Dreams Arguably the most important motif in Bergman is not God or Death, but dreams. Bergman's movies are dream plays. They may resemble ordinary reality at times, but most of his movies follow the laws of dreams more than they do the physical realities of the world. Dreams may be evoked in the ordinary sense when Bergman begins a scene showing someone who is sleeping or in bed or resting in a chair. Yet the scene that follows may be a dream where the impossible happens, or it may just seem to be ordinary reality.
Flashbacks also take on the ambiguous character of dreams.