THE SILENCE Movie Review

Tystnaden

The third in Ingmar Bergman's so-called “crisis-of-faith” trilogy. The Silence is at once the most enigmatic and the most disturbing of the three (the earlier films were Through α Glass Darkly and Winter Light). The two women in the film, Ester (Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (Gunnel Lindblom) have checked into a large, somewhat decayed hotel in an unnamed city that appears to be at war. The women, who may or may not be sisters, clearly have a sexual relationship. Anna has a young son who curiously wanders the halls of the hotel, but all three of them are voyeurs—Anna's strong, nearly desperate erotic impulses are tied to her desire to see others having sex, and in a famous, frequently censored sequence set in a theatre, she does. Ester is gravely ill, and she quenches her fears and anxieties with alcohol, cigarettes, and masturbation. The two women have filled their lives with activity and are still spiritually impoverished, but by the end of the film, Anna and her son have taken action, which may signal enlightenment and hope. The Silence is a dark and rather terrifying portrait of a universe without faith, and its dreamlike structure is both logical and undefined. The picture contains very little dialogue, but it's specific enough to suggest that these women may represent two halves of one soul—and only one of them leaves the hotel at the conclusion. It's a structure that would be echoed in the director's great Persona just three years later, and though the issues of communication and faith are raised in that film as well, Bergman's conclusion would be no more certain.

NEXT STOP … Through a Glass Darkly, The Passion of Anna, Shame

1963 95m/B SW Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindstrom, Birger Malmsten; D: Ingmar Bergman; W: Ingmar Bergman; C: Sven Nykvist. VHS, LV HMV, NLC