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A Tribute to Ingmar Bergman article

Submitted by Bikas Mishra on 31 July 2007 - 1:59pm | 3 Comments

Ingmar Bergman 1918-2007Somehow the images of the Professor Isak Borg from Wild Strawberries and Ingmar Bergman have got mixed up in my memory. Whenever I think of the master, the professor’s melancholic face flashes before my eyes. Like the professor who came alive in the evocative masterpiece, Bergman himself uncompromisingly and unapologetically pursued what he believed in.

Aniruddha (a huge Bergman fan and fellow author at DearCinema) introduced me to the master. I remember how Aniruddha and I searched for Bergman’s movies in entire Delhi. We even attended one Swedish Children’s film festival, only in the hope that we’ll get to meet Swedish culture centre officials to make a request to screen Bergman's films. I finally got to see his work in 2002, when we discovered the French Culture Centre.

 

I must admit though that I couldn't develop a taste for Bergman's works. The godless world he portrayed is too cruel, pitiless and quite often too depressing for me. He himself admitted in one of his last interviews that he rarely watched any of his movies because he found them “too depressing”.

Chess with Death: The famous scene from Bergman’s The Seventh Seal However the old master was one of the most significant filmmakers in the history of cinema. What made his work remarkable was the questions which always outnumbered answers and doubts which stepped ahead of faith. Undoubted only Bergman, who belonged to the literary, theatrical and philosophical tradition of Europe, was capable of doing that. A son of a priest, he kept exploring till his end if God really existed and always underlined His stark absence in his works.

Professor’s journey down memory lane in Wild Strawberries is one of most memorable cinematic images, I’ve ever seen. The old and lonely professor makes me think of his creator Bergman, who lost touch with the outside world and spent his last years in an island. Like the Knight in his much admired Seventh Seal, Bergman never played chess with the darkness of death and left this world in peace while sleeping. May God (if He exists) rest his soul in peace.

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Comments( 3 )

I have Ingmar Bergam to thank for

Aniruddha Basu's picture
Submitted by Aniruddha Basu (not verified) on 1 August 2007 - 4:19am.

I have Ingmar Bergam to thank for inroducing me to the world of European cinema. I must have been in college second year at that time when I went to watch the Swedish Film festival in Delhi's Siri Fort. The film playing was "Through a glass darkly", a dark and highly evocative tale of insanity. The film ended up having an effect of a lifetime on me. I will never forget the look of madness on the young woman's face when she proclaims that she finally saw god, "and that god was a spider". A film like this is enough to make any person lose faith in god and question the meaning of life.
Yes thats how good Ingmar Bergman was. But I dont quite agree with Bikas that all of Bergman's films were pitiless and cruel. Fanny and Alexander while portraying the pangs of adolesence was also a glorious celebration of life. Even Bikas's favorite Wild Strawberries was ultimately optimistic about the Professor's legacy.
Bergman was great not because he raised questions, but because these questions arise even to ordinary people like us from time to time, even though most of us lack the capacity to express it.
The disintegration of the relationship in the superb Scenes for a Marriage is done without any flair or melodrama, but just as if Bergman was observing all this under a microscope! We are shocked, but we cant deny the painful truth behind most of his movies..that human relationships are painful and unstable.

I have a third opinion on this post. In

Mayaa's picture
Submitted by Mayaa (not verified) on 1 August 2007 - 3:11pm.

I have a third opinion on this post. In my opinion Bergman's films challenge assumptions of the perceived reality that religion and his case Christianity weaves. His conservative Christian upbringing made him look or find an alternate and less perfect reality that he knew existed as he experienced it. Therefore, I don't think he was raising any questions in his films or trying to give a optimistic/pessimistic view on life. He was simply portraying his vision of that less perfect world that exists (and which is also not controlled by God) but was never addressed in his house by his pastor father. His films are a mirror of his intellect and his understanding of life and its imperfections. I think we need to celebrate him for that and not for giving those of us who watch him the opportunity to question beliefs about God etc? Don't we all know that intellect (read existential angst) is the luxury of few in this world.

Thank Bunuel, I was an atheist long

Bikas Mishra's picture
Submitted by Bikas Mishra on 1 August 2007 - 7:17pm.

Thank Bunuel, I was an atheist long before I encountered Bergman. The genius from Andalusia had already robbed me of my perceived sense of security derived from my inherited notion of “normality” and introduced me to the world of European cinema.
Nonetheless, I was equally awed by the proclamations of “god being a spider” in Through the Glass Darkly. However I don’t agree entirely that the film was a “tale of insanity”, I would call it Bergman’s search for god in a godless universe. A world that’s merciless and cruel hence insane. Nothing sums it better than Mayaa’s expressions “His films are a mirror of his understanding of life and its imperfections.”