冬日之光

这部电影是座宝藏，我挥舞锹镐。

1，第一场戏里埋下了很多线索，不只是情节的引信，更是人物内心和性格的伏笔。
这些线索藏在各个人物的表情和动作里。
渔夫的不屑——他总是垂着眼，拒绝与任何人或者上帝交流。
渔夫妻子的单纯虔诚——目光温顺地直视耶稣和托马斯。
玛塔对宗教的淡漠对托马斯的关切————其中有一组镜头是这样剪接的：（在第一次唱颂歌时）近景，玛塔抬眼看向前方；特写,托马斯手中的圣餐，耶稣的肉体；远景，站在台上的托马斯手持圣餐；近景，玛塔看着前方，又垂下头去。这一段剪接的重点在于第二个镜头，圣餐的特写，在这里它既暗示又隔绝了玛塔和托马斯的关系。英格丽图林是个多好的演员啊，光从眼神里就能清晰看到玛塔的怜悯，在这场戏里表现最好的就是她，好几处她只依靠着眼睛就展现了丰富情感。

2，渔夫夫妇来找托马斯时，伯格曼也有一个使我十二分喜爱的处理，我发现他把空间和时间同时进行了一种奇特的压缩，变得很紧凑，真非常厉害，我需要用截图将它记录下来。

3，我要先按着我的思路捋一下整个故事，这很有必要。
托马斯带领众人做礼拜。回到休息室渔夫乔纳斯夫妇来找他，乔纳斯的妻子希望托马斯能解救自己丈夫，托马斯让乔纳斯送妻子回家后回来。托马斯想读玛塔的信又放弃，从休息室走进教堂。玛塔来看他，一场并不顺利和成功的交流，玛塔离开后他又感到心慌，拿出去世妻子的照片来慰藉自己。然后开始读玛塔的信，这里就是长达八九分钟的玛塔面对摄影机的倾诉。有意思的是一开始托马斯放弃读玛塔的信，而在玛塔来到他身边又离去之后他又愿意来读这封信，是她的主动到来和被迫离开竟使他感到了他对她的需要。渔夫乔纳斯来找托马斯，这时本该是托马斯要挽救渔夫的心灵，却演变成托马斯把他看成救命稻草倾诉对象。就这样，从电影开始到这里，伯格曼用了三个步骤，托马斯灵魂的虚弱一步步被揭示出来。乔纳斯离开，托马斯侧身站在窗前，光亮起，照在他身后，神来一笔。玛塔又回到教堂，托马斯走到教堂的祭台下，弯腰蹲下，玛塔拥抱他亲吻他，他哭泣。乔纳斯自杀的消息传来，托马斯赶到现场，在一条河边，后来当留下他一人守着尸体时，“他清楚地检视自己生命中种种永难忘怀的失败”，伯格曼是这样解释的，但我却觉得电影里那个场景对这句话的表现力不足。托马斯开车送玛塔回家，在教室里两人有了一次惨烈的交流。托马斯和玛塔去了渔夫家，将渔夫死讯告诉了那位妻子。驱车至铁路旁时，面对呼啸而过的火车托马斯说了一句很重要的心里话。两人去到教堂，阿尔戈特跟托马斯讨论了自己对耶稣受难的思考。托马斯开始做礼拜，有了玛塔的陪伴。


4，再来看看托马斯与玛塔的几次相处和交流，也可以说是交锋。

开始是在教堂里做礼拜时，在这里的两人关系表现主要是玛塔对于托马斯的，而且伯格曼还是用相当隐蔽的方式。前面说过了。

接下来是在休息室里，托马斯开始倾诉，玛塔轻轻尝试从上帝那里拉他到自己身边，被拒。托马斯出来找她，她已离开。这一段伯格曼就把那些隐蔽的关系给说出来了，在这里玛塔处于主动托马斯处于被动，托马斯的被动胜利了，但他已经在她面前泄露了软弱。

玛塔在信里对托马斯的陈述，伯格曼让英格丽图林直面摄影机这种如此坦白的方式来处理这段坦白的情节。这段很关键，它将托马斯和玛塔的矛盾冲突纠葛完全展现。玛塔坦白的内容使托马斯感到愤怒羞愧无力，所以接下来当乔纳斯来到时他竟然要向乔纳斯求助。

玛塔回来看托马斯，在祭台下拥抱亲吻，给他温暖依靠。这是一段短暂缓冲。

在教室里的两人交流，我说那是惨烈，在于它的彻底性，在脸上和言语里装满冷酷的托马斯却是在退缩着，“你会恨自己至死”，玛塔一句话使他暴怒也使他明白自己需要她，所以终于他还是要求她跟自己一起离开。

在火车的轰鸣声里，托马斯告诉玛塔自己当牧师完全是父母的意愿，然后他们到了教堂。我一直在设想这个结尾里伯格曼的态度，由于他在电影里表现出的对现世生活的肯定对上帝的反抗曾使我迷惑，迷惑的地方是为何结尾还要安排一场礼拜，领取圣餐，现在我所能做出的解释是，安插进去的阿尔戈特和托马斯的谈话在这里起了作用，宗教是现世的宗教上帝是现世的上帝人生是现世的人生，能使自己相信的只有身处这个世界的真实的感受，这是不需假设的。所以伯格曼才说“一切都显得异常清晰起来，他终于面临第一个新生的机会”。
阿尔戈特向托马斯阐述自己的思考时，伯格曼将两人放进同一画面，然后镜头从阿尔戈特摇到托马斯再摇到阿尔戈特再摇回托马斯，让两人共享阿尔戈特表述的那个灵魂充满怀疑的痛苦。而接下去玛塔跪地祈祷“只要我们感觉安全，敢展现彼此的弱点，只要我们有某种信仰，只要我们相信”，说最后一句话时镜头切到了休息室里的托马斯，相似的景别和动作，相同的心声，信仰就在真实的生活里。

5，伯格曼在这个宗教色彩浓重的电影里却是让宗教退居了次位，人的内心情感和现世生活才是诉说的核心。
对于基督教，我是不怎么瞧得上的，它与我奉守的文化差异太大，伯格曼是从那个环境里浸染而出的，但他却在一步步洗脱，从他的电影来说，到了《芬妮与亚历山大》就洗的差不多了，在态度上已经很接近于儒家文化，肯定此世的生命，无论欢愉或悲苦。

《冬日之光》被伯格曼称为是自己最得意电影作品之一，这和他的另外两部作品《犹在镜中》和《沉默》并称为“信仰三部曲”。伯格曼从片中人物细致微妙的关系出发，探讨信仰，爱等问题，为后世西方电影的发展提供了丰富的给养，一直被认为是现代电影的经典之作。
伯格曼的电影带有很明显的北欧室内剧风格，《冬日之光》的地点仅限于一个小镇内，人物的活动围绕着镇上的教堂，主要的情节冲突发生于教堂后狭小的休息室内，这种空间上明显的压缩就从外部给观者以压迫感，使得目光更容易深入剧中人物微妙的关系网中。另外，伯格曼善于通过对于人物对话的精到把握和面孔的细致描绘，达到直指内心的效果。例如在《冬日之光》50至60分钟男女主人公的长对话中，托马斯细数对于玛塔的厌恶，玛塔作为一个沉默的听者把内心的感受表现在面部的细微变化中，使观众惊叹于大师对于这样一种爱恨交织，怜悯和失望并存的情绪的完美呈现。而这些电影手法的运用，为导演传达自己对于爱与被爱，信仰的沦丧和坚持的理念作了很好的铺垫。
首先，不可否认，影片是关于上帝之爱的，上帝到底在哪里，为什么眼睁睁看着世间人经受的苦难而不予以回应。片中帕森因为中国拥有原子弹而思维陷入困境，终而走向自杀，这种纯知识分子为思想而殉道的方式在我们看来似乎是难以理解的，但是在二战后普遍陷入信仰危机的西方人中却并不少见。托马斯作为牧师本有责任让上帝之爱重新充满帕森的内心，而事实却是，他连自己也说服不了，上帝带走了他最心爱的妻子，他所经受的一切苦难都无从解释，北欧的冬天，无论外在环境还是人物内心都是冰冷昏暗的，如果“上帝不存在了”似乎一切都顺理成章了，但同时，一切的意义也失去了，活着也变成了一种近乎荒诞的自我折磨，因而帕森选择的是早早收场。
但是，仅仅停留在对于上帝的探讨，显然不是柏格森电影具有如此大的普世价值的原因。《冬日之光》归根结底，还是写形而下的人世，写微妙的人际关系。女主人公玛塔在给托马斯的长信最后写道：“我爱你，我为你而活，占有我享用我吧。在我虚假的自尊和独立背后，其实只有一个愿望：能被允许为某个人而活着。”爱情赋予玛塔以生存的意义，这意义是美好的，可感的，尽管托马斯仍旧冷酷得说自己是如何厌恶玛塔为他所做的一切，这让她近乎伤痛欲绝，但是在电影的最后，玛塔还是心甘情愿得做托马斯布道的唯一一个听众，尽管她是不信神的。从某种意义上来说，托马斯就是玛塔的上帝，一个不予回应的被爱者。
可是，拥有信仰的托马斯和玛塔都是拒绝沦落的，这让他们得以坚守，得以让爱充满人心，电影取名“冬日之光”的原因就在于此，冬日的光是若有若无，难以把握的，但同时又是温暖的，充满希望的。电影提到耶稣的受难之源是怨恨上帝的抛弃，可见爱而不可得的苦痛由来已久，这并不能构成我们放弃信仰爱的理由，因为爱的意义不在于获得被爱，而在于使自身获得救赎，坚守希望。
艺术从来就是给人以美感和希望的，伯格曼的电影亦是如此，上帝隐没了，爱归还于人间。身在不同文化语境和时代背景下的我们，似乎很难体会到他电影所传达出的理念，那么就从想通的人心和人性出发，获得属于自身关于爱与被爱的体会，一部好电影的价值，就在于此。

（写于2010-11-10）

伯格曼大多电影就像一个死寂般宁静并充斥着晦涩与压抑的边缘世界，让人难以企及与困顿，但从中所体现出来的深刻思想与望尘莫及的智慧，又叫人不得不为之沉迷与折服，这种独特的氛围与感染力也延续到了电影《冬日之光》中，伯格曼就像一个高深莫测看透尘世的哲学家与思想家，以极为冷静与沉重的态度诉说着他对于人生意义与宗教信仰的洞察、质疑与理解。

这部电影并没有什么故事性，更多的只是以一种诉说与谈论的方式来呈现本片的深刻内涵和主旨，虽然感觉上会显得有些沉闷与枯燥，但细细地品味与理解后会发现这些寓意深刻的独白与对话，反而给我们提供了更多思考的线索与空间，值得铭记在心百般回味。而在这部电影中也不乏一些典型伯格曼式象征性的细节与片段。

例如影片一开始那一张张清晰的人物特写，从他们那形象具体的面部表情中仿佛可以窥探到他们游走于残酷现实与美好信仰中的迷茫、无奈、哀愁与落寞。熟悉的时钟和烛光也出现在了本片中，像是对于时光匆匆中生命与信仰脆弱一面的体现，同时对深化主题也起到了一定关键性的辅助作用。影片中伯格曼还利用了两个小孩来体现出他对于宗教信仰的反感与冷漠，以及通过片中人物冷漠的交流表达出一种人与人之间沟通的无用与无望。

影片中有三个重要的人物，在我看来他们更像是伯格曼的分身，以迥异的身份从不同的视角去体现他的观点与疑问。第一个是个郁郁寡欢悲观主义的渔夫，在诚心的祷告并接受完洗礼后，渔夫的妻子带着他跑去找牧师希望他可以以神的名义开导并助他走出精神困境，但经过了解，让人啼笑皆非的是使他抑郁恐惧的原因竟然是当时中国的“日益强大”带给他的恐惧与威胁。后来自我矛盾的牧师也没能拉他一把，转眼间他就走上一条不归路。

看到渔夫的命运，让人不禁感叹就连很多人（包括他自己）坚信的能给人类带来无限美好希望与安定生活的上帝也未能将他救赎，反而这种让人难以理解与酷似神经质似的信仰还让他更加沉沦于生活的残酷无常中，以至于一个八竿子打不到一起的消息就能触及到他敏感的细胞，让他深陷消极的情感氛围中难以自拔。而更引人深思的就是他向牧师提出的那个问题：为什么我们要继续生活？就算放在如今来看也依旧是个可以让人不断扪心自问却难以给予确切答案并索绕终身的人生命题。

整体来看影片的中轴人物其实是牧师。他一面慷慨激昂的赞扬着上帝存在的美好意义所在，以及上帝对于人类的付出与牺牲，因对上帝的信仰而塑造出来的令人无比崇敬与向往的幸福生活等。但当他摘掉这个如同工具般的身份头衔后，在周遭真实事实的驱动下，以及信仰所赋予的虚无缥缈的美好与现实所赋予的真实的残酷的反差中开始动摇、迷茫与困惑了起来。就像影片最后牧师的助手对他阐述着自己对耶稣受难极为精辟的见解，仿佛也道出了牧师与伯格曼的心声，疾病与肉体上的折磨根本算不了什么，精神上的伤才是最致命的打击。

“赐予我生活的意义，我会做你顺从的奴隶。”这是影片中一个中年女教师说的话，也是三个角色中的重要一员。她疯狂爱恋着牧师，甚至为了他甘愿付出一切。影片中女教师送给牧师一封信，伯格曼将信的内容转换成女教师坐在镜头前的独白，她深沉犹豫内敛的神情透露出一股悲凉而忧伤的气息，她诉说着对于宗教信仰的反感与不解，并告知牧师她是多么的爱他。本段的第一句话就是女教师独白中的一句，其实影片中的牧师就相当于是女教师的信仰与存在的价值，但后来当她在教室里得知牧师对于自身一切的反感与厌恶时，他自认活着的希望与意义在瞬间就变成了浮云。其实她与牧师之间，牧师与他死去的妻子之间的关系就是一种人与上帝的关系。

牧师厌恶她的原因除了他所说的一大堆毫无说服力的理由外，真正的原因其实是女教师对他的爱和纠缠让他意识到自己的信仰正在被慢慢地瓦解，在他的眼中上帝犹如他妻子一般的存在，他害怕自己对于妻子的依恋会被女教师取代，无法再依靠精神上的这种寄托过活，才会对她冷嘲热讽渐行渐远，而她百般的接近诱惑也只是想在牧师身上体会到活着的意义，所以两人才会以一种极为矛盾纠结的关系牵连在一起。其实很多时候信仰只是以一种作为逃避现实的借口与理由而存在，用一层自认刀枪不入实则虚无缥缈的盔甲伪装自己的痛苦与哀伤，在残酷现实的侵蚀下，作为一种如同救命稻草般的精神需求与心理安慰。无论是对的人的迷恋，还是对上帝的崇拜，大多都只不过是在寻获一个生存的意义与精神的寄托而已，

在我看来这部电影就像是伯格曼的内心独白，借他人之口道出了自己内心对于人生意义和宗教信仰独到的见解与领悟，以及引人深思的质疑，带给观众对于生活的一种更加透彻的认识与自省。虽然在伯格曼的电影中没有现代电影中炫目的电脑技术与科技含量，没有娱乐大众的电影元素与明星大腕，却拥有着当下电影中难得一见的深刻哲思和崇高的思想境界，带给我们更多价值非凡的触动。影片最后除了女教师外，教堂里空无一人，牧师还是一如既往如同例行公事般做着礼拜。不禁让人心生疑虑，是他在自欺欺人？还是所处时代的悲哀？

Fear and Trembling
Michael Joshua Rowin on Winter Light


The published screenplays of Ingmar Bergman’s “religious trilogy” contain, as a sort of introduction, a single-page announcement of the director’s intentions. “The theme of these three films is a “reduction”—in the metaphysical sense of the word.” Then, as if Bergman wanted to descriptively reduce these films of reduction, one-line summations of each film of the trilogy follow: “Through a Glass Darkly—certainty achieved. Winter Light—certainty unmasked. The Silence—God’s silence: the negative impression.” While the first and the last entries seem inadequate to their respective films’ complexities, it is the middle that, if one has seen Winter Light, brings pause. “Certainty unmasked”: the two words at once totally evoke and yet only hint at what might be the greatest achievement of Bergman’s mature work, an incredibly—almost painful—personal struggle with the nonexistence of God and the responsibility to oneself and others in the harsh light of doubt. The unmasking of religious certainty informs Winter Light’s sparse, skeletal story and structure, in which Bergman sheds any artistic ornamentation that remained from earlier films like The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. But, like a leafless tree in the dead of January, the film also contains jutting branches, subtle articulations of concept and character that touch upon a multitude of emotions, ideas, and considerations, eventually extending into one of the most spiritually ambiguous endings in all of cinema and provoking a profound and haunting transformation.

In Through a Glass Darkly Bergman first presented his vision of the “spider-god,” an insidious, corrupt obverse to the benevolent Christian God, a tormenting idea of God’s failure within a meaningless reality. As Bergman himself described the concept in interview, “It’s a question of the total dissolution of all notions of an otherworldly salvation.” Everything in this first film of the religious trilogy points to an Inferno, and yet Bergman backs off. Creating the character of Karin as a schizophrenic allowed him, as well as the viewer, to keep a safe distance from the consequences and possibilities of God-as-evil-manipulator. And after Karin completely succumbs to insanity, her father closes the film by letting son Minus and the viewer know that all is not lost, that “God is love” and that Karin is surrounded by this love. One senses that this speech ends the film on an utterly false note, offering a facile solution in face of an enormous existential dilemma—the director even admitted as much later on. While Bergman begins to grapple with religious uncertainty in Through a Glass Darkly, the process is undertaken with trepidation and lacks sustained moral conviction.

Winter Light, on the other hand, tackles the issue of a sick or absent God directly, with a greater sense of gravity and with precise mastery of form. For one thing, the mise-en-scène of Winter Light never overwhelms or startles as it does in the previous film, instead becoming quietly and effectively integrated with the action. The various settings of Through a Glass Darkly provide natural habitats for a spider-god, allowing Bergman to create expressionistic cinematic set pieces like the sea-wrecked ship and the room with ripped wallpaper. But in Winter Light the surroundings become muted, hushed, as if God’s silence had left a palpable expectancy in the very air the characters breathe. Bergman, like Ozu, is a seasonal director (Summer Interlude, Virgin Spring, Autumn Sonata, etc.), and the role winter plays is as important as the Reverend Tomas’s church, providing a cover of gray, melancholic resignation and suffering.


 
    The film opens, however, within the interior of a cold, humble church in the rural Swedish town of Mittsunda. A service is in progress, with Rev. Tomas Eriksson leading the congregation. Tomas tells the story of Christ’s last supper with the disciples, in which he offers them his body and blood as eternal salvation. Thus Bergman introduces the film’s main theme—communication, a true giving and receiving between beings that redeems the meaninglessness of existence. As visual commentary, something occurs soon after that is, cinematically, almost preternatural in its simplicity and power. As the Reverend says the Lord’s Prayer, Bergman cuts to three exteriors (each fading into one another) that normally would serve as opening establishing shots, with the church looking like an abandoned ruin among winter trees, the hardened ground, and a half-frozen river. This unconventional but structurally integral insertion of a montage sequence at this point in the film creates a feeling of extreme alienation and loneliness—through a seemingly gratuitous move to the bitter outside world during a prayer of great strength and confiding, Bergman undermines the potential warmth of the words and transforms a God’s-eye-view into its opposite, a hollow, empty space where a caring God cannot reside. Communication and solace seem remote.

Similar in environmental effect is a scene in which Tomas visits the place where Jonas, the man whose fear of nuclear war he had previously attempted to address, has killed himself. The body lies near that same earlier shown river and, over the course of five long shots handled from two strategic camera positions, the viewer sees, in documentary-like footage, Tomas’s encounter with the rote process of tending to a fresh corpse: the body is covered with tarp, kept company by Tomas when the doctors leave the scene, and finally transported to a hospital van. Bergman shoots all of this in as subjective a manner as possible by remaining completely objective—that is, as Tomas now sees the world as being absent of any higher power, Bergman films the scene with attention to the concreteness, the pure materiality of the landscape, as if existence were pressing itself upon Tomas for the first time. There is no recourse to a close-up which would neatly spell out Tomas’s emotional state—Bergman demonstrates here his aesthetic restraint in creating a sorrow rooted in nature, in the half-glow of the dreary surroundings and the relentless rushing water nearby.

The languishing sadness of Jonas’s suicide comes from its particular pertinence to Tomas. Bergman unmistakably links both in their individual torments, Tomas’s an intensely personal one in his relationship to God, Jonas’s a global one in a sane assessment of an insane world’s death drive. The reverend’s earlier offhand, routine remark to Jonas—a seemingly pathetic try to dispel anxiety—haunts the screen during his lonely stay with the body: “We all go with the same dread, more or less.” Both fears emanate from the same, desperate place in the soul, the annihilation of the earth deeply related to the annihilation of the self’s significance in reality. Tomas’s existential dread carries with it a terrible possibility—might not the winter light that accompanied Tomas’s acceptance of meaninglessness also be the blinding flash of the A-bomb?


 
    Tomas’s openness with Jonas is the crux around which the film revolves. Tomas reveals that God for him was once a secure “echo-god . . . who loved mankind, of course, but myself most of all,” one that became “a spider-god, a monster” emerging after his wife’s death. Although the nursing, unchallenging God of his conventional Christian upbringing and practice revealed its perversity in the face of personal tragedy, Tomas’ desperation is unlike Karin’s madness. Tomas’s spiritual and emotional breakthrough, his realization of God’s silence and the falsity of his role as a man of the cloth, brings with it freedom, a terrible existential vertigo. Winter Light here answers Through a Glass Darkly by allowing the “spider-god” a positive manifestation without falling back onto evasive reassurances like “God is love.” Thus, when Tomas cries out, in the midst of his consuming illness and after his monumental admission, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” the question is answered by the expressionist winter light of the title streaming through the windows, mysteriously illuminating the features of a man reborn.

The passage from exterior to the interior, from the absurdity of existence to the individual’s realization of that absurdity, takes place within this crucial moment. It was initiated, in part by Marta, Tomas’s mistress and the local schoolteacher. Marta is one of Bergman’s most complex characters, a substitute mother/wife, searching atheist, and stigmatized Christ figure all at once. In her extended letter to Tomas, Marta details her own struggle with God, reminding him of how one day she prayed “to be of use,” to put her abundant strength to a task that will give her life meaning. The prayer was prompted by eczema that, symbolically, afflicted her hands, feet and crown. The Christ symbolism is clear, and Marta easily sees Tomas’s religious compromises corresponding with the breakdown in their relationship—after mentioning the moment she realized Tomas didn’t love her she pinpoints his lack of faith, his “peculiar indifference to the gospels and to Jesus Christ.”

Tomas’s reading of the letter while waiting for Jonas is another example of Bergman’s simple, delicate and yet rich approach in dealing with storytelling. When the reverend begins to read Marta’s words it becomes rendered as—instead of, typically, a voiceover or flashback—a four-and-a-half minute shot of Marta, seated in front of a bare wall, talking directly at Tomas and the viewer. This is unmediated communication, openness and expressivity, the spiritual and emotional nakedness that has been lacking ever since the service that was conducted entirely with foreign (i.e., the Church’s) words, and not the characters’ own. Prefiguring the radical forms of address in Persona and Hour of the Wolf, it is as if Bergman announces the intent of the entire trilogy with this shot (a similar two minute shot follows a minute-long flashback scene), a complete demolition and removal of psychological, emotional, and cinematic defenses—an unmasking.

Marta’s confession of finding meaning in wanting to share a life with Tomas, as well as her critical insight into Tomas’s hidden jealousy and hatred toward God, shifts the focus of the film. Later, in reaction to Jonas’s suicide, in reaction to a meaninglessness that only further exasperates questions of responsibility and duty, Tomas flees from individual salvation by bluntly confronting Marta. His grievances—that she treats him like a child, repulses him with her various illnesses that require constant attention, and her failure to replace his true love, his late wife—come as a shock. So accustomed have we been to Tomas’s resignation that this outburst comes across as a frantic testing of freedom and at the same time a return to the spiritual stalemate in the struggle to understand God’s silence. Marta (the praying, physically suffering atheist) offers a new kind of faith in the form of human love and companionship for Tomas (the atheistic, physically suffering reverend) but—as the location of their conversation, a schoolhouse, suggests—the teacher’s lessons in love and connection cannot reach the confused, bitter priest-turned-pupil. Tomas’s renunciation of a dead God now only allows him to burrow deeper into his own pity and coldness.


 
    Ironically, Tomas finds redemption in a church, a place he earlier damned for stifling his life with the false cover of servile Christian faith. There, Algot, the hunchback sexton, tells Tomas before the service something that has been troubling him about the Gospels: Christ’s physical agony could not have been as bad as his own. The true agony was Christ’s abandonment by the disciples and his ultimate moment of doubt on the cross when demanding to know why God had forsaken him. “To understand that no one has understood you. To be abandoned when one really needs someone to rely on . . . Surely that must have been his most monstrous suffering of all? I mean God’s silence.” Tomas responds in the form of a decision—will the service proceed in the absence of any congregates, save Marta? Bergman moves the entire sequence from gothic, candle-illuminated lighting to electric, reflecting both the otherworldliness of the atmosphere and its unbeautiful blandness. As Marta herself offers a silent prayer (“If we could dare to show each other affection . . . if we could believe in a truth . . . if we could believe . . .”), Tomas comes out to lead the service: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. All the earth is full of His glory . . .”

In unmasking the certainty of religious faith, Bergman ends Winter Light with the almost unfathomable image of a godless reverend conducting a service for no reason other than his own sense of religious responsibility. Tomas’s final gesture suggests neither a reconciliation with God nor a turn toward self-parody, but a Sisyphian struggle in coming to terms with the absurdity of life. Marta’s prayer calls for the aspects (affection, truth, belief) still missing in the lives of damaged souls, while Tomas’s prayer confirms the ability to continually search for them, not through hollow ritual which made the first church service a theater of the grotesque, but through a personal, austere dedication to challenging and helping oneself and others in the face of meaninglessness. If God exists anywhere in Winter Light it is in that “absurd image,” as Tomas calls it, of Jesus on the cross questioning God as to the purpose of the Passion. The anguish of doubt, magnified in the cavernous, nearly empty church, proves that God need not exist for us “to be of use.” Instead, it proves that communication of that doubt—even absurdities like Tomas’s prayer to an empty church and a dead god—renders the silence bearable, makes it know that we are not dead in life, that we are constantly rediscovering ourselves in the midst of chaos and inertia, in the brilliance of that winter light which casts itself upon the valley of woe.

Bergman would complete the religious trilogy with The Silence, taking doubt to what is perhaps its inevitable flowering: communication, but for the faint candle that is Ester’s letter to Johan, becomes completely obliterated; war, only talked of in Winter Light, literally comes to town; and disease—that consistent Bergman metaphor—destroys mercilessly, hardly abated by human kindness or prayer. Persona moves further in this direction, with the relationship between Alma and Elisabeth a distillation of all the trilogy’s stumbling attempts at understanding. Winter Light, then, located in the middle of Bergman’s film career, stands as Bergman’s strongest testament to the nature of doubt, that paralytic wavering over the waters of faith and skepticism that infuses this singular film with its world-weary eyes and shivering soul.