Winter. Tomas is a Protestant pastor of a small parish. He is visited by a couple, Karen and Jonas, who ask for guidance. Jonas returns and confesses in private his depression caused by a news article that the Chinese will soon obtain nuclear weapons, which might lead to a doomsday war. Tomas admits he himself is succumbing to doubt in the truth of religion. Jonas later commits suicide. Tomas is visited by Marta, a woman who confesses her love to him, but he insists that he can only love his wife who died four years ago. A church assistant tells Tomas about how Jesus suffered much more from the abandonment of his followers and God.
“Winter Light” aligns with director Ingmar Bergman’s obsession with death since its whole story is basically just a giant allegory on dying and the passage of time, and highly unflinchingly and direct in this edition: in the opening shots, pastor Tomas is holding a mass in a church, but only a handful of people are attending, and in the aftermath, only scarce pennies are found from the church donations, all to symbolize how the time of this is slowly coming to an end. Tomas himself is in an existential crisis, doubting in the truth of religion, contemplating if he wasted his entire life. Even the setting is during winter, the end of a cycle, whereas Tomas is sick from a flu, almost as to show how even his physical state is dissolving. Bergman crafts the minimalist story in his typical conventional, grey style, but his writing rises to the occasion, stinging with staggering sharpness in some bleak dialogues. The 6-minute sequence of Marta reciting her letter and looking directly into the camera, describing her pain from a rash, offers one of the best lines Bergman ever wrote: “God, why have you created me so eternally dissatisfied? Why must I realize how wretched I am? Why must I suffer so hellishly for my insignificance?” Rarely was he able to get to the point of some universal human truths in such a concise, fast manner.
In another sequence, the depressive Jonas asks for guidance, but Tomas just proves to be even more negative than him while describing his own thoughts: “I put my faith in an improbable and private image of a fatherly God. One who loved mankind, of course... but me most of all! Do you see Jonas what a monstrous mistake I made?” He concludes: “If there is no God, would it make any difference? Life would become understandable. What a relief.” Bergman creates a codification of events on a certain level: Tomas suffers from anxiety because he receives no feedback from God, but that is paralleled by Marta’s situation, who loves Tomas and awaits his feedback, but she receives nothing from Tomas, either, who chastises her for “mimicking” the behavior of his late wife. Negligence, insignificance of frail, limited lives, and pain of desolate isolation in the cold world are the main themes of the film. Tomas realizes he has been following a deception, but in the end just continues the empty tradition, unable even to change. While some of Bergman’s obsessions with religion and always the same autistic lamentation about the suffering in the fatalistic world tend to get stuck running around in circles, “Winter Light” is one of his best achievements, an unassuming film with some timeless themes presented in an understanding way.
Grade:+++
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