Nattvardsgästerna

Plot synopsis:
Ingmar Bergman's "Winter Light," also known by the more appropriate British title "The Communicants," is the second installment in a film trilogy, preceded by "Through a Glass Darkly" and followed by "The Silence." This association was not intentional when Bergman made "Winter Light." Instead, the coda of "Through a Glass Darkly," "God is Love and Love is God," forms the nucleus from which he developed the central theme of "Winter Light. " The films of the trilogy are laid out like pieces of chamber music.First Movement. The film opens on a gray November Sunday, at noon. Pastor Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Bjornstrand) is celebrating the liturgy of the Eucharist in a little church at Mittsunda. In the almost empty church, only seven parishioners are in attendance. Four of them are the usual attendees, and the other three are present with ulterior motives: the village school teacher and Eriskson's mistress, Marta Lundberg (Ingrid Thulin); the fisherman, Jonas Persson (Max von Sydow) and his pregnant wife Karin (Gunnel Lindblom). All three will communicate, together with the hunchback sexton of Frostnas, Algot Frovik (Allan Edwall), and an old woman from Hol (Elsa Ebbesen). Following the end of the service, flu-ridden Tomas returns to the vestry, where Mittsunda's sexton, Knut Aronsson (Kolbjorn Knudsen), is counting the meager collection. He advises the sickly Tomas to forgo the afternoon vespers service at the nearby village of. Frostnas. Tomas contemptuously refuses: he must dutifully keep his service to the parish. Frovik comes in to talk to Tomas about a personal problem, but Tomas dismisses him somewhat summarily, advising him to come to him later in the afternoon, before the vespers. Enter Mrs. Persson with her husband in tow, wanting to discuss a very urgent and private matter with the pastor. Jonas is silent and Karin must herself explain that her husband has been extremely depressed by a recent news article he read. According to the article, the Chinese, who are raised to hate, will soon possess the atomic bomb, thus intent in destroying everybody. Tomas is unable to connect with his parishioner's anguish and can only utter few platitudes: his "we must trust in God," provokes Jonas' angry look, which Tomas cannot sustain, and forces him to lowers his eyes. The situation is so awkward that Mrs. Persson suggests that her husband drives her home, and returns immediately for a more private conversation with the pastor.As the Perssons leave, Marta enters the vestry, bringing Tomas a basket of food and coffee. He tells her he already has his own coffee. This is a typical "Tomas" reaction to Marta's attention: everything Marta does to near herself to Tomas seems to be wrong. They bicker briefly over her persistent harassment that Tomas should marry her. Before leaving, Marta asks him if he has read the letter she sent him the previous day, in which she explains herself, but to her chagrin, he has not.Second Movement. After Marta's departure, and with some hesitation, Tomas reads the letter in the interval before Persson's return to the vestry. Persson returns as promised [or does he?] At first, too afraid to address Jonas's philosophical issue, Tomas acts more like a social worker, asking Jonas mundane questions about his life. Realizing the superficiality of his approach, Tomas next launches into a long monologue in which he voices his own fears and doubts about God. It is obvious that Tomas's word cannot help Jonas, who leaves the vestry without uttering a word. Tomas rushes out to the chancel where Marta is waiting for him, and collapses in a coughing fit in front of the altar. At that moment, the old woman from Hol enters and says that Jonas has committed suicide with his own gun, by the river.Tomas, returning quickly to the reality of his clerical function, rushes to the site of the suicide, leaving Marta alone. The police are already present, and Tomas must simply stand by uselessly, as the body is taken away. Meanwhile, Marta has walked to the scene by the river. Together, they drive back to her schoolhouse, where Tomas accepts her help in the form of some aspirins and cough medicine. Marta climbs to the upstairs apartment to fetch the medicine, while Tomas waits downstairs in the classroom. A young student enters to retrieve some comic books from his desk. Tomas engages the boy in a light conversation. Marta returns, and she continues to discuss with Tomas their relationship. This is the climax of the film. The scene is without doubt the cruelest verbal assault in all of Bergman's films. Triggered by Marta's "Sometime you sound as if you hated me," Tomas lets her have it, with both barrels blazing. Tomas's attack is so cruel that, as a spectator, one cannot feel but embarrassment at being somehow a reluctant witness to such an awful scene. The vicious arguments between Taylor and Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, or more relevant to Bergman, those between Ullmann and Josephson in Scenes from a Marriage, pale by comparison.Tomas nonetheless asks Marta if she would care to accompany him to the vespers at Frostnas. On the way, they are stopped at a train crossing. Tomas tells Marta of a terrifying childhood experience he had when he woke up frightened and could not find his father. They stop on their way at Mrs. Persson's house, so Tomas can bring her the news of her husband Jonas's death. Tomas and Marta continue on to Frostnas church.Third Movement. In the vestry, Frovik finally has the chance to explain his thoughts to Tomas about Christ's abandonment on the cross . At the same time, the organist, Fredrik Blom (Olof Thunberg), suggests to Marta she should leave Mittsunda and Tomas, as Tomas is still hopelessly in love with his dead wife. Blom also implies that Tomas's wife was far removed in reality from the image Tomas carries of her.As there are no parishioners present for the service, Frovik comes in inquiring if the vesper should begin. Tomas tells him to go ahead regardless, to ring the bells announcing the beginning of the ceremony. Tomas emerges from the vestry, approaches the altar, kneels, then rises and turns around. His face full of angst, he pronounces the final words of the film "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. All the earth is full of his glory" Despite the silence and his own doubts, Tomas still decides to officiate, and to plod through what is for him a meaningless ritual.

Tags: bleak, romantic, atmospheric

Review:
If you've ever lived in that scenery (cold pine-forested northerly countries) It appears almost as if it were in color, as if one is there at that moment.Needless to say, the actors makes fantastic performances.I find it pointless to say much about the plot, it is well summarized on this site, it is also a very personal movie to watch and therefore any type of "analysis" that is revealed to the viewer before he or she has seen the movie, may interfere with their own personal view on things.Truly a masterpiece among movies, completely free from unimportant elements, a clear, uncompromising questioning of ones faith in god and life.10/10.
"I think I have made just one picture that I really like, and that is Winter LightEverything is exactly as I wanted to have it, in every second of this picture."  Ingmar Bergman"Winter Light" concentrates around the middle-aged priest named Thomas (extraordinarilly played by Gunnar Björnstrand) of a small Swedish church and his spiritual and emotional struggles during the one winter afternoon.
His "faith" is as much a will to live as anything else.Bjornstrand and Ingrid Thulin are amazingly good, and Max von Sydow does more with a few subtle expressions, and very little dialog, than most any actor is capable of.Not a film to watch in the dead of winter if you suffer from SAD, unless you're like me and get a perverse type of therapy from confronting the hopelessness head first..
In the cold winter in the countryside of Sweden, the pastor Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand) is a bitter man living a crisis of lack of faith in God after the death of his beloved wife two years ago.
"Nattvardsgästerna" is the second part of Bergman's Trilogy of Silence with an unpleasant story of unrequited love, lack of communication and lack of faith on God. The pastor Tomas Ericsson is one of the bitterest characters that I have ever seen, and his speech to Märta Lundberg is one of the cruelest and coldest of a man to a woman in love.
But I think the main difficulty with "Winter Light" is that Bergman paints his protagonist (Pastor Tomas Ericsson, played by Björnstrand) mercilessly, making it hard for us to make any connection with the selfish bastard, whether you're religious or not.
Bergman despises him and makes us despise him too; I, for one, couldn't manage to feel the smallest degree of sympathy for the man.In those interviews, Bergman talks about how difficult shooting "Winter Light" was, with Gunnar Björnstrand ill and detesting his role (no wonder!!) and the influence of Bergman's traumatic religious upbringing (his father was a strict Lutheran pastor), which made it hard for him to convey sympathy for Björnstrand's character.
Bergman also said that Thulin's character was partly based on his second wife, who had serious eczema in her face and hands.Christian faith has been the subject of superior films by great filmmakers -- Dreyer, Rossellini, Bresson, Buñuel, Pialat, Melville, Pasolini, and, of course, Bergman himself.
And, of course, that Bresson's priest is impossible to dislike whereas Bergman's pastor is a s.o.b. Bergman himself had been very impressed by Bresson's movie, which, in my opinion, is superior and "thicker" than "Winter....", although both display some of the most magnificent b&w cinematography the movies have ever shown (and Bergman talks proudly about the great amount of work it took to reach the right lighting for the film).The second of the so-called "Silence Trilogy" (it was never planned as such, but you know, it was the trilogy fad -- S.Ray, Antonioni etc), "Winter Light" is, IMHO, the least satisfying of the three, overshadowed by the powerful study in schizophrenia and incest with richly elaborated characters of "Through a Glass Darkly" and the incredibly daring, close-up approach of female sexuality, childhood innocence, war threat and terminal sickness of "The Silence".
The movie is about depression, how to deal with your principal beliefs when you don't believe in them anymore, "God's escaping me..." We feel the priest running out of strenght and slowly fading away in his disbeliefs, he then finds a man who he can relate to (Due to the depression he has, as heard about the bomb which the Chinese are creating, they are learnt to hate) He kind of uses him to give himself the power to get on with his own life, he doesn't listen to the man, but he explains his own problems, due to this the man kills himself, it's now the task of the priest to tell his wife, and by this he finds himself again, feeling again what his role in this so cruel world is.
Everything is exactly as I wanted to have it, in every second of this picture."  Ingmar Bergman "Winter Light", the second film in the writer/director Ingmar Bergman's trilogy of "faith" or "Silence of God" (it follows "Såsom i en spegel" (1961) ...
Bergman, aided by his regular cinematographer Sven Nykvist and performances by Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom and Max von Sydow had created a compelling, tragic, and thought-provoking film about a village priest (Gunnar Bjornstrand) who can't give much comfort and hope to those who need them as he feels none for himself.
This bleak, sparse film from Ingmar Bergman focuses on a disillusioned, increasingly skeptic Lutheran priest called Thomas (Gunnar Bjorstrand, who's excellent) administering the gospel in a Swedish village to a very small congregation.
He's unable to accept the love offered him by the plain school teacher Marta (Ingrid Thulin, also very good), and incapable to offer the conviction of his faith to save from suicide a fisherman called Jonas (Max von Sydow) troubled by the prospect of a nuclear war(incidentally, this was filmed just before the Cuban missile crisis).This must have been a very personal film by Bergman (the son of a stern Lutheran priest, the director lost his religious faith as a young man).
Like many of Bergman's movies, 'Winter Light' challenges us to reflect on our own lives, our very existence, essentially what it means 'to be'.
"Winter Light" (also known, more accurately, as "The Communicants") is the the central film in Bergman's "faith" trilogy (following "Through a Glass Darkly" and preceding "The Silence").
Bergman, aided by cinematographer Sven Nykvist and performances by Gunnar Bjornstrand and Ingrid Thulin, has created a small masterpiece about a village priest who finds "God's silence" intolerable.
But as brilliant as Bergman is (and as daring a risk as this choice was), certainly Thulin's performance has a great deal to do with the power of the scene.While watching "Winter Light" in conjunction with the first and third parts of the trilogy is a fascinating experience, the film stands alone beautifully.
"Winter Light" may not be for those uninitiated in Bergman films (it lacks the grandeur of "The Seventh Seal" and the sweet optimism of "Wild Strawberries"), but for those in the mood, it is the most rewarding of his movies..
Starring Gunnar Björnstrand as Tomas Ericsson, the small town priest in the throes of a crisis of faith, and Ingrid Thulin as a school teacher willing to substitute her love in exchange for God's in Tomas' life.
In a deeply moving and powerful film, Winter Light is just one of the prime examples in Bergman's oeuvre that cement him as the filmmaking giant he is.On a cold day, in the heart of winter, Pastor Thomas Ericsson finds himself preaching to a nearly empty church.
Obviously, it sticks out as a part of Bergman's religious trilogy, the films in which he deals most with man's relationship to God. The barren dismal landscape of the winter outdoors is echoed inside the church as the bodies lining the pews are topped with desperate faces, bored and lacking interest in the church service.
Even in his lighter portions with the 80 minute, half dozen characters, half a day time frame bleak masterpiece Winter Light, he can create such a rich and thought-provoking portrait of life with a universal problem - God's silence.
Instead of being a depressing theory to match the film's anguished tone and network of characters, of which are remarkably performed by Bergman's regular company, it's an idea quite reassuring.Winter Light has a naturally limited plot, being mostly formed out of dialogue and monologues, but Bergman's structure and economy still shine through.
Ingmar Bergman is one of these skeptics, as he uses Winter Light to detail a pastor's deep disbelief towards God's existence.
Bergman avoids this trope; by portraying the sheer amount of torment that the pastor's conflicted feelings bring him, the audience is forced to think a little harder on how much of a detriment it is for the faith in God to be able to sedate so many people in a growing world.
I don't want to spoil it by saying how, but it's not all dark and hopeless as you go through long sequences of despair with broken relationships and characters struggling with their relationship or understanding of the existence of God. I think that if you're a deep person that's asked yourselves these questions in the past or presently, then you would relate to this film.
WINTER LIGHT is a drama film, which, in a strange and disturbing way, describes a day in the life of one pastor who faces with statements of love by a schoolteacher, while at the same time, he tries to save the life of a depressed fisherman.A local pastor is finishing his sermon.
Among the remaining parishioners is a plain-looking schoolteacher who has long been in love with the pastor and a depressed fisherman with his pregnant wife...Mr. Bergman has tried to investigate religious beliefs, through doubt and despair, in a cold atmosphere.
Fear of death is all and it is everywhere.'Winter Light' is one third of 'The Faith Trilogy', accompanying 'Through a Glass Darkly' and 'The Silence' -- Ingmar Bergman at the height of his powers, but also at his most metaphorical, uncompromising and inaccessible (the film is bleak and intense, but the truth often is).
Here he explores the lack of faith, our need that a God must exist, it's a cold film, it does not use soundtrack at all, the priest (played with excellence by Gunnar Bjornstrand) is a cold man, he tends to react coldly, almost indifferent.
This is nothing compared to what Thomas is later confronted with in middle age spinster & substitute teacher Marta Lundberg, Ingrid Thulin, who was hiding behind the curtains who shows up and gives him this long and boring story about how much she loves the guy and wants him to marry her, in a letter she mailed him, before he himself who's in danger of contracting pneumonia kicks off.It's here in regard to the sobbing Marta that Thomas, who looked like he had already one foot in the grave, suddenly comes alive and lets all his feeling about God and Marta as well as the world situation come to the surface.
Marta for her part instead of getting more depressed sees that the man she's in love with and wants his support is in fact far more screwed up in the head then she ever was or even possibly will be.***SPOILERS*** The by now totally out of it Thomas after letting it all out in the wash now goes back to give his speech to those assembled in his church, about a half dozen, about the glory of God and how the entire world is filled with it.
The second in Ingmar Bergman's "God Trilogy," the director cited Winter Light as one of his favorite films.
A deeply stoic exploration into faith, Winter Light focuses on a Lutheran pastor, Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand), and his increasingly bleak world view.
I feel sorry for the character of Tomas because of his confusion and depression after having faith in a God who does not communicate and brought him much sadness by taking his wife.
He stayed in his own egoistical circle, and that circle might be the eye of Ingmar Bergman, the son of a Lutherian pastor, trying to break through his rigorous education and the weight of oppressing certitudes.And while in "Through a Glass Darkly", we couldn't empathize with Björnstrand's character, because he was wrapped up in his own ego, in "Winter Light", it's doubt that poisons the heart of a sickly priest, removing all traces of sincerity in his own sermons, not Cartesian doubt but something of a more emotional level.In the opening sermon, something in Tomas' eyes clearly betray his lack of confidence, he stares at a crucifix looking for answers that would never come, and ironically, he's the man people came to, for some relieving words.
We never quite know what goes through Tomas' mind, maybe the realization that this absence is part of our mortal condition, and it's our interpretation that makes who we are.The film ends with four persons in the church, a half-drunk organist who doesn't care, an atheist who is here out of love, a cripple with a cheerful attitude and a man who can't find his path to happiness.
And Märta believes in her love for Tomas, but he rejects her, her 'Silence' is for Tomas, and she'd live as desperate and disappointed as he is, it echoes the final words of "Through a Glass Darkly" where the idea of God was associated with love, and maybe Tomas' pain comes less from the absence of God, than the person he loves the most, and he only suffers because he feels like betrayed by God who took his most valuable person in life.It's just as if his faith was 'interested', why not, even Jesus, expected a reaction from God before asking why he forsake him?
He can sleep with Märta and has done for years; but he cannot love her."Winter Light" follows "Through a Glass Darkly" as the second in Bergman's introspective, existentialist examination of meaning in life.
Toward the end of the film, a simple church member who has been crippled rather severely for years comes to the good pastor and asks him a theological question, a question of faith, a question about Jesus:Algot Frövik, Sexton: The passion of Christ, his suffering...
God's silence.Tomas Ericsson, Pastor: Yes..."I think I have made just one picture that I really like, and that is Winter LightEverything is exactly as I wanted to have it, in every second of this picture."  Ingmar Bergman See this film.
After watching Winter Light, Bergman's second parter in his "religious" trilogy (which is redundant for Bergman) that also includes Through a Glass Darkly (my second favorite Bergman film) and Silence (I haven't seen just yet), I knew it includes nearly all of his key elements in most of his films- the silence of god, the fear of women, the helplessness of the lord- and this time he takes a direct poke at his father, who was a Lutheran priest.
As frigidly powerful as his other god-questioning dramas, this film's only weak spot is a not 100% fulfilling denouement, and too little screen time for the supporting character of Jonas, played by a usual Bergman choice, Max Von Sydow.
Winter Light (1962) *** 1/2 (out of 4) The second film in Ingmar Bergman's trilogy takes a look at a Pastor (Gunnar Bjornstrand) who is losing his faith in God while at the same time trying to fight off the advances of a woman (Ingrid Thulin).
Depicting the loss of faith of small town priest, "Winter Light" is, as most of Bergman's films, full of impressively well-written dialogue and great acting..
A part of the trilogy which deals with faith and doubt, or God and his silence despite his sizable place in most people's lives, the film progresses in a few hours in the afternoon in a day of the life of Tomas, the pastor of a small rural church, where we get a full view of his relationship with the regulars of the church and how this relationship turns into a challenge to his own faith as he tries to answer their distressing and some sarcastically critical questions in regard to their relationships with God. This is in a way a film about the difficulty - or may be the impossibility - to reach God despite all the love and need that one might have for him.
The first film in director Ingmar Bergman's "faith trilogy" - to be completed several years later with "Winter Light" (1962) and "Silence" (1963) - "Through A Glass Darkly" (1961) stars Harriet Andersson as Karin, a young woman who suffers from a mental illness.
But the problem, the film goes on to show, isn't that God does or does not exist, but that he has always been summoned and shunted aside whenever it best suits man."Winter Light" ended with two atheists in a church, waiting for God to speak.
Winter Light (Nattvardsgästerna- literally The Communicants) is the middle film in Ingmar Bergman's Spider Trilogy (as it too references the God as a spider imagery), following Through A Glass Darkly, and preceding The Silence.
The acting, in every single role, is pitch perfect, yet Bergman regular Ingrid Thulin gives one of the great dominant female performances in film history, as Märta Lundberg, an atheistic substitute school teacher in a small town with a now unrequited love for a Lutheran Pastor named Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand), head of a church whose congregation has dwindled to a handful.
Winter Light is the most unequivocally religious of all Bergman's films.
Basically pastor Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand) performs his usual Sunday service to a tiny congregation in the small rural church, but the cold winter weather has given him a cold, and unknown to others he is also suffering a crisis of lack of faith in God, following the death of his wife two years ago.