Through a Glass Darkly (1961) by Ingmar Bergman – (8/10)

One of Bergman’s “chamber” movie, that could have just as easily been a play as a movie but because of how wonderful the framing of the faces is, it is still much better of as a movie, I think.

The movie is about four family members gathering on a remote island. Of course, given that this is Bergman, there is plenty of tension between them that is just bound to erupt.
Her brother cannot have a conversation with their father, feels isolated and deprived of love. The father is a second-rate novelist who just returned from a trip but despite having promised that he will stay, he is planning to leave again soon. The son’s wife, has a long history of mental illness and has just been released from an asylum. Her husband is a physician. At night Karin, hears sounds and is guided to an abandoned room upstairs. There she can hear voices through the walls. They are talking about the arrival of “him”. She has an orgasm. Latter on she finds a diary that her father has been keeping where he states that he believes that her mental illness is incurable but that he must study her descent into madness. Confrontations ensue but in a typical Berman fashion since the characters are incapable of either communicating or expressing their true emotions. The husband finds his wife who has told him that she is ready to be committed again back in the same room as she was before waiting for the arrival of God. When God arrives, she witnesses nothing but a horrifying spider that tries to penetrate her. Probably my favourite, part because that is just such a interesting, disturbing way of seeing at things, seeing God.

It is a fascinating play about human relationships, inability of many to build up a normal relationship with their father or both parents perhaps and the nature of faith and God himself.