hell is other people

fucking nightmarish; functions better as a horror film than the dramatic spectacle its text might give way to in the hands of any other director. envisions the deathbed as a site of purgatorial torment and unanswered calls to the void - a real feat in depressive picturemaking

certainly deserving of a second watch (such that i might be able to write something real about this movie, because, like, holy shit) but i am not too keen on doing so for reasons that should be more than obvious

very much a pivotal work of bergman's, marking his abandonment of the nihilist juvenilia of his much-lauded seventh seal in favor of a less angst-ridden sort of picture with this aptly miserable little faith/retribution-centric parable. certainly not to be mistaken as a firing-on-all-cylinders scenario (this is plenty flawed, no doubt), but moreso interesting as a transitional artifact of bergman's explosive career trajectory. would be very surprised if robert eggers was not at least a tad inspired by this one when dreaming up the northman, btw

the insurmountable weight of my blind faith has crushed me in the face of reality #relatable #liveandlearn

conceited with a sort of nervous-laughter, end of the world, nihilistic paranoia. i am either too smart or too dumb for this movie (i'm pretty sure it's the latter). i dunno. angsty bergman is ostensibly not for me; his pleadings with god feel unflinchingly individualistic and ultimately very frantic. but. max von sydow is just like,,, really really good so i can't bring myself to hate this or even dislike it

bergman ranked

Desire as the catalyst to the known normal: when one's thirsts are unearthed and moreover carried into impulsive completion, fluctuations in reality occur in turn.

Conceptually interesting, yet the material of the film sort of falls apart as it goes. Bergman's ethereal realism only carries his works so far; merely that and vague themes of yearning don't quite make for a complete story. Thirst is far from terrible, yet very much falls short.

The material natural; wherein the coldly manufactured and the industrially unfettered seamlessly coalesce under dreamlike skies of blue.

Herein, beauty is found within utter mundanities, for Bergman's stance as a documentarian appears to vastly differ from his as a fiction-based filmmaker. His typical cynicism is not to be found here--Farö Document is but a portrait of humanity, entirely(?) undiluted by the pessimist whimsy of its artist. For better or worse, one is simply meant to take in the sights as are presented: nothing further.

A collision of realms; those exterminated by imperial reverie birthed into the real and those yet--but soon, perchance--to be. The inextricable bond between the living and the dead is very real yet very much lacking in tactility; its effects present themselves in an incorporeal fashion, perhaps spiritually so.

Besieged battlefields and their harbored corpses mirror the relationships of the bystanding citizenry. War is both a product and producer of heartbreak and that which entails; whether it be physical or emotional. There is nothing to be gained, but everything to be lost.