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Winter Light
Ingmar Bergman's highly personal treatise on the torments of faith, in which a widowed village pastor struggles to deal with his parishioners and ex-lover.
Drama 1962 81 mins
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Overview
A widowed village pastor (Gunnar Björnstrand), tormented by private doubt, finds dealing with his troubled parishioners and the teacher who was his lover (Ingrid Thulin) an increasingly oppressive burden. Drawing in part on personal experience, Ingmar Bergman turns a dark, stark chamber drama into a remarkably rich meditation on the difficulty of living in uncertain times; the dialogues between the protagonist and his motley flock ring scarily true.
Winter Light is the second film of Bergman's 'Faith Trilogy', a trio of thematically connected (but not directly related) works exploring man's crisis of spirituality in an increasingly Godless world.
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