Cinema’s Shakespeare, he will live as long as the medium lives

One thing that I remember from my institute days is that Ritwik Ghatak wasn’t particularly fond of Bergman’s films. He would instead extol the style and panache of Luis Bunuel, “the Master from Mexico”, as he would call him. He obviously had his own logic for his dislike of the Swedish great.

But for most cineastes around the world, Bergman ranks among the greatest masters of the medium. For me, among the most striking aspects of his career was that he was as much into theatre as he was into film. He was a colossus in both spheres and that made him an artistic force of rare versatility.

I never met Bergman in person. But I once saw a documentary that threw light on his working style. It showed Bergman at work with Bibi Andersson. The extent to which he allowed his actors to have a say in how a film panned out was quite remarkable.

Though his cinema was extremely personal, he obviously believed in working very closely with his actors, which probably explains the emergence of a truly formidable repertory of screen performers around him (Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson and Bibi Andersson, among others). My own approach towards actors and how I make my films is, of course, the exact opposite.

But that is not to say that Bergman wasn’t an influence on us. He was. His cinema was deeply meditative. It had a high level of spirituality, but not in the sense of being religious, but in the sense of being imbued with a soul. His style was very, very distinct, and no filmmaker who watched a Bergman film, no matter where in the world, could ever remain untouched by his influence.

Yes, that influence may not have manifested itself in obvious ways. In fact, one doesn’t have to actually follow the ways of a master to pay homage to him. It’s enough to just uphold the spirit of his cinema. Bergman’s films are great examples of exquisite filmcraft, and they have been liberally borrowed from over the decades.

This may sound clichéd, but Bergman marks an entire era in the history of filmmaking. He was after all active from the 1940s all the way up to the 1980s. He will stand out like a true master forever.

For example, in theatre, it doesn’t matter what periods and cultures William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen or Luigi Pirandello belonged to. What matters is that their work has never lost relevance. Bergman probably comes closest to being cinema’s equivalent of Shakespeare. He will live as long as the medium lives.