‘Film… deep into the twilight room of the soul

The first Bergman film that I watched was The Virgin Spring, a harrowing yet faith-strengthening tale of a young girl who is brutally raped and killed. With its stunning black and white photography, it left a lasting impression on the mind of a young cinematographer.

Later, in a retrospective of his films, I saw Wild Strawberries, which probed the mind and soul of a septuagenarian professor as he journeyed in quest of the meaning of life and death. The same retrospective had other riches, among them Smiles of a Summer Night and The Seventh Seal. The knight playing chess with death in The Seventh Seal is an iconic image.

Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence (which formed Bergman’s famed religious chamber trilogy) and Persona followed. They explored the inner life and the darkest corners of the psyche of the characters, manifested in the relationships between the protagonists. This line of exploration in Bergman’s work attained extraordinary depth in his richly textured Cries and Whispers, my personal favourite. It is the story of a terminally ill woman tended by two sisters who are poles apart as characters, one is reserved but overbearing, the other intense but indecisive. A stark soundtrack and stunning cinematography by Sven Nykvist and an astounding performance by Liv Ullmann raised this film to the status of a great cinematic achievement. And of course who can forget his Scenes from a Marriage and the gorgeous Fanny & Alexander!

Bergman’s strength lay in his relationship with actors. His films have extremely internalised performances from a repertoire of actors that he cultivated. He provided his actors space to develop their performances, fully sensitive to their state of psychological vulnerability.

Bergman’s collaboration with Sven Nykvist, his cinematographer, is by now a part of cinema folklore. Together, they created some of the most enduring images in world cinema. Bergman’s essential concern was with his characters as human beings — their moments of joy, their sorrows, their emotional traumas and the poetry of their souls tormented by questions that seemed to defy answers. With Nykvist on the camera, his films established a sophisticated cinematic aesthetic that reflected his artistic concerns.

Reflecting upon the nature of cinema, Bergman once said, “Film as dream, film as music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.” Bergman’s cinema is indeed a symphony of the human soul.

The writer is an eminent film-maker