A small-town priest must contend with the silence of God as he is overwhelmed with existential doubts in one of Bergman’s sparest works about the limits of religious faith.
Review #2,649
Dir. Ingmar Bergman
1963 | Sweden | Drama | 81 min | 1.37:1 | Swedish
Not rated – likely to be PG13 for some sexual references and mature theme
Cast: Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom, Max von Sydow, Allan Edwall
Plot: Small-town pastor Tomas performs his duties mechanically before a dwindling congregation, including his stubbornly devoted lover, Märta. When he is asked to assuage a troubled parishioner’s fear of nuclear annihilation, Tomas is terrified to find that he can provide nothing but his own doubt.
Awards: –
Distributor: Sven Filmindustri
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Existential Crisis; Limits of Religious Faith
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: General Arthouse
Viewed: Criterion Blu-ray
Spoilers: No
One of Ingmar Bergman’s shortest and sparest films, Winter Light is part of the Swedish auteur’s ‘Trilogy of Faith’, which includes Through a Glass Darkly (1961) and The Silence (1963).
Here, a small-town priest, Tomas, must contend with the silence of God when he is confronted by a member of his small and dwindling congregation.
This member, played by the great Max von Sydow, has fears of nuclear annihilation. Well, he can be good buddies with Toshiro Mifune’s character in Kurosawa’s suitably-titled I Live in Fear (1955), who also shares this same irrational fear.
But perhaps it isn’t that irrational when the Cuban Missile Crisis which threatened to end the world was thankfully averted a year before Winter Light’s release. Bergman plays into these fears, but more crucially, he uses it as a conduit to explore the limits of religious faith in clearing murky existential doubts.
“We live our simple daily lives and atrocities shatter the security of the world. It’s so overwhelming and God seems so very remote.”
Beautifully shot by ace cinematographer Sven Nykvist—the grey skies and sea of white are a mood altogether, reflecting each character’s inner desolation.
Gunnar Bjornstrand embodies Tomas’ anguish as he goes through the motions of priestly duties, and so is Ingrid Thulin who plays Marta, Tomas’ secret lover, which doesn’t escape the town’s rumour mill.
Such is Marta’s agony (of another kind) that in arguably Winter Light’s standout sequence, she reads a confession letter of romantic longing to us (in fact, breaking the fourth wall) as Tomas opens the said letter.
It’s a sequence of tremendous emotional clarity. At the same time, it accentuates the film’s central tension—what else is there to live for when existential fears and unrequited love remain unbearable? Even God may pass up the chance to offer an answer.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Eternality Tan 
[…] Winter Light (1963) […]
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