Winter Light

Both titles of this film, the American Winter Light and the Swedish The Communicants, are apt. The light of winter is a facade: it provides light but not warmth, shines bleakly, an icon without meaning – Gunnar Björnstrand’s pastor whispers to himself, “what a ridiculous image,” when looking upon Christ upon his crucifix. The Swedish title literally refers to the act of communion, but really symbolizes what each character in the film fails to do: communicate directly, to provide meaning in a way that gives aid to the receiver.

Winter Light is hard to watch – it confronts the viewer directly and doesn’t let them look away. The adversarial nature of the film is never more evident than in a six-minute long unbroken take where Marta, played by Ingrid Thulin, looks directly into the camera and lambastes the pastor whom she love. Bergman examines every player in close-up, investigating their faces for evidence of belief as though he himself can’t quite trust what comes out of their mouths. Winter Light is all about belief and what inspires faith: in Bergman’s mind, both come from tangible and worldly places, like personal experience or the love of another. Often, those experiences are not enough to create the kind of faith strong enough to meet religion’s demands, an the answers that people find through religion alone are not enough to provide a succor that can sustain them through life.

Despite this seriousness, Winter Light ends optimistically; well, optimistic in Bergman’s droll way. Pastor Ericsson attends to a service that only has three attendees, the organist, the man who sets up the church for service – two men who are required to be there – and Marta, his former mistress and the woman with whom he has fought for most of the film. She has prayed on her knees in the chapel that she and Ericsson could feel safe enough to show tenderness, to find some truth to believe in. Ericsson does not have to begin the service, having had nobody from the town show up, and yet he does. This is his moment of commitment to Marta: that he will try to rise above his self-hatred and the feelings of an inner spiritual void to communicate with her more honestly.

He has not rediscovered his faith or heard a noise beyond God’s silence; rather, he has accepted the facts of God’s absence as he sees them and forges forward, to be of service in helping individuals like he couldn’t help an overwrought parishioner in the middle third of the film. “There is no creator. No sustainer of life. No design;” man must provide or seize his own meaning, his own light and warmth.