One vote for beautiful, original vision here. An underrated underappreciated masterpiece! It surprises me when i hear of all the people that hate it.
I am a solid vote for beautiful, original vision.
This is one of those times that I can’t believe this is even up for questioning.
I am a solid vote for beautiful, original vision.
This is one of those times that I can’t believe this is even up for questioning.
Perhaps the worst film by a great director. Its a horrible film on ALL levels. The actor’s performances were, indeed, the best part of the movie, but it does not save the film. The script is amateur at best. The dialogue, the characters, the pacing, the setting, the execution of the premise is woat. The camera work is not bad, but not outstanding, the direction was a failure.
The slowness of the film is not justified by any reasoning, nor does it help emphasize the meanings of the few sequences in the film.
What possesed him to put midgets in the film? Had he just seen a Fellini movie, and thought, ‘hey, I can do that, too’ sorry Ingmar you can’t. I don’t mind odd films or difficult ones, but when a film is so slow and boring that it offends you then it has become a complete failure. Because the message of the film will not be grasped if nobody cares enough about the movie to pursue its themes.
If the film had been 60 or 70 minutes long, then perhaps it would have been paletable, but the film was so long and drawn out that it became a parody. Its like Bergman, the great screenwriter tried to make a film without words, but he lacks the visual vocabulary to do this, and it is painfully obvious here.
And again, what is with the midgets? What is the purpose of having the boy pee in the hallway? Utterly pointless film.
I’m a big Bergman fan. My favorites of his are Fanny and Alexander, Virgin Spring, Smiles of a Summer Night, Scenes from a Marriage, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Magician; but this film is just bad. And I’’l reiterate it, Bergman is perhaps the greatest screenwriter in all of cinema, and in this film, its as though he tried to make a movie without words, even though he lacked the visual vocabulary and the editing skills to do so. In the end it was a turd.
No Jason…it’s flawless and beautiful. Just accept it.
One of my favorite if not favorite Bergman films.
So far no one who likes it is explaining why they like it.
Maybe I shouldn’t have posted this, I can’t really offer a fair judgment, since it’s been about twenty years since I watched some of The Silence, and then I believe I was in a somewhat altered state. I remember thinking that the film was very repressed, or felt very repressive. I don’t even remember the midgets, but yeah that’s always kind of chancy as far as symbolism goes. (And I liked Even Dwarfs Started Small.) I think The Silence may have been a first pass at themes that ended up in later films like Persona, Cries and Whispers, and even The Serpent’s Egg.
But I’d like to hear more about why it’s great from the people who like it. Why do you like it?
First of all Jason, there is a meaning to the slowness in the film because the film is meant to be a descent into hell where misery goes on and on. And second there really is a meaning to the midgets, for this is hell and nobody is going to be normal. The Silence literally means The Silence of God, a place where god does not exist, a place where boys pee in the hallway, a place where sisters engage in incest. This is a film Bergman made right after Winter Light when he became an athiest, and The Silence is the end result. You metioned some great films by Bergman Jason but i would put The Silence above The Magician and Scenes From a Marriage. I like the war like apocalyptic tone of the film, both in visuals and in feelings, mood and tone. I also found The Silence to be very erotic. The direction and execution was a triumph! I dont care what anyone says.
I love Gunnel Lindblom
I never knew that hell was so boring. I would think of it rather as cinematic purgatory; and besides, why would an atheist make a film about hell? Old Ingmar could never turn completely away from God.
Because its not a literal hell, it is Bergmans anguish.
I would be careful saying that their relationship was incestual. I already made that mistake on this forum once. :-)
I think it is obvious dont you Troy? And it is no mistake, especially from the Ingrid Thulin character.
I am planning on seeing this film again soon, as I just remember its atmosphere, not too many specifics. I found it very dark and mysterious in tone, on first viewing. I think the film has a definite thematic relationship to Persona, as it is mainly about the relationship of the two female characters. I found the whole allusion to war, and many other things in the film very ambiguous. Like Persona, it can be interpreted in different ways. I think he has a whole range of symbolism going on, which I will need to see the film again to get into. Until I see it again, I will, for once, remain silent.
I haven’t really seen the Shining, just cut up bits on tv, but I know what happens, after seeing the Silence, I thought wow, this is just like the Shining, only more personal, more logical.
I felt like the little boy being stuck in this mysterious, and boring kinda place, though it wasn’t boring boring, nothing ever really is, if something seems that way, it is just you…i will call it transportory film making at its most successful, I went to that hotel, I sweated, I dozed off, I woke up, thought “where am I?” “oh, still here….shit”. Its a cool movie, you cannot really find anything to be good or bad, ya know…this bergman guy has made some cool movies!
If you let me cut 30 minutes out of it, I might be able to salvage the thing. Its just too long and boring for me to care about the stuff its wanting me to care about. The Silence is just too pretentious. There is a formula, that can help a film maker determine how much symbolism, and how much arrogance a film can contain, in relation to the length of a film, and how interesting it is.
I’d watch The Jason Trochesset Cut of The Silence.
I’ll try …
My interpretation of the message of ths film is that when faced with the silence of God, or with the discovered non-existence of God, man must fend for himself and will press on.
All three main charactrs are on a journey, but you’re really never sure exactly to where. All you know is they’re all hurtling towards somewhere, maybe home, maybe someplace else. You do know they’ve all had a history, even the boy, who is the best representation of “innocence” as Bergmn can get, even though the boy’s history is presented as him posibly being the result of “original sin.”
The characters are smitten with every conceivable horror (read: taste of hell) — war, disease, pestilence, anguish, shame, loneliness, betrayal, hatred, fear, disgust. In terms of things religious, it reads as "A Book of Bad Days.’
The final injustice, when none of the main characters can understand the language any longer, throwing ultimate confusion into the mix, they nevertheless make a conscious decision to continue.
Man is proven; God is not. Consciousness is, in part, reality; faith, however comforting, is not. Deal with it.
Sorry, Jason, I fully respect your opinion and I usually agree with much of what you write here, but I think this film is a freaking masterpiece.
The reason I won’t buy the box set. Love the other two films.
Dwarfs in the hotel, tanks in the streets… it’s all so unknowable.
SNAP OUT OF IT, Ingmar. Okay, it ain’t as bad as The Serpent’s Egg but you got carried away sometimes.
There are those times when you seem to be in a contest with Samuel Beckett to be the most depressed.
This film is a mixed bag for me. I find Bergman’s descent intriguing (its a fascinating view of a man wrestling and running from God), quite honest, and utterly anguished. I do imagine that in a world where God is silent, this is close to what it would look like. Like Jason said, it is a wreck, a complete mess. But for argument sake, let’s postulate that there is a God or something out there in the universe. Then an artist comes along, decides to grapple with the divine. This artist is racked with Lutheran guilt from his upbringing. Part of him still believes, the other part of him is now total disbelief. With “Winter Light” (one of, if not my favorites of his) he rode the line of ambiguity beautifully. Belief/disbelief in a tug-of-war. But with “The Silence”, the man who once quite possibly heard something or believed he heard something, such as God, now hears nothing. All is terrible silence, and thus an absolute and horrible mess. It could be nothing else. The man and the artist had utterly collided into a great abyss. So part of me loves it. The other part hates it. And I continue to sort out why.
And FWIW, yeah Jason, the midgets were a bit much. But again, how could it be anything other than unreasonable?
I just watched Hitchcock’s I Confess, a very subtle yet striking film about, I think, this very question of the silence of God. The faith to act in the face of adversity. The sense that, for a truly spiritual person, the earthly world is the unknowable one. And it was all conducted within the framework of a taut, beautifully controlled story, half love story, half noir. Bresson films also come to mind about the challenges which life poses to religious faith. So I think the question is not so much what The Silence is saying, or trying to say, as the way it says it. Again, I can’t really give an impartial judgment here because of my distance from experiencing the film. But it seems like reason doesn’t have to go totally out the window in order to make a mature and reflective statement on the purgatory of souls on earth, or what have you.
Very good thoughts, Justin. Thanks. “I Confess” is one of my personal Hitchcock favorites. And I do believe that Bresson made a much stronger and clearer presentation of the tensions posed by religious faith.
Just re-watched this film to refresh my memeory of it. It did not have any theological overtones for me re the ‘silence’ of God, or anything of that nature. To me, it was just a character study of two different woman, the two sisters, Ester and Anna. Typical of Bergman, there is a conflict, mostly not really explained but just alluded to, between the two sisters. The whole setting is purposefully strange, with a language no one really understands. The old hotel ‘bellhop’ provides moments of a sort of comic relief, but the whole tone is so oppressive, without really going anywhere, that I can see why Jason says what he does about it and why it made no impression on my own memory. The midgets neither added or distracted, but just seemed part of the bizaare atmosphere Bergman was attempting to create. Because the film does not really get to the bottom, or anywhere near, the conflict between the two sisters, or even establish their relationship, I think that Silence in this case means the silence of Bergman as writer/director to adequately explore his theme. A rather slight Bergman footnote. He dealt with the conflict between two women, one silent – one not – much better in Persona.
The Silence is a very ambiguous film. In my view, Anna and Ester are lovers. The film is about longing, sexual repression, isolation, lust, and fear of abandonment.
This was the most asinine thread I ever started. I really regret it. Because I never saw The Silence and I was just trying to stir things up.
Figures, that’s why I started a new one
Twisted and hauntingly beautiful. Ingrid Thulin is simply the best.
the child actor in the silence as in persona appears to represent the young bergman and his disturbing realationship with his quixotic mother her erratic ever shifiting persona became an obsession with him
liv ullmans dual role in cries and whispers is another study of the shifting moods of bergmans mother
Justin Biberkopf
Okay, let’s finally have it out (in a civilized way), since there seem to be a lot of opinions regarding this film and I think it could yield a fascinating analysis. Is it a beautiful, original vision or a mess full of heavy-handed symbolism?