The Silence

I watched "The Silence," (Tystnaden in Sweedish) a film by Ingman Bergman from 1963. It's the third film in what is known as Bergman's "Silence of God" trilogy, "Through a Glass Darkly," (1962) and "Winter Light" (1962). I haven't yet watched the first two films, but I understand that what is implied there is made very clear by the third film, there is no God in the world, and thus only silence remains from the cold, bleak universe.

The story focuses on two sisters, Ester (played by Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (played by Gunnel Lindblom). Ester represents the intellectual (who is dying), and Anna represents the sensual. Yet both are bereft and without hope in their own ways, and both resent each other.

It's unclear where they are, but wherever it is, it is bleak, cold, dark, and all out war is about to break out, though they stay in a largely vacant hotel, where the only other guests seems to be a troupe of performing dwarfs, who are much more alive than the two sisters, though the dwarfs are despised in the social order and only tolerated at the theater.

Anna's very young son, Johan (about 9), serves as the only connection between the two sisters, the dwarfs, and the rest of the oblique, yet plush, hotel. (The camera angles there give a sense of alienation.) He is the only basis for an irrational hope in an irrational world.

It's quite clear that in a silent, godless universe, there's no basis for morality, and many in a 1963 were shocked by some of what goes on in the film. There's also no love, only sex, except for love for Johan, who provides the only real connection left between the two sisters, again providing the irrational hope in an irrational world.

Most find the film deeply disturbing, which is exactly what Bergman hoped to convey, and mainly why it is considered a great film. Bergman wants to disturb complacency with a realistic view of a nihilistic universe. However, in providing a sympathetic, curious, and mostly innocent child, Bergman points to an existentialist hope for meaning, hope, and love, though it is in the area of non-reason. Bergman's later works expanded on this existentialist hope.

(I previously posted on another Bergman film, "Hour of the Wolf.")