08 February 2008
Bergman's 'Silence'
I don't think I can ever forget the desperate, oppressive atmosphere of The Silence. Sometime last July, I felt like watching nothing but Bergman films for some reason, and that's when I happened upon this film. Two sisters, Ester and Anna and Anna's son Johan (a boy of about ten or twelve), stop at an unnamed European country on the brink of war. Ester is suffering from a terminal illness and struggles to come to terms with her impending death while Anna takes a new lover, neglecting Johan and leaving him to wander the hotel where he crashes a midget party.
An exceedingly strange film - without a doubt one of the strangest I have ever seen. Ester and Anna seem to represent two approaches to life - or perhaps one could even go further and say that they are the personifications of spirit and flesh respectively. Ester is grasping for some sort of meaning, logic, explanation of her life and her suffering while Anna indulges in pain and pleasure in whatever forms she finds them. Both sisters seem to be at the end of their lives in a way - there is a certain desperation about the way they conduct themselves.
The atmosphere of complete chaos, degeneration and decay is perfectly conveyed and adds to the desperation of their sisters. Both act from their most fundamental instincts, but while Ester seems to find some sort of absolution in the end (and she passes this on to Johan), Anna is as lost as ever.
Labels: Film
posted by Abigail at 16:12
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