Shimmering Opacity in a Country Church

This one is likely to be short. I’ve just handed in my dissertation, and I think my brain will blow out like a whoopie cushion exposed to a pin prick if I try to go on for any length of time. I’m running on the neural equivalent of fumes. The term “late medieval mysticism” is banging around in my head, and there’s nothing I can do to silence the farting echo.

The only thought that brings me peace is Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light (1963). This is strange, since Bergman’s film is about a pastor who has an existential crisis after his wife dies. Mostly, he stands around in stony silence, lamenting the day he was born, or he pushes away those few who love or care about him like the atheistic Märta (Ingrid Thulin), whose love for him is about the best sign of God’s reality a Lutheran pastor could hope for. What little optimism we do get only comes along by way of a disabled ex-railroad worker’s reflection on the loneliness and sadness of Jesus, abandoned by His friends, left to face a long, painful execution while crying out in feared desolation.

It’s not as bad as it sounds. I recall the film fondly because I, in fact, believe that the greatest hope emerges from just such moments of terror and sadness. If the unexamined life is not worth living, then the life free of crises is inhuman. And I am certainly human. The six years I’ve put into my dissertation have produced something of a crisis. I’ve changed much over that time; I’ve seen innumerable shifts in myself and in the world around me. When I began, TikTok was obscure. No one had then heard of COVID-19. And, of course, Donald Trump was still president (we’ll see if he occupies the office again). In those days, I was unmarried, living in New York, and pet-less. Now, well, I’ve got a wife, four pets, and a residence in the New Jersey suburbs. Times change.

Winter Light could easily be boring. It’s a quiet film with no extradiegetic music and only occasional outbursts of speech. What makes it captivating is Bergman’s obsession with the human face, his constant use of the close-up to show us the raw and overpowering emotions of his characters. Even if you dislike Tomas the pastor (Gunnar Björnstrand) or find his angsty whining a bit too much, you cannot help but be moved by the truth of his feelings. We have all been alone, felt alienated from everything and everyone, unable to help or be helped. One day things improve, perhaps suddenly, perhaps slowly. We trudge on, sometimes even happily, weights lifted off our shoulders. I doubt Tomas is ever sure of his god’s existence. But that’s hardly the point. He doesn’t end up where he began.

And that’s about what we can ask for, no? The existential crises, the bad times—all that—will come. But to endure (even to learn!) is a deeply human thing, a truth that, even if invisible in each moment, has vitality and salience when observed over the long haul. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just tired. But, then again, Tomas was tired too.