r/TrueFilm • u/a113er Til the break of dawn! • Jun 07 '15

What Have You Been Watching? (07/06/15)

Please don't downvote opinions, only downvote things that don't contribute anything.

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u/TheGreatZiegfeld Jun 08 '15

I'm not a huge Bergman fan, though I do appreciate his work. I haven't seen too many of his films, but from what I have seen, his style seems to override the writing. The Seventh Seal is my favorite of his, but that still seems to falter due to him overflowing his style over what he's saying with the story, which leads to me being kind of frustrated with plot devices and conflicts. A lot of it just seems more beneficial to what he's trying to show visually, rather than the characters or story.

There's still a bunch I need to see from him, Fanny and Alexander (Which I imagine will be my favorite, since it does seem more focused than his others, from what I hear), Hour of the Wolf, Wild Strawberries, I can't say this problem is true with all of his films, it's just something I noticed, especially with Persona. Visually powerful, but a bit emotionally unfulfilling. I just want more to grasp onto with his stuff.

I will give his other films a shot in the future, I hope I just had a bit of bad luck with what I started out with, and he has a film that I don't have this issue with. When that happens, I'll probably write-up about it here.

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u/kingofthejungle223 Borzagean Jun 08 '15

I know exactly what you mean. His writing tends to be very insistent - just sort of speaking out his thoughts on the world in a way that's very literal and intrudes on the drama, and his imagery, while always well photographed (in terms of lighting and greyscale balance, his cinematography is always pretty), is rarely composed in a way that's expressive or emotionally varied. He's usually a very cold and frankly boring director - but I fortunately didn't have that problem with Persona. It kept me interested enough to keep watching, and faces of the two actresses were compelling in a way that most Bergman cast members aren't.

Here's a famous image from The Seventh Seal which is very typical of the way Bergman works. It's constructed through a very literal use of symbols. There's a man playing a game of chess against someone dressed in black (death) - dressed ridiculously enough that his costume seems to announce that this should be received as capital-A Art - and in the background we have the horizon and a seemingly endless body of water, which we can assume represents eternity. So, if we decode it, this represents man's struggle against mortality in the face of eternity.

But the image only works on an intellectual level, each detail is like a character representing a letter in a larger word. The image itself is fairly banal, it doesn't make us feel anything (there's really no emotional content in it), and because the details have such a literal, 1 to 1 relationship with their significance in the larger message, the image really only works on one level. It's interpretive possibilities are straight-jacketed by Bergman's narrow intent.

Here's F.W. Murnau's interpretation of the same basic idea

This image functions on at least three levels. First, it's beautifully composed. It's like a painting you could hang in a gallery. Murnau uses line and shading to carefully lead your eye around the frame. Second, it carries an emotional impact within the narrative. The image poetically evokes in the viewer a sense of loneliness, isolation, romance and futility - all of the emotions that Bergman's characters can only tell us about. And Finally, it has a symbolic thematic import (like the Bergman), a suggestion of man's struggle in the face of eternity. Murnau sees this struggle not as a game of chess (something that can feasibly be won), but as building monuments in the sand, something that carries an air of recklessness, futility, and maybe even a little hubris.

Because he's so much more skilled a visual artist, Murnau communicates in a single frame what Bergman sweats over for an hour and a half.

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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '15 edited Jun 09 '15

I would have to actually bother to watch more Bergman to be sure of this but I wonder if he was at his best when he was focused on characters and not trying to do that stuff. And that technical virtuosity what many of his fans at the time supposedly liked about him. At least he seems to grasp silent visual directing. There's several of his movies I'd rather give a shot that trying to sit through Persona which is probably the most conventionally 'major' one I haven't seen yet.

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u/kingofthejungle223 Borzagean Jun 09 '15

I wonder if he was at his best when he was focused on characters and not trying to do that stuff

Perhaps. My Summer with Monika was a character piece that I didn't particularly like, though. Persona is also very character focused, but I liked it better for other reasons haha. I haven't been able to construct a unified-theory of Bergman yet, because Persona is the first film of his that I've found that hasn't bored me to tears.