Les communiants

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.

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

"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.

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.

"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.