బై ద వే ROSENBAUM ఆర్టికల్ కి కౌంటర్ గా Roger Ebert రాసిన Defending Ingmar Bergman చదివారా ??

…. దాని గురించి పోస్టు కూడా చెయ్యాలనుకున్నా …ఇంతలో మీరే చేసారు .. సర్లెండి ఆ సోదేదో ఇక్కడే వాగుతా … నాకు సంబంధించిింతవర్కూ Some Minor Quibblings abt bergman I think it is not just a willingness to tackle “big” and serious questions that make Bergman’s films so effective and leave such a powerful impression. It is rather his technical competence and even more important the extraordinary cast of actors that he surrounds himself with that save his films from ridicule and laughter which comes from too much seriousness. Even a marginally less competent director will not be able to pull things off like Bergman does. Even then I don’t think there is a any director in film history who is more often parodied, although never without respect.

Another thing that came to my mind was how relevant the questions of soul, existence of God, spiritual isolation, freedom and responsibility are to us living in the early twenty first century? I mean the general human populace, stripped of all individuality and self-identity, mindless herd of consumerist sheep populating the shopping malls and movie multiplexes? It takes me to another weak point I find in Bergman — his utterly a-historical and decontextualised portrait of human reality. Some people would say it is his strength, he doesn’t clutter what he wants to say with extraneous details. That he is interested only in the essential. If that is so his diagnosis of the human condition can only be called incomplete. Is the problem of faithlessness really that universal and timeless as Bergman claims it is? I think modern literature tackles this question is much more well rounded manner. In fact I have still been thinking of David Cronenberg’s Crash, which I saw on Saturday, a film as attuned to the 21st century human life as one can be (a cinema of the body as opposed a cinema of the soul), and even there I found Cronenberg’s hesitant approach to tackle his subject in a more direct and political manner a little disappointing.

Lastly, much as we would like it otherwise, we can’t escape the fact that we live in the age of irony. You can’t say something and also hope that people think you mean it. That is asking too much. Again Bergman pulls it off because of his extraordinary craft. Not the stuff of lesser filmmakers. (Even in fiction I often see critics bewailing the lack of story, characters and believable psychology in modern literature and longing for the comforts and the securities of the victorian fiction. Needlessly to say I find these very irritating too.) In movies I don’t see any example more eloquent than Lars von Trier’s reworking of Dreyer’s Ordet into his own Breaking the Waves. The austerity, sincerity and seriousness of Dreyer give way to mockery, contrivance and irony in von Trier. This is truly the Ordet we deserve at this time in the history. Asking otherwise is akin to trying to reverse the historical clock. We don’t have any Bergman and Dreyer now because we can’t have.