in which they are staying and he meets midgets from a wandering troupe. The relationship between the two sisters, Anna (his mother) and Ester (once so strong and now so very sick) is growing tenser. Johan tries to understand, walks along the hotel corridors, plays... he tries to lean on someone.

We see through the eyes of Johan (chaos and the search for love) and Anna (rebellion, desire, the search for something/someone) and Ester (fear and hope succeeding each other).

Ester, Anna and Johan - they are together but so very far apart. Johan, Anna's little son, is the only one that wants to establish a real connection, but when the film ends, he has already begun to suspect what life's about - the first steps to a rude awakening.

There are not many films like "The Silence". This film is really what could be called a masterpiece. It is very difficult for me to describe "The Silence" and the feelings/emotions it provoked in me. All I can say that it is a very rich film and each viewing will reveal new things and different angles to the viewer. "The Silence" is cinematic art in its purest form.

"Tystnaden", "The Silence", is perhaps Bergman's most disturbing film without the shocking images of, say "Cries and Whispers" and "Fanny and Alexander". It is more the atmosphere and what is not said that makes this film so uncomfortable to watch, but that is one of the things I love about the cinema- to be shocked, moved and disturbed by the images. I can understand why some people, my mother for example, do not like Bergman, but I believe he is a great artist and one of the true canonic directors we have, along with the likes of Dreyer, Mizoguchi, Fellini, Tarkovsky and Kubrick (just to mention a few!).

Bergman's women shine in this film, too, although they must have been exhausted afterwards. Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom star as the two sisters, whose apparent incestuous relationship has destroyed them both, Esther (Thulin) physically (she is dying) and Anna (Lindblom) mentally. They arrive, with Anna's son Johan, in a foreign city at war, which creates an uncozy atmosphere around Sven Nykvist's exterior shots. The tanks roll down the city streets, becoming a metaphor of the war of emotions between Anna and Esther. Thulin makes a very physically demanding performance, like Harriet Andersson in "Cries and Whispers" she is dying (of cancer?), and her pain is showing. Anna clearly wants to hurt her sister, who is the oldest and smartest of them, by saying cruel things and playing with Esther's apparent sexual love for her.

Sigmund Freud would have loved this film, and Anna seems to want to break free from her sister by having casual sex with a man she meets at a bar. She then tells her sister about it, and Esther's reactions to this is extremely ambiguous, like most of the film is. Anna's wish to become free of her sister is deeply rooted in childhood experiences, and it leads Anna to say things like "I wish she was dead" to the man who does not understand a word she is saying. All these things make "Tystnaden" the disturbing film it is. The only release is when Johan explores the corridors of the hotel alone, meeting a bunch of short men who perform at a circus-like variete Anna visits to escape from the sight of Esther. But Johan meets a kind (or is he a paedophiliac?) old man who works at the hotel, and it is he who has to care for Esther as she draws her last breaths, Anna tearing Johan away from her sister's arm in a very cruel manner. The long periods of silence in the film perhaps makes the title, or perhaps it means that the silence about the sisters' past is never broken to us, the spectators. A lot is left up to us to interpret, typically of Bergman's cinema.

All in all, a very ambivalent, Freudian and disturbing film from one of the masters of the cinema.

There are different strokes to appreciate The Silence.

The first is the theological/existential perspective. Contrary to many published reviews on the trilogy, I find the three films affirm the existence of God in the face of doubt. What is the silence referring to? God appears to be quiet; yet the ailing Ester communicates with her nephew by providing him a piece of paper with a foreign word "hadjek" that means "soul" or "spirit". Is that a word that a woman disillusioned with existence of God would pass on to her nephew on her deathbed? I have doubts about Bergman's professed agnosticism. "Hadjek" is the last word of The Silence spoken by Johan reading from the list of foreign words from Ester's letter to him that he jealously guards from his own mother Anna. Somewhat like "rosebud" in Citizen Kane. Again there are two shots towards the end of The Silence that offer Christian symbolism affirming faith in God. First, there is the last shot of Ester her face directed at light from the window, fully exposed to light, as she waits for her eventual death, content at having passed on the letter to her nephew. The second is the last shot of Anna her bathing her face in rainwater (a symbol of baptism) having read the contents of the letter that Johan holds in his hands.

Now Bergman gave names to his film's characters with considerable thought, incorporating Biblical connections that he probably picked up from his father's sermons. The priest Tomas in Winter Light is so named because St Thomas doubted the resurrection of Christ, just as Tomas is questioning the existence of God. Ester in The Silence is obviously named after the Biblical book Esther, one of the only two books in the Bible that does not mention God directly. Does the absence of God mean the book is not holy? By corollary, does the silence of God mean that God does not exist? For the atheist viewer of The Silence, too, there is sufficient room to record the director's observation of deserted churches—when Anna truthfully confesses to her elder sister that she had sex with a waiter in an empty church. For the existentialist viewer, there is silence from God to the cries of help from Ester. Yet another way to appreciate The Silence is to study the physical silence in the film. Spoken words are indeed few. The film begins with the tick-tock of a watch/clock, which stops when the characters break their silence. The watch is also a metaphor for the limited time of life on earth available for each individual. The sound of the tick-tock increases when Ester is unable to breath and is mortally afraid of dying from suffocation. It is also heard when Anna is reflecting on her post-coital satisfaction in her hotel room. Words are few—the foreign words learnt in the unnamed country relate to "hand", "face" and finally "soul". Much of the visual communication relates to "hands" and "faces", particularly those of Ester. Ester's hands move even when she is sleeping. Ester's hand caresses Anna's hair but stops short of touching the face. The denizens of the unnamed country hardly speak, yet we know all is not well, with tanks moving in the night and underfed horses pulling carts of furniture to nowhere. Death seems around the corner. One of the few other sounds we hear is the click of the toy gun, disturbing the cleaner of the chandelier. Then there is the clank of the tank negotiating the narrow street outside the hotel. More importantly, silence in the film between individual characters in the film, existing side by side with the theological silence.

A third way to evaluate complex issues of The Silence is to study the camera-work of Sven Nykvist. Much of the brilliance of the black-and-white film revolves around shadows and light, mirrors and last but not the least, close-ups. The carnal events are captured in shadows, while epiphanies are swathed in bright light. Nykvist and Bergman use mirrors to indicate the lack of direct communication or rather the presence of bounced communication. When Ester, the translator of languages cannot converse with the maitre d'hotel, she resorts to sign language—even the boy Johan prefers Punch and Judy to communicate his feelings rather than read a book for his sick aunt. The extraordinary performance of one of cinema's finest actresses, Ingrid Thulin, would have been difficult to perceive were it not for Nykvist's close-ups of her face and hands.

A fourth way to approach The Silence is the character of the young boy Johan, who probably is the personification of the young Bergman. Johan is a mix of irreverence (he urinates in the hotel corridor) and innocence (he willingly cross-dresses at the behest of the dwarfs). He is attached to his mother, but respects his aunt even more. As the film un-spools, it is evident that he obeys his mother but is able to connect with the aunt's higher level of intellect, quite aware that she is dying. Johan's father exists but is not physically present. Johan is figuratively squeezed between his mother lacking a "conscience" and an aunt with a domineering and an implied lesbian relationship with his own mother. It is not a perfect life for a boy. Indirectly, Bergman wants the viewer to step into Johan's shoes, irreverent yet innocent and loving. Johan is first introduced to death by the personal collection of family photographs of the maitre d'hotel, including photographs of his dead wife. But John prefers to hide them beneath the carpet but resurrects the subject in his own Punch and Judy show for his aunt.

Then you can look at The Silence as the quintessential Ingrid Thulin film. In The Silence her facial expressions are the very imprints one associates with Peter O'Toole's thespian turns in cinema. It is no wonder that she acted in films of topnotch directors: Bergman, Visconti, Resnais and Minnelli.

An Ingmar Bergman film always takes me to film school. `Silence' offers the PhD. Metaphors and character arcs: No one does it better than Bergman.

It's a study in contrasts. It's about the strife sewn into the lining of family intimacy, contrasted with the perfection of strangers engaged in the base behaviors. Complexity vs. Simplicity. The common ground shared by youthful innocence and ignorance vs. the confusion imposed by years of living. Short people seeking acceptance vs. normal folk who are so completely unacceptable to each other. It's about a dying woman whose life's work is translating one language to another so others can understand it vs. two people who speak the same language who cannot understand each other (further) vs. two other people who speak different languages who have a better understanding than those sharing a common lexicon. And on and on.

Watching this film, it occurred to me how deeply Bergman's work influenced the likes of Kubrick and Hitchcock and Aldrich and Leigh … so many more. 2001 Space Odyssey, Psycho, so many of the great films have seeds here. The screen was Bergman's canvas; the camera his brush. Neither the script nor the imagery alone created the work. His work has a soul from the combination of all of it.

Watch Bergman's life's work and save yourself a bundle on film school. You'll be in the master's care.