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.