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Ingmar Bergman’s, The Silence, is the third installment in the artist’s so-called “spiritual trilogy” which investigates the artist’s relationship, or lack thereof, with god or his spirituality. It was interesting to finally see this film so as to close the case on the collective effect of the trilogy, having studied all of its parts respectively. Having read up on the film a bit before watching it, I must say it was certainly liberating to see the camera move after coming from Winter Light and Through a Glass Darkly in which the camera barely moves at all. As Peter Cowie explains in his interview on the greater significance and overall critical interpretation of the film, some shots are even taken from the point of view of the boy; thus, giving the cinematography a subjective dimension apparently quite novel to Bergman films. The idea for this film that Bergman wrote about in his autobiography, Images: My Life in Film, was this notion that the entire screenplay was based on a dream; moreover, it was based on an alternate world, similar to our own, but a world without social rules or guidelines where anything can happen.
I found it most compelling the way the character of Ester had this profound inability to engage in social interaction, thus, leading her into alcoholism and social withdrawal. To that end, I also found it disturbing the way Anna is such a maliciously spiteful character to Ester as she tries to reach out to her. I think the entire film speaks to an inability of humans to interact socially, morally and virtually; and therefore, if the closest thing to spirituality lies in human interaction (in the mind of Bergman), what do we do if we can no longer communicate? Anna’s son, Johan, is representative of the purity of individuals before they are corrupted by society; still fresh and naïve to the world he is able to interact with all of the grotesque individuals he encounters throughout the hotel. It seems that both Anna and Ester are perpetually trying to escape as a result of their inherent inability to socially interact. Ester is constantly using alcohol and her work to escape the reality of her life and her inability to engage in social interaction and it seems Anna’s over-sexualized character seems to escape into sexual interaction as best exemplified in the scene where she makes love and ends up crying with the man she has met in the café. The notion of the dwarves is also quite interesting, Peter Cowie mentions this as well; Johan is able to interact with them, yet, Esther is unable to interact with them not due to their infirmity or grotesqueness but due to her own. Ester is obviously a figure suffering from an internal crisis, as is Anna, as they are both shown to be relatively beautiful women; yet, both seem rather grotesque psychologically.
The cast is quite small; yet, the two leading women are both Bergman favorites, quite competent and believable in their performances. We are familiar with Gunnel Lindblom from The Virgin Spring and The Seveneth Seal and with Ingrid Thulin from Wild Strawberries and Winter Light. Bergman says something in his autobiography about this film possibly being responsible for sabotaging both of these highly talented actresses careers due to some of the risqué more obscene portions of the film. For example, Gunnel Lindblom’s breasts are shown in clear view for a few second as she washes them off in the sink and then afterwards, she barges in on a couple having sex in the movie theatre; this moment too, is quite vividly portrayed. Furthermore, there are scenes of violent sex between Gunnel Lindblom and a waiter she picks up in a café, who doesn’t speak her language; a perfect candidate for Anna, emphasizing the theme of the inability of the characters in the film to communicate and truly engage in human interaction. I found it interesting to see, as Peter Cowie points out, the reflection of the ending of Through a Glass Darkly and Minus’ “Papa spoke to me” moment in Johan’s reading of Ester’s letter. Also, as Anna opens the window and gets covered with rain and water I see it as representative of the other water imagery we have seen in Bergman suggesting a sort of resurrection or rebirth; thus, maybe there is hope after all.

Part III of Bergman’s “Trilogy of Faith,” The Silence, abandons any remaining inhibitions from the first two films and dives headlong into the heart of the matter: sex and death. Because when it boils down to it, modern-day Christianity, for all its self-righteous spirituality and hypocritical proclamations, is actually about nothing more than our fear and fascination with the two most defining human experiences: sex and death. The Silence – a film about two sisters and a son who disembark their train early in a foreign land on the brink of war – is complete with nudity, masturbation, fornication, lesbianism, incest, asphyxiation, and midgets. I promise you won’t soon forget it.

The Silence is sort of an anomaly for Bergman, in both a stylistic, and philosophical sense. Nykvist has never explored interiors with such fluidity and laxity, and the dialogue is more scarce than anything else I’ve seen by him. In fact, even if the actual location of the film’s setting, or language were pointed out, the dialogue from every character but the two sisters and the boy is basically gibberish. It’s funny to think about a possible parallel to Jacques Tati’s sound methods. Probably the one and only thing I could think of that the two filmmakers have ever had in common.

However, it’s a Bergman film that I’ve found is either loved or reviled. A common criticism of the film seems to be provoked by some of the disparate and convoluted messages to be found through a number of things going on. The incest between the two sisters, is in my opinion, not really anything new for Bergman. There is a powerful feminine ambience to the entire film that he would revisit in Persona. And the fine line between indulgence/asceticism definitely resembles Bergman’s classic contrast between the artist and the professional. Johann acts as a perfect symbolical mediator in all of this too, which displays a sort of overlooked sense of hopefulness in what is essentially a bleak world, even for Bergman.

If nothing else, maybe the Silence is just a Bergman piece with a large margin for interpretation. It’s definitely a loose film in terms of how it can be viewed. While I can understand some of the issues taken with it, I can’t agree that it’s either too slow, too long, or full of meaningless scenes that don’t connect to some sort of intentional whole. Nothing felt irrelevant in terms of where the story was going. It’s just sort of nice think of the incredibly strange direction that he took with this project.