Ingmar Bergman: 'Nattvardsgästerna' / 'Winter Light' (1963)

Ingmar Bergman's stark 1963 black and white film Nattvardsgästerna [The Communicants] / Winter Light focuses on faith, belief, lack or loss of faith and non-belief. It serves as a test for the nuclear age: for believers and non-believers alike. What do you, can you believe in?

"Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating." ~ Carl von Clausewitz, On War (1832).

"Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult." ~ Ditto.

In Winter Light, everything is simple, but the simplest things are difficult.

Main characters: Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand), pastor of two (or more) contemporary (early 1960s) rural Swedish churches. Märta Lundberg (Ingrid Thulin), substitute teacher, atheist and sometimes paramour of pastor Tomas.  Jonas Persson (Max von Sydow), a spiritually lost fisherman distraught about the possibility of nuclear destruction to the point of suicidal urges. Karin Persson (Gunnel Lindblom), his wife and mother of two young children. Fredrik Blom (Olof Thurnberg), cynical, comical and boozy organist. Algot Frövik (Allan Edwall), sexton, serious thinker and believer, previously disabled in a work accident, foil to Fredrik.  

Winter Light is memorably shot in black and white. Cinematographer, Sven Nykvist. 

Fears that seem as pointed in the 21st century as they were during the Cuban Missile Crisis more than fifty years ago keep Winter Light fresh and to the point: ". . . and that it's only a matter of time before China has atom bombs." Change "China" to fill-in-the-blank. Change "atom bombs" to fill-in-the-blank. Voila! More fear pictures. When the pastor suggests that God is a Spider and we're caught in Its Web and wriggling till Death, one cannot help but shiver. 

The funniest line in the whole movie is delivered by Märta Lundberg, the atheistic substitute teacher: "Another Sunday in the vale of tears." That's Winter Light in a nutshell. I would suggest this only to those with strong heart and mind.

Today's Rune: Partnership.

'Wild Wild Country" (2018): One Wild Nutty Ride

Wild Wild Country (2018): "A Netflix Original Documentary Series" in six parts (so far). Set mostly in the 1980s and the nearer past, it's a dazzling, freaky kaleidoscope swirling with the cult of personality, tipped elections, conspiracy, challenges to the separation of church and state, surveillance, immigration themes, homeless people, cuisine, religion, G-men and semi-automatic weapons. What a show -- and how pertinent to our current Trump show!  Imagine the Branch Davidians and Jonestown on a large, international scale, making it successfully. Are you ready? Think Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, the 700 Club and the PTL -- Praise the Lord aka "Pass the Loot" -- Club, armed to the teeth and ready to rumble.     

Wild Wild Country: the Eyes of Texas are Upon You. Or more accurately, the Eyes of Oregon and India are Upon Each Other. "You can't make this shite up."

For all these years I've had this snapshot of a restaurant sign in Copenhagen, Denmark, loving its name: "Zorba the Buddha."  Not until I saw Wild Wild Country did I realize that this was part of the Rajneesh movement -- even though it clearly reads just below the name: "RAJNEESH RESTAURANT." Location in 1983: Strøget, Frederiksberggade 15, København 1459. Suggesting once again that everything is connected to everything else in the grand scheme of things.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

'The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Contentment, Comfort, and Connection' (2017)

Louisa Thomsen Brits, The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Contentment, Comfort, and Connection (New York: Plume, 2017; first published in the UK in 2016). Photography by Susan Bell.

"Hygge (pronounced 'hoo-gah') is a quality of presence and an experience of belonging and togetherness. It is a feeling of being warm, safe, comforted, and sheltered. . ." Page [7]. (In the UK version, the pronunciation is rendered "HYOO-guh"). 

The author may not have had this example in mind, but consider Tony Soprano, main character from The Sopranos. To ease the stress that comes with being a mob boss, he spends quality time with a favored goomar, enjoys a bottle of wine, savors a good meal. One of his favorite lines is, "Take it easy." And he's not even Danish!

Most of the ideas and examples in The Book of Hygge are low-key. They are the opposite of feeling harried. rushed, annoyed, irritated, high-strung, anxious and alienated. 

Of anti-hygge matters, consider advertisements: they play on fears or fantasies, no different than the manipulative methods of snake oil salesmanship of bygone days. Treat an ailment -- that may not even really exist -- with miracle potions. Take a pill to ease the constipation caused by your opioid addiction! Drive this shiny car or rugged truck and feel both dominant and free. Speed through a pristine wilderness and become one with nature, even as you trample it under your wheels.  See the big sporting event where one team will flatten another and make you feel tribalized. Buy insurance! Invest! Go to an artificial seaside resort and be treated like royalty, even if you are a serf. Go on a cruise. Rush to the drive-thru of a hundred fast-food franchises. And whatever you do, hurry! Hurry! Limited time only! Coupons! Discounts! Hurry! Limited quantities! Going out of business sale!  Give money! Hurry! Hurry! Before it's "too late!"

Hygge is the opposite of everything in the previous paragraph. It is neither fear nor fantasy, but rather much simpler. 

The Book of Hygge is peppered with illustrative quotations. I like this one in particular, from William Morris, an influential 19th century Arts & Crafts proponent:  "The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life."  (Page 84). That's it! There's nothing more deadening than lack of interest, indifference, and lack of curiosity.

Hyggering is a groovy way of grokking. With Germans, think Gemütlichkeit. In French, there's the more all-encompassing concept of joie de vivre.  
   
The Book of Hygge gives some flavor of this ideal Danish way of life, and certainly it's easy to see how different the Danish approach is from idealized American materialism and "freedom."  Take care of each other. Quality over quantity. "Less is more" (from Robert Browning, page 152, but also an architectural philosophy developed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe).  

Another quip from William Morris: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." (Page 157). I'm down with that. This syncs well with the principles of feng shui and with Marie Kondo's KonMari Method of asking of all material things: "Does this spark joy?"  If not, forget-about-it. 

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

'Pawn Sacrifice' (2014/2015): Bobby Fischer vs. Boris Spassky

Edward M. Zwick's Pawn Sacrifice (2014/2015) delivers a dramatic rendering (with some comic touches) of the great but erratic chess player Bobby Fischer, culminating in his world championship match against Boris Spassky in 1972.

I love the cast of Pawn Sacrifice, which includes Tobey Maguire, Liev Schreiber, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Lily Rabe, Robin Weigert and Evelyne Brochu, among others. Overall, the movie is fun and interesting, definitely lighter fare -- and hokier -- than the documentaries Red Army and Best of Enemies -- although all three compliment each other within the Cold War Zeitgeist and all three are worth watching. 

In Pawn Sacrifice, Fischer (played by Tobey Maguire) is depicted as a person existentially located somewhere between an anti-social and paranoid "idiot savant," chess prodigy, and enfant terrible -- fittingly compared to Mozart (although Wagner might be even more fitting). Stuhlbarg and Sarsgaard, pictured here, play Fischer's handlers, the one an eager promoter-patriot and the other a worldly Catholic priest and chess coach. 

Liev Schreiber makes Boris Spassky seem a whole lot cooler and classier than Bobby Fischer, albeit tightly contained by his Soviet "management team" (which he resents, but begrudgingly understands). In 1972, both players are "pawns" of the Cold War. 

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

Häxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968)

Benjamin Christensen's silent movie Häxan (1922) clocks in at 87 minutes (or is it 104?); via Antony Balch, it morphs into a 77-minute version: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968), wickedly narrated by William S. Burroughs and accompanied by a jazz soundtrack courtesy of Jean-Luc Ponty and Daniel Humair. Both versions are weird and fascinating and come together on one DVD thanks to the Criterion Collection.

"Häxan integrates fact, fiction, objective reality, hallucination, and different levels of representation -- all within a first-person discourse. . . The mixture of narrative modes . . . is astonishing for its freedom and audacity." - Gillian Anderson, liner notes, Criterion Collection DVD, 2001. 

"At times, Häxan appears to be a literal depiction of the imaginings of people of medieval Europe . . "  Sometimes funny, sometimes scary, sometimes both (the Devil's obscenely flickering tongue, for example). Crazy cool stuff, indeed, ending with little psychiatric episodes from the 20th century.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Today's Rune: Initiation.

København: Fristaden Christiania Redux

Thank you, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (Season Two), for bringing this and other global touchstones into greater consciousness. 

There is quite an alternative community, very interesting to check out, in Copenhagen, Denmark, called Freetown Christiania. Situated on a former military site, nearly 1,000 people live there (last I double-checked). If you're into pot, it's there. If you're into art and music, it's there. If you're into food and drink, it's there. It's everywhere. 

In fact, all of Copenhagen, all of Denmark is nifty-fifty. Indeed, all the Nordic/Scandinavian countries are culturally sophisticated, ecologically minded and highly educated. 

You might say that "modern" Existentialism started in Copenhagen with Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), whose spirit roams the city.

Above: Peter Fallesen & Sulaima Hind,  Fristaden Christiania / Freetown Christiania (2008).

More from CNN's Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (Season Two) here.

Today's Rune: Partnership.   

In the Port of Amsterdam -- or Copenhagen

If cameras serve as visual "recording angels," here's a mystery along the lines of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup / aka Blow-Up (1966). It imprints the possibilities of a story or some sort of reconstructed memory. 

Resurrecting images from a scanned negative, even though I snapped this picture there's only a twin-trickster memory of such an interior -- Amsterdam and Copenhagen / København. 1980s. An intense examination would yield results -- there's lettering visible in this cropped blowup, for example. But for now, it remains a mystery of sorts. More will be revealed -- or not.

Here the setup looks sort of like the final scene in The Sopranos.

And here we pull back to the beginning image. What is this place?

In corresponding textual memory of Amsterdam and Copenhagen, I remember locales such as the Melkweg / Milky Way, Zorba the Buddha, Musikcaféen and the Texas Saloon, plus certain international hostels. Could this be a small antechamber attached to one of them?  

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.   

De tre bukkene Bruse

Folk tales have lives of their own. Not literally but by word of mouth, by image of eye, by cultural diffusion. Translation into different languages may alter some details. Besides that, where did they come from to begin with? From on high, from an inspired tall tale teller or what?  Hard to tell specifically because most such tales began as oral stories long before being transcribed in print.

Let's take a Norwegian folk tale (or fairy tale* if you prefer), De tre bukkene Bruse / The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

How far back this one goes, I haven't been able to figure out yet. It appears in printed Norwegian collections by the mid-1800s, and quickly comes into English translation just before the American Civil War. I don't know if the Norwegian words "bukken" and "bukkene" have the connotation of billy goat in the original, because going by machine translation, they come across strictly as "goat" and "goats" respectively. At any rate, the nickname "billy goat" didn't pop up in written English until the first part of the 1800s; presumably the same is true of "nanny goat," the female equivalent. 

How about "Gruff?" This word floats into view in English by the late 1600s or early 1700s. In the Norwegian fairy tale, "Bruse" is the goats' family name -- they are brothers. "Bruse" means, in English, "Gruff." 

In Norwegian, the tale opens thusly:

Det var engang tre bukker som skulle gå til seters og gjøre seg fete, og alle tre så hette de Bukken Bruse. På veien var det en bro over en foss, som de skulle over, og under den broen bodde et stort, fælt troll, med øyne som tinntallerkener, og nese så lang som et riveskaft.

This translates into American English (roughly) as:

There were once three goats that would go to the mountain to fatten up, and all three were named the Goat Gruff. On the way there was a bridge over a waterfall that they must travel over, and under the bridge lived a big, ugly troll, with eyes like tin plates, and a nose as long as a rake handle.

The original English translation (by George Webbe Dasent in 1859) goes like this:

Once on a time there were three Billy-goats, who were to go up to the hill-side to make themselves fat, and the name of all three was "Gruff." On the way up was a bridge over a burn they had to cross; and under the bridge lived a great ugly Troll, with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker.

Three goats, a bridge and a troll. Beyond the variable details in each telling, pretty good ingredients for a tiny tale, eh? 

Today's Rune: Journey.  *Nowadays, these are sometimes compressed into single words -- folktale and fairytale.

Kierkegaard Says

In carting around ideas and notions put forth by Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), let's take a look at a couple from Frygt og Bæven / Fear and Trembling (1843). These definitely seem to hold continued relevance in the early 21st century.

"Fools and young men prate about everything being possible for a man. That, however, is a great error. Spiritually speaking, everything is possible, but in the world of the finite there is much which is not possible."  (Walter Lowrie translation, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, 1968 edition, Princeton University Press, page 54.) 

To me, this is pretty basic -- everyone who can has to choose carefully what they are doing with their lives, or bumble along; either way, our options are limited by time and place. Choose wisely -- if possible. Not everyone can do X, Y or Z. But maybe more could mind their Ps and Qs.

"He has comprehended the deep secret that also in loving another person one must be sufficient unto oneself."  (Lowrie, page 55).

The optimum relationship is one between existential equals. This is not to say that everyone can function optimally at all times or even at the same level, only that such would be an idealized balance.

One more quip as a bonus point: "He resigned everything infinitely, and then he grasped everything again by virtue of the absurd." (Lowire, page 51).

Zen and the art of grokking. Compare with Donovan's "There Is a Mountain:" 

"First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is . . ."

Today's Rune: Journey. 

Fort Worth vs. Ingmar Bergman

Fifty years ago, the City of Fort Worth had the dubious distinction of blocking the showing of Ingmar Bergman's Academy Award-winning film Jungfrukällan / The Virgin Spring (1960) at the Capri Theatre, a long-since demolished venue that showcased independent world-class films and inspired, among others, Fort Worth musician T-Bone Burnett (by his own reckoning) to widen his horizons in life-changing ways.   

In JANUS FILMS, INC. v. CITY OF FORT WORTH 354 S. W. 2d 597 (1962), this act of censorship by the "Board of Censors" of Fort Worth was justified in part by the following statement:

The ordinance [Fort Worth Ordinance No. 2475] provides that no permit shall issue for the exhibition of motion pictures (or other forms of entertainment) which are, in the opinion of the Board of Censors, indecent or injurious to the morals of the citizens of Fort Worth, or which would tend to promote or encourage indecency, immorality, or racial or sectional prejudice, or juvenile delinquency.

If this ruling had stood, in 2012 it could have still been called upon to justify blocking the screening of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012) or Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012). As it is, well -- I'll get to that.  
 
Presumably, the supposed justification for suppressing an Ingmar Bergman film was nullified by the US Supreme Court in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964).

Meanwhile, Fort Worth no longer has any daily venue for the screening of independent or international films. There is only the Magnolia at the Modern (Art Museum), which shows films only on weekends (usually), and the Lone Star Film Festival, which has been held once every year since 2007. For a city of its size (a little bigger than Detroit proper), Fort Worth is in serious need of a permanent "alternative" theater.  If we're lucky here, the planned Citizen Theater on Magnolia Avenue may bring succor by sometime in 2013 or so.  

Today's Rune: Movement.     

 

Ingmar Bergman: Through a Glass Darkly

Ingmar Bergman's Såsom i en spegel / Through a Glass Darkly (1961) revolves around a mere four characters in a short timespan (twnety-four hours or so). It's not exactly a Thanksgiving gathering, but all of these chracters are family. There's David, the emotionally paralysed father, a writer who has spent most of his time avoiding the rest of them. There are his two children, teenager Minus (Lars Passgård), a student and aspiring playwright, and Karin (Harriet Andersson), an adult recently released from a mental institution where she's been treated for schizophrenia and subjected to electro-shock therapy. Finally, there's Karin's husband, Martin, apparently a professor, or perhaps a doctor who also teaches (it was unclear to me from the sparse dialogue, but he carries a medical kit and mentions dealing with his students). Martin is played by Max von Sydow and David by Gunnar Björnstrand. Not incidentally, in Bergman's Det sjunde inseglet / The Seventh Seal (1957), the former portrays a crusader knight and the latter, his squire.

Cool movie, beautifully shot in black and white on Fårö, an elemental Baltic Sea island.

Karin slips in and out of "two worlds" -- the mundane (pragmatic) and mystical-disordered (schizophrenic).  The way everyone relates to each other seems very true, and Harriet Andersson is superb in flipping the switch on Karin's state of mind, so to speak. 

I've known two schizophrenics, both very smart people. One, in North Carolina for a while, was a physicist and the other, in London, a landscape architect. Both of them would go off into mystical musings while seeming to retain an awareness that they were, or sounded, quite strange compared to those around them. I still remember some of the eerie things they would say. Tasked with conveying messages to both (years apart) and seeing to it that neither did self-harm or lurched into trouble, I also experienced other wild fluctuations in their behavior firsthand. As far as electroshock, it elicits memory loss to varying degrees, from what I've seen.

Bergman's influence extends to the Rolling Stones

Today's Rune: Gateway.          

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975: Take Two

Göran Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) begins with footage from 1967 when the US population is 210 million (it's now 312 million at the time of this posting) at the height of the US-Vietnam War, with a military draft in place and 525,000 American soldiers deployed in Vietnam.

Swedish archival footage gives us fresh glimpses at people, places and events, including stellar footage of Stokely Carmichael (or Kwame Ture, 1941-1998, pictured above) and his mother -- she has a fascinating Trinidid-New York City hybrid accent, while he retains a subtler Trinidadian lilt. When asked in Paris if he fears being imprisoned upon his return to the USA, he responds, "I was born in jail." He relocates to West Africa in 1969. 

Martin Luther King is clearly against the US-Vietnam War, as Angela Davis notes in narration made for parts of the documentary. His "Beyond Vietnam" speech at Riverside Church, NYC on April 4, 1967 -- exactly one year to the day before his assassination in Memphis -- epitomizes his overall stance: "We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

There's footage of MLK and Harry Belafonte meeting with King Gustaf VI Adolf (1882-1973) of Sweden in Stockholm, reminding us of ongoing Swedish support for human and civil rights as well as the international dimensions of American society.

Black Power kicks into high gear when MLK is killed in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive and sometimes called Revolutionary Year Zero. (To be continued).

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.       

Göran Olsson: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Göran Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 brings to light exciting and empathetic archival footage of the movement from a Swedish perspective. I loved it. There's the backdrop of the US-Vietnam War, riots, upheaval and assassination, the Black Panthers and Attica Prison uprising, with contemporary commentators. More to say about it, with more details -- soon. Anyone interested in human/civil rights and/or the 1960s and 1970s would probably dig this for any number of reasons. I sure did.  

Today's Rune: Initiation.  

Ingmar Bergman: Persona

Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966) takes you through a funhouse mirror of person-to-person interaction. Where does one end and the other begin? How many layers of personality and personae are we made of?

In Persona, Elisabet (Liv Ullmann) and Alma (Bibi Andersson) become alternately intertwined and unspooled through a maddening but effective technique: the half-talking cure. One talks and talks and the other remains virtually silent, responding with looks and mostly non-verbal gestures and movements. The result, combined with sections of fast cuts, semi-subliminal images and bursts of wild music and set against a backdrop of changing light and ambience, stuns and makes you wonder.  

Personae shift and shimmer depending on circumstance. A lot of times this has to do with audience. For instance, I'm not going to use profanities in front of undergraduate (or younger) students, whereas in much freer (and therefore very limited) circumstances I swear like a sailor -- and enjoy it.

Life is theatre: keep stage and audience in mind wherever possible. Life is a movie: there are things like flexibility, lighting, presentation and various effects to consider. Choices. Options. Actions. Let's roll it. Alma: "To change oneself. My trouble is laziness." To change yourself, it helps to know yourself; sometimes it's easier to know someone else's contours better than your own. Consider photos and mirror images vs. our interior mutterings and self-conceptions -- there's usually a disconnect there somewhere, or a no-connect, which is probably why it's so exciting when we do connect, or reconnect, or make entirely new connections, with other people as well as with ourselves. 

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Charles Bukowski: Factotum (Reprise)

Factotum (2005), based on the 1975 novel of the same name by Los Angeles-based writer Charles "Buk" Bukowski and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer, began limited release in the USA on Friday, August 18, 2006.

Charles Bukowski (8/16/1920-3/9/1994) devoted most of his adult life to writing, women, drinking, smoking, gambling, and avoiding conventional jobs or responsibilities as much as possible. Before he died, he published forty-five books, mostly novels and poetry, and became a cult figure. Barfly (1987) and Crazy Love (1987) are earlier films based on Bukowski's work. There's also a documentary that came out two years ago, Bukowski: Born Into This, that is packed with good footage.

In Factotum, Matt Dillon plays Bukowski's fictional alter-ego, Hank Chinaski (played by Mickey Rourke in Barfly). Given that the real Bukowski was vaguely hideous in appearance, this is a merciful choice. The main women in the film are inspired choices, too: Lili Taylor and Marisa Tomei, among others. The film was actually shot in Minnesota, not L.A.

Bukowski was quite a character. He retained a strong belief in his writing abilities and has inspired many in his wake. He has also inspired a number of people, mostly men, to think they can laze or roam aimlessly about and somehow become cult figures themselves, without having to actually write much or make any effort on their own. In that sense, Bukowski's life is also a cautionary tale.

Bukowski's titles alone are usually worth the price of admission. Five examples: Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window (1968), Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969), Love is a Dog from Hell (1977), Ham on Rye (1982), and If You Let Them Kill You They Will (1989).

Today's Rune: Flow.  [Originally posted on August 10, 2006, slightly tweaked].

Jean-Luc Godard: Masculin féminin, Part 1

Godard's Masculin féminin: 15 faits précis (1966) observes life among Parisian youth (mostly twenty somethings) in 1965, just as some things are starting to go swinging electric. More than one actual date is shown in the movie: December 5, 1965, for instance. 

Shot in grainy black and white, Masculin féminin feels like a mix of documentary, journaling and comedy-drama of manners. I find it helpful as a window into the relatively near-past. "Times had changed. It was the age of James Bond and Vietnam." 

Pictured here: Saigon-born Chantal Goya as the mercurial chanteuse Madeleine Zimmer.

In Masculin féminin, we see people playing pinball, drinking coffee and wine, smoking, reading newspapers and magazines, listening to music, watching movies, talking and otherwise interacting. In one scene, two friends discuss Bob Dylan.

What are you reading?

An article on Bob Dylan.

Who's he?

He's a Vietnik, you know.

What's that?

It's an American word, a cross between "beatnik" and "Vietnam."

Who are you, Mr. Bob Dylan?

Madeleine never mentioned him? He sells 10,000 records a day!

Later, Madeleine pops in to tell friends, "I'm Number 6 in Japan with 'Pinball Champ.'"  Who's ahead of her in the game? The Beatles, yé-yé singer France Gall -- and Bob Dylan. 

[To be continued].   

Today's Rune: Partnership.