The Silence may or may not bring to a conclusion the trio of films that Ingmar Bergman released between 1961 and 1963. What is certain is that it was indeed the last title released in a supposed "trilogy" that's been referred to in various ways over the years - the Trilogy of Faith, the Death of God Trilogy, or simply (as the Criterion Collection labeled it) A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman. But it remains highly debatable is whether or not The Silence actually concludes matters in the way we usually understand a final film in a trilogy is supposed to (whether that be, for example, Star Wars, The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, Christopher Nolan's rendition of Batman, Richard Linklater's "Before" series, or - in my opinion anyway - the granddaddy of them all, the Samurai Trilogy.) There's clearly not much basis of comparison to the continuity established in all those sagas I just listed; a more fitting comparison would be Michelangelo Antonioni's so-called "alienation trilogy" (L'avventura, La Notte, L'eclisse), comprised of three unrelated stories that feature common thematic and atmospheric elements. But even then, this Bergman Trilogy remains problematic. The director himself issued contradictory statements about it over the years, regarding his intentions going into the creation of each film. But time and tradition have established this triad of movies as a distinct something, connected and pivotal in the career of one of cinema's all-time greats. We're not done with this box set yet, as we have one early example of the meta-documentary to cover in a short while here on this blog. This is also the last Bergman film we're going to see on this blog for awhile, until 1972's Cries and Whispers, unless Criterion gets their hands on Persona or any of the other films he made in the 1960s.
So if Through a Glass Darkly can be summed up in one word as "insanity" and Winter Light can be similarly labeled "doubt," the singular capsule description that applies to The Silence would be "confusion." Bergman's lack of epistemological focus, his willingness to simply allow the emotions and impulses of his characters to run loose and free, marks the clearest departure of The Silence from the failed attempts of its two predecessors to bring their own surging energies under harness. Through a Glass Darkly depicted a family trying to hold itself together in spite of the mental breakdown of a cherished daughter/sister and the craven betrayal and exploitation of her father. Winter Light depicts the struggles of a pastor who's locked into his religious vocation by vows spoken decades ago by a younger, naive and idealistic version of himself, and his tortured, pent-up lover who's unable to let him go despite his obvious contempt for her. In The Silence, the tensions of familial relationships, sister to sister, mother to son, aunt to nephew, are still acutely felt, but the effort that goes into trying to salvage those connections is feeble and quickly abandoned. Each character, even the child Johan, swiftly goes about pursuing whatever they find interesting, after a brief twinge of conscience. Ester has her booze, her cigarettes, her books and ideas, and the readily-available self-induced pleasures of her right hand to help her cope with the bout of crippling, perhaps fatal disease that's ravishing her lungs. Anna has her voluptuous strength, the robust attraction exerted by her ripe and attractive physique, matched with a willingness to throw herself into carnal encounters simply for the sake of feeling desired and fulfilled. Johan, in the void created by his caregivers' negligence, is given free rein of the vast and mostly unoccupied hotel, embarked on a schoolboy's exploration of what the adult world has to offer, and some of the horrible options exemplified to him by a ghastly array of disgruntled, uncommunicative male role models, all survivors of World War II and fully inhabited citizens of the Cold War era.
Back to that theme of confusion: Bergman seems to have been in a celebratory mood, feeling a lack of constraint from requirements that his next story make any kind of rational, narrative sense. As an ardent cinephile himself, highly aware of the film trends unfolding around him, he'd undoubtedly taken in films like Last Year at Marienbad, 8 1/2 and the Antonioni films I mentioned earlier. The Silence strikes me as an amalgam of those influences, probably others too, but filmed with Bergman's typically impeccable elegance, intelligence and clarity. Sven Nykvist played a crucially important role, of course, as he always did, and enormous credit must be given to Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom for giving such vivid portrayals to complex, enigmatic characters whose motives and backstories remain such mysteries. These artistic accomplishments all bring a degree of coherence to what would otherwise be a truly masturbatory mash-up of dream sketches, titillating sex scenes and absurdity for its own sake. (That formula of course has been steadfastly imitated and expanded upon over the years, and we'll see numerous examples of that in upcoming reviews here on this blog.) Much of what The Silence accomplishes is a credit to its makers - the film succeeds in spite of the enormous risks it takes, defying the odds that, in lesser hands, would have surely seen it collapse in a pretentious muddle of confusion that ultimately failed to provide any enlightenment.
But still... that confusion remains a big obstacle for many viewers, and Bergman's only real concession to the masses is that he made it all look so cinematically attractive (that, and the prodigious, previously unprecedented display of naked female breasts in an intellectually respectable and artistically defensible setting.) The simple truth is that this story really doesn't make much sense if one regards it as happening in "reality." Unlike Through a Glass Darkly or Winter Light, which take place in very plausible, historically located settings, The Silence exists in an arcane, symbolic realm, its characters existing only within the moment we see them, without any discernible past they've emerged from or future they're destined for. Sure, it may be the case that Anna gave birth to a son, or that Anna and Ester have some kind of strange incestuous history, or that there is a home that the three of them envision returning to. But none of that is really explored or all that important. Anna, Ester, Johan and the supporting characters are all automatons of a sort, ultimately abandoned, neglected and left to sort things out for themselves in the heat of the moment they presently occupy. They each greedily consume the goodies that they find available - alcohol, nicotine, sex - and vent whatever emotions surge through them with only a thin veil of restraint. Though in Johan's case, we recognize his innocence and the fact that he's just now beginning to recognize the extent of his unsupervised "freedom." He can hang out with dwarves, rudely stick out his tongue at repairmen, pee on the floor of the hotel's ornately decorated hallway, sneak around and spy on his caretakers... none of it matters. Whatever slight scolding he might receive doesn't really impact him.
Thus Bergman too, having endured failed marriages, commercial and artistic disappointments, the loss of collaborative artistic partners and ultimately his personal crisis of religious faith, now displays in The Silence a kind of liberation, mostly a lack of inhibition in this case, but also a renewed confidence in his creative abilities. Both of those characteristics find expression in his willingness to patch together an abstract, nearly pointless narrative that drops us in and plucks us out of a bleak and confusing situation involving the two women and a boy. We have no idea how they got in that train, where they're heading, where they've temporarily disembarked (in a city preparing for war, speaking a language nobody on our planet understands) or what will happen to them after Anna and Johan part ways with Ester, presumably on her death bed (but what will she do if she survives?) Likewise, the question is raised, though never explicitly addressed, as to whether or not Johan will follow the examples of his mother and aunt and become a depressive addict of one sort or another... the history of the 1960s and its children had yet to be written, of course, but there's Bergman, presciently putting the issue before us.
And speaking of prescient... as significant as The Silence was in Bergman's development as a filmmaker and person, there's no doubt in my mind that it marked an even bigger advance in terms of expressive freedom in dealing with human sexuality, especially as it involved both nudity and the portrayal of women in pursuit of their own erotic fulfillment rather than as merely passive sex objects. The brief commentary by Peter Cowie included on the DVD mentions that Bergman was "amused" by the censorship controversies that his film triggered around the world upon its release, but that response strikes me as a bit disingenuous. I can't fathom how Bergman would have failed to recognize the stormy response generated by close-ups of Lindblom's boob as she caresses it over a sink, the grappling lap-grind in the theater balcony, both participants arched back in full orgasmic exertion, or the wild (in 1963 terms) hook-up scene in the hotel when Anna gets in bed with the bartender, the nightstand gets kicked over and the tears, screams and claws come out. That was indeed, as Gunnar Bjornstrand intoned to Cowie at the film's premier, "strong stuff." And Bergman had to know that he was taking things to a new level that would both embroil him in dispute... and enrich himself and his movie's distributors. It was certainly exploited as such:
The end result was that The Silence became Ingmar Bergman's most financially successful and well-attended film in its original theatrical American run. I think that speaks more to the cumulative curiosity of a repressed populace in the USA and elsewhere. I figure that a lot of the horny guys who came to gawk at Bergman's usual ensemble of Swedish beauties soon came to the conclusion that they could find the gorgeous naked babes they were looking for in more abundance and with much less confusion and patience than Bergman demanded from them, as the strict standards of censors quickly began to erode after The Silence broke down the barriers. With the completion of the trilogy (really, at the end of Winter Light, since God is so notably absent in the finale), Bergman set aside his personal preoccupation with the problems posed by religious orthodoxy, though questions of faith, ultimate purpose and the existence of God would crop up in future projects - just not with the same sustained focus that he'd given them since his films of the mid-1950s. Instead, he would dig even deeper into the human psyche and its primal driving forces, by and large handing over the territory of explicit sexual imagery to others more intent on pursuing that particular angle. With this weekend's Palme d'or winner Blue is the Warmest Colour and Lars Von Trier's upcoming Nymphomaniac, we can trace a tangent that didn't necessarily begin with this film but is clearly continuous in using on-screen sex to drum up interest. And it works! Through its lasting influence and continuing beguilement as to what it's all about, The Silence still makes a lot of noise.
Next: The Fire Within