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Just what I expected

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Appropriately there really is very little dialogue in Bergman's THE SILENCE. Sometimes ten whole minutes will pass between the sparse and often caustic verbal spats between two sisters temporarily stuck in a large and mysterious Eastern European hotel while one recovers - or not - from some unspecified chronic illness that has interrupted their railway journey. Between the spiteful jibes and the longing glances into space the pair pay sporadic attention to the young son of the healthy sister and it's through his eyes that we observe much of what's going on beyond the walls of the hotel suite. He roams the corridors (as the boy in Kubrick's THE SHINING would do over a decade later) encounters a troupe of dwarf performers and a curiously friendly/sinister/comic waiter who communicates by improvised hand signals as he, like the other hotel staff members, does not share a common language with any of the three main characters. This lack of communication in itself becomes a central element in the pervading and stifling 'silence'.In the streets below we see tanks rumbling past and occasionally jet aircraft scream overhead. Is this Hungary in 1956? Are we seeing the Soviets quelling the popular uprising? If it is the cars we see are a bit too modern... But the sisters don't seem to know and the language barrier restrains us too. While the boy amuses himself observing the bizarre characters, some of whom he play-shoots with a toy pistol, his bored mother is amusing herself with various men whom she either beds in empty hotel rooms or admits to pleasuring in dark corners of a nearby church. All her encounters are wordless and her actions self-gratifying. This promiscuity highlights an area of the sisterly conflict.While the healthy one flaunts her heterosexuality, the sickly one seems pious and disapproving, although she is not averse to pleasuring herself. In one scene she lies back on the bed during a respite from her illness, unties her pyjamas and slides her hand between her legs as the camera pans demurely away to her face which contorts for a brief moment of release. At other times she seems driven to distraction by what could be an incestuous lesbian obsession with her sister. This is all deep and obliquely referenced leaving the viewer to form opinions rather than having then handed over on a platter. What is the deal here? Typical Berman! On the production side the photography is superb, as always, but softer and less naturalistic than in his later films. However the opening train carriage scene has no sense of being anywhere but inside a studio with back projection and model work that while it's up to the standards of Hollywood movies of the time,looks very unconvincing today. But the acting is excellent; the little boy is marvellously awestruck and natural, his mother is suitably sensual as she wanders around the interiors in a half open dressing gown revealing glimpses of her panties and the occasional bare breast in a most matter-of-fact fashion. The sickly sister is brim-full with melancholy and regret. Her frustration is palpable. The other characters are largely caricatures in the manner of Fellini, but none the worse for that.Is it a good film? Answers on a postcard please...It really depends on how you receive it and how shocked you are by the sexual references and the one, brief, graphic scene which back in the day was the cause of much censorship discussion I'm sure!

This is an excellent film which in my mind handles the dual nature of man: the sensual and the rational. The story is told through the eyes of a small boy, who is innocent and his perspective is yet untainted by either of his sides. He is still curious about the world around him, and holds no preconceived notions. There are two women with him, sisters, one is his mother and the other is the mother's sister. One woman represents the sensual side of man, and the other the rational, and the movie is a journey of the mind to find peace within it self torn between these contrasting sides. absolutely fantastic film, the kind they don't make any more.

Bergman's 'Tystnaden' is not a comfortable film to watch because of its underlying dark and disturbing theme. He explores the devastating consequence of an incestuous relationship between two sisters, Ester and Anna. The destruction seems to have taken a toll on Esther's health while Anna seems to be mentally and emotionally shattered (unable to connect to others and engaging in casual sex). Amidst this is Anna's son Johan, who, like any curious child, is exploring his own world.Bergman's film starts off with the three principle characters in the train and then ends with Anna and Johan in a train as they have left Ester behind. Perhaps this last scene symbolizes Anna's escape from her traumatic experience. Bergman uses a lot of symbolism but he doesn't spoonfeed them to the viewer. It is all there in his subtle presentation. He also stresses on contrasts between different ideas such as Johan's youthful innocence (his way of seeing the world) vs the confused world interpreted by his mother and aunt. His display of the relationship between the two sisters is brilliant. A strong maternal bond is displayed in the relationship between the mother and child. It may seem as though her son is the only one with whom Anna has a stable relationship but at the same time she goes wandering off in the city leaving her child behind in the hotel. Even as a mother she is broken by the trauma. The movie has many silent moments (quite obviously given the title) but the contrast between these moments are noticeable because it is quite unsettling as the rawness of the tension is exposed. Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom and Jörgen Lindström are stupendous in their roles as they portray the complexity of the relationships through subtlety. The cinematography is outstanding. The closeups are particularly haunting. I was surprised by the amount of nudity and sexuality (I have nothing against it) but then again, this is no conventional 60's film. It is a brave and poignant film that was ahead of its time.

The Seventh Seal was an absolute masterpiece. After seeing it I thought, "Wow! I've GOT to see more Bergman!" I thought this because The Seventh Seal addressed struggles that are common to all of us; hope, faith & death. Yet at the same time it managed to address these with compelling characters that provided a glimpse both of the beauty of life and of the deep hardship. Seeing Winter Light was then, different. It offered only bleakness, which being new to Bergman I should have been prepared for but I still found the story moving as it showed the extent of this priest's depression.I see The Silence and what do I get? ... Nothing. I really can't think of anything eventful at all that happens in this movie. Common arguments I hear in favour of this movie is that "you are not supposed to relate to the characters. You're supposed to be shattered by their loneliness and their inability to communicate". Which is fine, just as long as something actually happened. I really cannot think of anything that happens in the movie and severely frustrated I fast-forwarded through the movie reading the subtitles so I could get this over with and not watch another Bergman film again any time soon.I was initially drawn to Bergman as he was reputedly one of the great artists of cinema and I was fed up with the same commercial rubbish that was being produced year after year. This movie goes too far in the other direction. People may say there is great merit in this movie for the issues it addresses or its daringness to address them at its time of release, but none of that matters if the movie is not entertaining and this just genuinely wasn't.We go to movies to be entertained.That's it. That comes first.Bringing in philosophical themes & broken relationships is fine, great in fact, as long as the movie is still entertaining. That's what The Seventh Seal did. I really don't know why people LOVE this movie so much. I can't understand why I've only read one other review with this sentiment.However, one of Bergman's quotes was that he couldn't understand why critics loved Citizen Kane so much when he thought it was so "immensely boring". I guess it goes to show how subjective these opinions of movies really are.