Nattvardsgästerna (1963)

a.k.a Winter Light

81 min
Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Drama

A Swedish pastor fails a loving woman, a suicidal fisherman and God.

3.9K 569 30

14.5%

18:1

8.1

More info on IMDb TMDb

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V012

Such a fun film. Bring the kids.

10 years ago

pitchorneirda

I guess all protestantism is contained in this film.

11 years ago

Winter Light, Ingmar Bergman's exploration of faith and doubt stars Gunnar Björnstrand as a troubled pastor, Tomas, just going through the motions and hearing nothing but silence from God. Set between two services, mere hours apart, this is an intimate and subtle piece that could have been done as a play. What most jumps out at me is Tomas' hubris, a function of the first Deadly Sin pride, and the reason he feels cut off from his own spirituality. In one telling speech, he admits that his naive younger self became a clergyman because he saw God as a function of himself, an ideal that seemed only possible to a young man. Now that he has suffered, he doubts, if not God's existence, then God's interest in humanity. Fact is, he's still interpreting God through himself. He tries to comfort a suicidal man, but can't because he is himself despondent. A woman loves him, but he hates her for reminding him of his dead wife. He rejects her love just as he rejects God's, indeed just as he rejects his idealistic self. If the Divine Spark is in ourselves, and each person their own God or echo of God (according to your beliefs), the Tomas' nihilism is laced with self-hatred, which he projects onto the people in his life and his God. Pride not as self-love, but as self-hatred. Does he, by the end, reconnect? Some have called the ending ambiguous. I rather think he continues to miss the point of the lessons he should learn through the course of the film. At the end, the cycle merely repeats. Or am I projecting my own attitudes upon it?

5 years ago