Of long shots and lazy Hyderabad afternoons….

The death of Bergman and Antonioni on the same day was a significant event for film lovers across the world indeed… but for an eclectic class of twenty people, who about two years ago shared lazy Hyderabad afternoons watching the best of European cinema, it was a time to share a few words and look back at what we had learned from that class…Much to the chagrin of our instructor some of us might have dozed off during many a Bergman long shot and giggled through Antonioni’s resolution scenes, yet, each of us took something back from the class…given below are the rough drafts (and when i say rough i mean ROUGH) of my assignment on both these filmmakers …

Winter Light is a story of disillusioned pastor, much like Sacrifice, which was about a disillusioned philosopher…but the difference lies in the way these two protagonists achieve a resolution within the self…while Alexander had to make a Sacrifice to be at peace with his spiritual self, the Pastor clearly has a more complex inner struggle…For he was in denial, denial of self need…
His repeated shunning of the physically tainted Martha and his longing for his marked wife shows that he clearly has not exorcised his own devils…
A priest who is supposed to be the representative of Jesus, the one who embraced the lepers, shuns Martha, because she is diseased . Martha on the other hand realizes that her completeness lies in being with him.
Jonas, the fisherman , who along with his pregnant wife , signifies domestic abundance is under threat too here (unlike in The Seventh Seal where Joff and Mia are the survivors).
Clearly Berman is a disillusioned man when he makes this film; he sees the threat of destruction of the humankind as an inevitable one.
But he never fails to hope, the scene where the wife of the fisherman breaks the news of the fathers death to the children in a warmly lit dining room , is a heartwarming one…fo life will go on, and there will be survivors…
The neurotic fisherman, Jonas, who kills himself because he fears that the Chinese will attack, brings in the greater concern to the movie… He enunciates what the world fears, another war…the constant threat of something drastic happening, is quintessential to most concerned European films…
In Winter Light religion is the only solace, not because of what it says but because of what it does…the pastor feels he is partly responsible for Jonas’s death because he couldn’t offer a helping hand to him…
At the end of the day the devout Christian in Bergman believes that the world will be saved by the milk of human kindness…