Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

 Ingmar Bergman's "Through a Glass Darkly"

I find it very difficult to speak about Ingmar Bergman's 1961 film "Through a Glass Darkly." I try to find the words to express how I feel about what I just witnessed, but it is rather difficult. When one watches a film that completely kicks out the feet that are under you, you are left on your back. However, I will do my best to articulate the feelings I have about this immensely emotional experience.

"Through a Glass Darkly" is the first installment in what Bergman calls a trilogy of films, preceded by "Winter Light" and "The Silence." The reason for this moniker of 'trilogy' is due to the running theme on the absence of God. "Through a Glass Darkly" starts off this thematic run with a bleak and harrowing depiction of a family dealing with the mental decline of a loved one.

The film only contains four characters, all on a remote island in a 24-hour period. A father, David, spends time with his 17-year old son, Minus, and his adult daughter, Karin, along with her husband, Martin. Karin has just been released from the hospital, where she was treated with schizophrenia. David, a successful author, has been an absentee father to his children after their mother died. Karin uncovers that he has ideas about documenting her illness for publication. After learning this information, she spends the night and the proceeding morning descending into mania. 

As Karin descends into mania, the true darkness of the film is revealed. Not specifically with what Karin envisions in her manic brain, but rather with how her family members deal with having to watch someone they love having to deal with their horrors. There is plenty of suffering to go around and how each member falls into a crisis is deeply felt and deeply disturbing in their own individual ways. 

I can't quite go any further than that. I still feel that sense of speechlessness. I still feel like the film has taken the wind out of my sails; like everything was left out in the open for all to see and there is nothing left to muse or ruminate over. I know I haven't exactly explained WHY, but the film has absolutely devastated me. I know Bergman was thematically touching on the absence of God, and boy, did I weep at this concept at certain points in the film. It leaves you empty. It leave you hollow. It leave you with the feeling that there is no hope for the human soul.

I will admit, however, I felt a little let down by the final remarks made by the father at the end of the film. It felt a little tacked on and completely unrelated to the overall message the film presents. Even Bergman himself admits that the optimistic epilogue is "tacked loosely onto the end" and made him feel "ill at ease" when later confronted with it. It felt like it didn't quite fit the film and Bergman needed a light at the end of the tunnel to save the viewer from complete oblivion. 

Despite the ending remarks that don't quite work with the rest of the film, "Through a Glass Darkly" is an utter masterpiece. Its emptiness is palpable. Its dry desolation felt. Its deep longing for meaning is universal. I will never be able to get over this film.