Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 112 Editor's Choice: 13
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Wonderful retrospective
[Read the article: Remembering Bergman]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Once again Andrew O'Hehir writes a phenomenal cultural overview.(I have his review of "The Good Fight" saved as one of the best looks at the terrorism/Bush contradiction around.)
I first was introduced to Ingmar Bergman in the late 60's at Wisconsin when film began exploding on campus. The Swedish film society ran 12 Bergman films for two dollars! They started with relatively early works like "Summer with Monika", through the great films such as "Wild Strawberries", "Seventh Seal", and "The Silence". The series ended with "Persona".
As with Andrew, Bergman changed my life. He became my favorite director. What fascinated me about this great genius is that in spite of what was clearly an existential despair that tormented him and was expressed in many films, particularly "Virgin Spring" through "The Silence", the man had an abilty to touch the transcendent mystical and convey it in terms of magical light that was exceedingly unusual. This was at the heart of the wonderful expansive sense of love that pervades "Wild Strawberries", and the incredible delight of "Smiles of a Summer Night" (Which I personally think is BETTER and with the same magical tone as Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream".) I used to joke that if Bergman ever solved his conflict with God, he could make the greatest religious/spiritual film of all time.
But of all his films, I agree with O'Hehir that Persona is the greatest. Shaking off even the hint of didactic heaviness of even tremendous accomplishments such as "Seventh Seal", Persona explores the nature of being, intimacy and meaning in the framework of a twentieth century existential crisis, at a time when technology and art were beginning to fuse, with almost unsurpassed illumination and originality. I remember after seeing it how deeeply haunting were its images, and how incredibly seamless it was as a work of art. This was a great, great artist who even after making many truly incredible films, reached a pinnacle, a personal Mt. Everest of accomplishment that is just extremely rare. Persona's fluidity of soul, its depth in traveling the paths of feeling in such subtle ways of the human psyche puts it in a pantheon of the very few films that can be called the greatest of all time.
Bergman helped me to understand as a young man that film in particular, and art in general, could explore depths of meaning, and great philosophical issues in a popular form. His influence, with others like him, was towering, and his legacy profound. I will always treasure his gift.
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Appreciation
[Read the article: Beyond the Multiplex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm not going to compare the two. I'm very verbal and spiritually oriented and Bergman's approach, style, and themes captivated me like few others. I saw a few Antonioni, including L'Aventura and the responses here urge me to review his work again. I agree with most that art is subjective and what will resonate with one will not trip the wire at all or as much for another. I remember not having a clue over Bunuel when I was younger and being dazzled by him as I matured.
What I do want to do is relish and express gratitude for Salon, not only its writers but also its phenomenal community. I look forward more and more to the letters section of each piece brcause the erudition, knowledge, insight, and often sheer brass of the group is astounding. What an amazing bunch. Kamiya comparing Bush and Iraq with Jacobean theater. O'Hehir writing splendid cultural analysis. And folks like Dogtown illuminating us with their background to probe more deeply into a subject. I think Salon and its audience represent what is best intellectually about America in its current state of Philistine navel gazing.
As for the spat over art after O'Hehir's Bergman piece, what a crock of shit. Frankly, if you have to attack "intellectual" works of any genre because its not "of the folk" or "down home", go lie in the grass with Bush. Read Barbara Ehrenreich's "Fear of Falling" about the latest (thirty years) attack by the right to gain control using "effete elitism" as their rallying cry to understand the roots of your foolish view in a long line of a most pernicious aspect of the American temperament.
Pauline Kael remarked that what was so striking and original about American film in the main was its extraordinary vitality and visceral directness of energy. One can trace this back to the great D.W. Griffith who was no slouch technically. It was this vibrancy that influenced the "New Wave" in films such as 'Breathless" and "Shoot the Piano Player". Kurosawa was indebted to this aspect in the development of his style.
BUT... to appreciate the genius of the American spirit in film is to not move soley to its dark side of sensation, titillation and violence above all else. It was this preoccupation with ever escalating need for visceral stimulation, moved into warp speed by Spielberg and Lucas (and the huge dollars they brought) that has virtually destroyed American studio film and pushed any sense of contemplation and "art" to the indies and really good TV (Like the best of HBO. Can you find that quality in mainstream American film consistently anymore?)
Yeah, I like good potboilers. "History of Violence" was a great ride, a cut above. But folks, know your roots. Regurgitating the not so time honered anti intellectualism of the "geist" is not becoming. If you don't get it, or don't like it, fine. Just don't flaunt it. Because its sad, really.