Death won't be the same ...

... Ingmar Bergman has died.

To quote Browning, "I feel chilly and grown old." I associate Bergman's films with my youth and his influence on my own spiritual development was incalculable. I think of his films as works of literature, since the screenplays of his best films are as interesting to read as the films themselves are to watch.

I'm not sure I agree with this: "The Seventh Seal, The Virgin Spring (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963) and The Silence (1963) all lead progressively to a rejection of religious belief, leaving only the conviction that human life is haunted by 'a virulent, active evil'." I don't know where that phrase about evil comes from and I found Winter Light exhilarating in its passionate engagement of the dilemmas of faith.

As I've suggested here before, faith settles nothing. It is a struggle, not a victory. Bergman's own faith may have proved incapable of bearing doubt, but his engagement with religious issues was never glib.

Here's the dream sequence from Wild Strawberries and the chess game with death in The Seventh Seal.

Here's an inteview: Part I and Part II.