218 - The Virgin Spring, 1960, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.

Sunday, August 6, 2017

218 - The Virgin Spring, 1960, Sweden.  Dir. Ingmar Bergman.

BREAKING NEWS:  INGMAR BERGMAN MAKES A REVENGE THRILLER.

Well, not exactly a thriller.  But a revenge drama.  With startling scenes of violence, rape, and murder in the midst of the calm of nature.

The film is based on Tore's Daughter in Vange, an old Swedish tale, a 13th-century ballad, around for 700 years.

The story is part of the Swedish culture.

It would be like making a movie based on Beowulf (975-1025) or The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400).

Or Little Red Riding Hood.

A girl goes into the forest to take candles to church.  Her jealous maid watches from behind the trees. The girl is Karin, a Christian.  The maid is Ingeri, a worshiper of Odin.  Three herdsman join Karin for lunch and then have their way with her.  And leave her body on the forest floor.  The maid suffers remorse, thinking she is guilty for having willed it.  She had hidden a frog in Karin's sandwich when she made it.  When Karin offered the sandwich to the herdsmen, they found the frog and grew enraged.  Yet it is possible they would have done it anyway.  Two of the herdsmen commit the crimes, while the third one is just a boy.  He is innocently and unfortunately caught up in what the others do.

The men take her clothing and travel on.  They find shelter in the house of Karin's parents.  They try to sell the mother the clothing they say came from their sister.  Karin's mother recognizes Karin's clothing and knows that her daughter is gone.  She mourns her and awakens Tore, her husband, Karin's father.

Tore takes his revenge.

And the boy gets caught up in the rage, just as innocently as Karin did.

In the place where Karin's body lay, a spring rises from the ground.

Tore does not understand God, but he trusts him, seeks forgiveness, and commits to building a church on the site, as his only skill is working with his hands.

Ang Lee saw The Virgin Spring in 1974, when he was 18 years old and in his first year at The Academy of Art in Taiwan.

Here are some of his comments.

I sat there for one time, and I was perplexed, I was dumbfounded, and I was electrified.  And I refused to leave the screening room, and I watched it again.  Life changed afterward.  I couldn't say a word afterward.  I had never in my 18 years of life seen anything so quiet, so serene, and yet so violent, and so fundamentally questioning God--where you are?--the conflict, inner and outer conflict of man and nature, the mundane nature of human being, and also the need of understanding it through God.  It's a grandness, yet it is so natural and small.  It is like a microscope into humanity. . . . I was beginning to search for it, and I am still in the middle of that journey. - Ang Lee.

Our senses may be numb to the impact this film had on its contemporary audience, as we are now used to violence far more graphically portrayed.  But the responses of the day were clearly and palpably felt.  Yet the truth behind it has not diminished.  If one allows the film to do its work, then one will be confronted with questions of guilt and grace and a mature treatment of the human condition.

Different types of guilt are portrayed.

Ingeri the maid suffers from what on the surface appears to be a false sense of guilt rooted in her superstitious pagan belief system.  Yet it is possible that her ill will towards Karin, actively carried out with the frog hidden in the bread, really did contribute to the herdsmen's offended reaction.

Tore's real guilt is further compounded by the fact that he attacks the boy as well as the men.  While he does not know the individual culpability of the three herdsmen and he is reacting in immediate and visceral rage, that blind energy carries him past any boundary line of caution as he takes the child, who has just run into the protective arms of Tore's own wife, and throws him against a wall.  This act adds complexity to the question of clemency because it moves Tore past the point of understandable self-justice into a level of uncontrollable fury.

It is also poignant that the atheistic Bergman seems to have given the film an affirming ending.  Even if he were portraying the father from an objective and neutral, or even skeptical, viewpoint, merely showing what the father would do in those circumstances, he further presents the miracle of the spring in a straight-forward manner as well, void of undermining doubt.  It appears Bergman is simply telling the story without adding his own philosophical bias to it.

The Virgin Spring provides substantial material for theological inquiry.

This is a film about forgiveness.