Winter Light – Film Review

With Winter Light, Ingmar Bergman explores the search for redemption in a meaningless existence. Small-town pastor Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand) performs his duties mechanically before a dwindling congregation, including his stubbornly devoted lover, Märta (Ingrid Thulin). When he is asked to assuage a troubled parishioner’s (Max von Sydow) debilitating fear of nuclear annihilation, Tomas is terrified to find that he can provide nothing but his own doubt.

Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light is a deeply intriguing and thought-provoking look at the immense craving for personal validation. It also excellently touches upon religious themes – particularly the behavior of those who are slowly starting to lose their faith in God.

Obviously, as you can probably tell just from what I’ve written already, this movie served as a huge source of inspiration for Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed. Both are absolutely excellent films that are filled with meaningful dialogue that gets you thinking. This is one of the rare movies where I feel as if everybody is going to walk away from it feeling something. Whatever emotion you end up experiencing… that’s for you to find out.

The script that was penned by Bergman is absolutely brimming with personality and boy does he ever have a lot to say in this story. But what I love about this movie so much is that it never once feels super preachy despite its subject matter. This could have easily come across as some incredibly frustrating and bare-bones story that didn’t really cut deep but gratefully, that’s not the case.

All of the acting here is top-of-the-line, too. Gunnar Björnstrand delivers an extremely understated and incredibly powerful performance in the role of Tomas Ericsson. Not only does the script give him plenty of things to do, but Björnstrand comes into every single frame feeling as if he is in command of the ship. Ingrid Thulin is similarly just as great, portraying school teacher Märta Lundberg. She doesn’t get as much character development as some of the others (i.e. the aforementioned Björnstrand), but she still shines whenever she’s on-screen.

If there was one thing I wish was different about this movie, it would have to be the pacing. Winter Light runs at a total of just eighty-one minutes, leaving barely any room for meditation which this story clearly needs. Bergman definitely does his best with the script for the film, but it certainly would’ve been nice if he had padded out the script to make it even just fifteen or twenty minutes longer because the end result feels like it’s seriously lacking some genuine gut-punches along the way.

But that still doesn’t change the fact that Winter Light is a great movie. It’s filled with immensely powerful dialogue and serves as an excellently thought-provoking piece of cinema.