This year marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Swedish film maestro Ingmar Bergmann.
Bergman's film is not small, but it is difficult for the average moviegoer in China, mainly for two reasons: first, the difference in culture, Bergman's film is soaked with reflection on the "two Greeks" civilization and ethical consciousness, if there is no basic concept of Western culture, it is difficult to enter; second, the purpose of Bergman's film is not to show the external things such as strange things, beautiful nature, and social conflicts, but to explore and express the heart of the characters. In order to make the invisible invisible visible, Bergman must make his stories and images "extraordinary", only in this way can he force the audience's "gaze" into areas that they may never have paid attention to and thought about, to an almost unfamiliar environment. However, it is precisely the "unusual" of such an image that also discourages some viewers.
Pan Ru's monograph "The Beauty of Art and the Thoughts of the Soul: The Study of Ingmar Bergman's Film" (hereinafter referred to as "Bergman's Study") is a research monograph on Bergman's film, which provides a comprehensive interpretation of Bergman's film from two main aspects of Western culture and the ethics of desire, which can help us better understand the meaning of Bergman and his film works.
Virgin Springs
The cultural context of Bergman's films
The book "Bergman Studies" points out that the cultural background of Bergman's films comes from Greek culture and Hebrew culture, which represent two tendencies in the development of human culture, one is the Dionysian culture of enthusiasm, wandering skeletons, and enjoyment of life; the other is the religious culture of asceticism, original sin, and suppression of desires. The presentation of these two cultures in Bergman's films is not a one-dimensional existence, but a dialectical relationship that complements each other. For example, in the film "Virgin Spring", the father is both a believer in God, but also an apostate who kills his daughter after learning of his murder. Such a contradictory characterization may be incomprehensible to Chinese audiences who lack Western religious and cultural concepts, and in the book "Bergman's Study", the author explains in detail why the father insists that his daughter go alone to the church deep in the dense forest to perform the sacrificial ceremony, does he not know that this is unsafe? This is because the father as a believer must have known the story of Abraham in the Bible, Abraham sacrificed his son according to God's will, and at the moment when he was about to take his son's life, God appeared and saved the life of Abraham's son. Therefore, the father who believes in God in the film does not believe that his daughter will have any accidents in the process of the sacrificial ceremony, and even if there is an accident, God should help. But instead, the daughter encountered three evil shepherds in the forest, and they conspired to rape and kill the virgin. The father was furious when he found out and killed the three shepherds. The critique of religion here is obvious, because shepherds have special meanings. In Bergman's post-film WinterLights and Whispers, both the priest and the bishop were negative characters.
Can we say that Bergman's work is completely anti-religious? The book "Bergman's Study" tells us that Bergman cannot be understood in a simplistic way, and in the story of "Virgin Springs", although the father is an apostate figure (the three of them with a blade), he finally has to build a church where his daughter died, because the homeless soul ultimately needs a home. Pan Ru pointed out in the book "Bergman's Study": "In a sense, Bergman, the contrarian son of the seemingly unruly priest's family, projected this noble spirituality into art, thus affirming the meaning of religion. That is to say, Bergman did not simply stay on the distinct theme of anti-religion, but had a deeper thinking: after the overthrow of religion's repression of human nature, after the seal of death was lifted, what exactly did people's souls face? This is another important theme of Bergman's films: the indulgence of Dionysus desires.
"Still in the Mirror"
The soul tormented by desire
Without the fear of God and religion, human desires also spew out, and we know from Bergman's life and works that he has a clear critical attitude toward religion, but he does not explicitly express his welcome or opposition to the catharsis of desires, and in his works there are both the happiness of human relaxation and the pain of violating ethics and indulging in desires, and the expression of pain seems to occupy the main space. Dionysus desires are everywhere in the images, but in the depths of people's hearts, it is an abyss of pain.
First of all, in the process of pursuing one's own desires, people often face crazy that cannot control themselves. In the film "Wolf's Moment", the painter John chases his old lover in hallucinations and finally kills his wife out of control; in "Passion", the hero and heroine who are dependent on each other on the island are insane; in "Shame", the hero falls into madness and kills; in "Puppet Life", the hero is also completely crazy, killing the prostitute of the same name as his wife.
Second, although God's authority over the human psyche no longer exists, the desire to control others and the struggle for control have never ceased. Bergman portrays this scene in his own films, in "Masquerade", the control of a silent person over the chatter; in "Autumn Sonata", it is the control and counter-control between a mother and daughter; in "Puppet Life", it is the wife's desire to control that makes the hero crazy so that killing his wife becomes his illusion.
Again, it's a sign of homosexuality and incest. Bergman's 1960 film "In the Mirror" shows the incestuous relationship between sisters and brothers, and regardless of Bergman's intentions in this film, Bergman is already quite bold and avant-garde in terms of the theme of incest, because in that era, homosexuality and incest were strictly prohibited in the laws of many countries, and they were also taboo in the field of social ethics. Bergman explored this theme several times in his films made in the 1960s–1970s, involving homosexuality in "Puppet Life" and both in "Shouts and Whispers." There are also metaphors and hints at the two in other films.
How to explain the performance of these "out of line" human psychology and behavior in Bergman's films is a difficult problem, which is the main reason why Bergman's films have caused many different views and debates. "Bergman Studies" points us to a shortcut to understand Bergman's films, from the source of Western culture to see the phenomenon of the human mind, although the original sin in Hebrew culture has a thousand years of history, but human beings are rational animals after all, the disappearance of the original sin in Hebrew culture is not equal to the promotion of Dionysian desire in Greek culture, the two must be balanced under the constraint and control of the spirit of the sun. The Bergman Study states: "Although, the ideal state of human culture, the balance between the two Greek civilizations, has never been achieved. However, with the dream of a different culture, Bergman continued to ponder the topic of the integration of the 'two Greeks' civilizations that Nietzsche had thought and practiced with art. For Bergman, the fusion of the two Greek civilizations was achieved through a unique and mysterious way—the compatible communication of the art of the Sun God and the religious atmosphere. ”