WINTER LIGHT (1962)

Christopher

This is the second film to the Through A Glass Darkly trilogy, Through A Glass Darkly being the first. Watching this movie again was really interesting but in a different way than Through A Glass Darkly. When I first saw this in high school, I was super into it and thought that it brought up super important issues while holding my attention throughout. Watching this again as an adult I found myself just wondering why this priest is just now questioning God and his priesthood.

I can’t really say that I had a moment where I questioned my faith with God but I certainly know that I haven’t given it a second thought since leaving for college, no longer required to go to church each week by my parents. I think what got me the most about Winter Light is why did it take the priest so long to think about “God’s silence?” I think the fact that I passed that moment in my life this whole story just seemed a bit boring to me. Which is crazy because I remember being petty into it in high school.

I think if you are interested you should check this out but i would start with Through A Glass Darkly first.

Elizabeth

While I really loved watching Through A Glass Darkly, I think Winter Light might be more fun and interesting to talk about than to watch, at least for me. But I feel like that’s a very personal take on it and I probably wouldn’t have felt the same way if I had watched it at a different time in my life.

Winter Light follows Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand), a pastor with a cold. The first scene is the end of his service, which is as boring as any church service. It was interesting to watch, though, because everything felt so mechanical: the patrons silently knelt for communion, Tomas gives communion so robotically that after he says the same thing a couple of times, Criterion doesn’t even bother giving subtitles for the other times he repeats it. After the service, married couple Karin (Gunnel Lindblom) and Jonas (Max von Sydow) go to Tomas for help, which makes one really appreciate the availability of therapists. Karin is upset because Jonas is depressed after reading somewhere that China is working on an atomic bomb. Which was sort of funny, considering there’s a scene in Annie Hall about a young Alvy being depressed over the universe expanding. Tomas obviously doesn’t really know what to say, basically just telling Jonas to keep his faith, but asks Jonas to come back after taking Karin home. They leave and Marta enters, who is definitely a former girlfriend of Tomas’ but it’s not totally clear on what their current status is.

Marta asks Tomas if he’s read the letter she sent him, and when she leaves he sits down to read it. This was a great scene; instead of a voiceover or anything similar, the letter is read to us by Marta looking directly into the camera. It’s a really cool, long shot that made the letter so much more engaging. Her letter tells a crazy story about how some time before she had a terrible rash that spread all over her body, with her hands being the worst, and how Tomas was disgusted by her and didn’t help her at all, by neither being there for her or effectively praying for her. Tomas falls asleep at his desk after reading the letter (he obviously wasn’t all that moved by it) and is awoken by Jonas standing in his office. Tomas seems startled and kind of starts rambling a bit. I loved this scene. The fact that Tomas has a cold (and it’s mentioned that he probably has a fever) and is startled awake make him seem weird at first; he knows where he is and everything but is talking almost as if Jonas wasn’t there.

Unfortunately for Jonas, Tomas uses the time he should be counseling Jonas to instead work through his own faith and feelings about God, which, it turns out, aren’t that great. He sort of comes to the realization that he can’t stop ignoring how cruel he thinks God is with God’s own existance. Basically, because Tomas spent time fighting in the Spanish Civil War (don’t ask me how, given that Tomas is Swedish, but I just went with it) and saw horrible things there, he can’t continue to think that God would allow those horrible things to happen. Instead he comes to the conclusion that either God is not real or God doesn’t care about humans and is cut off from us. Now while those are totally legitimate concerns, it’s not the best thing to say to someone who is super depressed and is looking to God for help. Jonas pretty much just leaves without saying anything, and a few minutes later Tomas gets word that Jonas shot himself.

It’s interesting because Tomas obviously feels relief from having his own views on God figured out, even if it’s not the outcome he wanted. But he’s still the pastor, and he still has patrons, so when Tomas tells Karin that Jonas is dead, he gives no indication that he’s lost his faith. He obviously feels like he has a job to do. What’s also interesting is Tomas talking about his first wife, whom he uses to sort of tear down Marta, telling her that she will never live up to his wife and he will never love anyone like that again. From what we’ve heard (particularly from Through A Glass Darkly), there’s a notion that “God is love,” which we’ve obviously all heard before. I think Tomas’ loss of faith could be attributed to his realization that he really won’t love anyone again the way he loved his wife. And if God is love, and Tomas’ life is now absent of love, it would make sense that he no longer believes in God.

Again, Winter Light wasn’t the most engaging movie ever, but the questions and thoughts it opens up definitely makes it worth it.

 

ANNIE HALL (1977)

Elizabeth

We watched Annie Hall sort of out of the blue, and all because Bob Dylan’s “Just Like A Woman,” started playing. It made me think of the scene where Pam (Shelley Duvall) describes the song to an uninterested Alvy (Woody Allen). Then that made Chris think of the scene where Alvy talks to Annie (Diane Keaton)’s psychotic brother, Duane (Christopher Walken). Talking and laughing about those scenes were enough to make us just watch it right there.

I’ve seen Annie Hall a lot but not in a while, probably not since college. It was a movie that totally blew me away the first time I saw it and I still discover new things whenever I watch it because so much is packed in. Alvy and Annie’s relationship makes such perfect sense while somehow making absolutely no sense. Alvy’s kind of a dick, Annie’s kind of an airhead. But their relationship just feels real; even if it doesn’t seem logical, they have a chemistry that seems very realistic.

Annie Hall is filled with perfect one-liners (“Don’t knock masturbation, it’s sex with someone I love,”) and awkward situations (Alvy sneezing into a couple’s cocaine). Even though I clearly didn’t experience 1970s New York, Annie Hall seems like such a great snapshot of that time and place. I always sort of think of Annie Hall and When Harry Met Sally as similar, at least to me because they’re both two of my favorite romantic comedies. But Annie Hall is the they-don’t-end-up-together version, but it’s not at all sad. Just like everything else in the movie, Annie and Alvy’s relationship ending just feels natural. It’s really pretty beautiful.

Christopher

I know I first saw this movie in high school but I’m glad we watched it again because I think I understood a lot more than I did back then. However, the best scene in this film to me, and it was really the only thing I remembered before we watched it again, is the one where Christopher Walken shows up as Annie’s brother. The deadpan comedy he brings is out of this world funny and Elizabeth brought up a good point, that he really is just being Christopher Walken in those scenes but I guess since he wasn’t really a big star at the time, it was new to everyone. Even today though I found this to be my favorite part of the movie.

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY (1961)

Christopher

High school has so far been my golden era for watching Criterion movies. One of the directors they cherish the most is Ingmar Bergman. And even though I don’t have a specific memory of watching Through A Glass Darkly I definitely remember this being a movie I watched multiple times. I’ve seen a good number of Bergman films but Through A Glass Darkly might be his movie that stayed with me the most. Watching it again with Elizabeth was like watching a movie I just saw a week or so ago. Every scene was still so vivid in my mind. I say all this because Through A Glass Darkly is a movie that I feel almost everyone should watch.

When people talk about religious movies I kind of think of shit like Heaven Is For Real or an upcoming post, Courageous, but to me it’s Through A Glass Darkly. This movie has exactly what I want in a religious movie; tons of fear and ambiguity. This movie is the first of a trilogy and even though this movie is really more about mental illness than religion, it does have some great scenes involving some type of higher power. Whenever people talk about God I have an image in my head because of this film . . . even though it might not be a good one.

I highly recommend this movie and even if you think you might not enjoy it it definitely is a film that holds your attention throughout. It kind of just gets crazier and crazier as the plot unfolds. CHECK IT OUT!!!!!!

Elizabeth

Wow. For a movie with only four characters that takes place in about 24 hours or less, Through A Glass Darkly has a whole lot going on. And it is beyond amazing.

The plot is so simple that there isn’t even really a plot at all, but just a study of these characters as they interact. Everything takes place on a fairly remote island where a family is vacationing: Karin (Harriet Andersson) and her husband Martin (Max von Sydow), along with Karin’s father, David (Gunnar Björnstrand) and teenage brother, Minus (Lars Passgård). We find out that it’s more awkward than your average vacation with the in-laws as Karin has somewhat recently been released from a hospital, where she’s being treated for what sounds like schizophrenia.

The whole movie rides on dialog and how these characters interact with one another. Despite Karin’s diagnosis, she’s far from being the only weirdo. Like so many movies we’ve watched recently (and like The Leftovers, which we also just finished), David sort of hates his kids. He’s a popular writer, but he doesn’t get great reviews. Minus and Karin’s mother died some time before, and we find out that she also had schizophrenia (and it sounds like maybe she died from it, or some kind of complications from it since I’m not sure how what would work). David clearly has little to no interaction with Minus, given that Minus is kind of crazy, especially about how he feels towards women; he’s obviously heterosexual, but is also disgusted by women. Karin learns, by reading David’s diary, that not only is her illness incurable, but David wants to use her illness for his writing. Even though that wasn’t meant for Karin to see, it’s still pretty devastating and shitty parenting. Martin is probably the most stable one of the bunch, but his intense love for Karin, whose illness sort of prevents her from expressing much love back, is almost debilitating, even though it is noble.

We first meet the family in the evening before dinner after they’ve gone for a swim. At dinner, David tells the family that he will soon be leaving on a trip again to try to help his apparent writer’s block, even though he promised Karin and Minus that he would be staying home for a long time. David gives everyone gifts from his trip as he goes back to his bedroom. They open the gifts and are immediately disappointed that they seem rather thoughtless and last minute, but while they complain, David secretly sobs in his bedroom. When he returns, they all thank him for the gifts as if nothing is wrong. Karin, Minus, and Martin put on a play for David that Minus wrote, which is about an artist who is asked to give up his life for his art but decides his life is too important, which David takes as an attack on himself.

Later that night, while everyone else is asleep, Karin goes into an empty room. It seems like she’s following something there, although she’s alone. She has convulsions, which at times seem orgasmic, and then passes out. Later, she goes to David’s room and says she can’t sleep. He’s up working, so he tucks her into his bed while he continues to work, which is probably the most parental action David takes during the whole movie. Even though we know David is not a good parent, that scene was very comforting to me, especially because Karin seems to fall asleep immediately. It just reminds me of those feelings of being a little kid and nothing being more comfortable than your parents’ bed. When Karin wakes up, David is gone and that’s when she reads his diary. She tells Martin about it, who denies that her disease is incurable. When Martin reassures her, it’s hard to tell if he’s straight-up lying (Martin says in the beginning that there is a small amount of hope for Karin but she’s likely incurable), not quite lying since there is some hope, or if he just truly believes that it is not totally incurable himself. I have to go with the last one on that; Martin has a clear, unconditional love for Karin, to the point where I think Karin going crazy would be worse for Martin than Karin herself.

Martin and David go fishing and Martin confronts David about what Karin found in his diary and basically calls him out on all kinds of shit that he’s clearly holding onto. I was honestly scared the scene was going to turn into The Talented Mr. Ripley but instead it ends up being a pretty calm conversation between Martin and David. David tells a story of how he tried to kill himself and almost succeeded, but then realized he did love his family. It’s really too little too late, and Martin knows it, but seems to appreciate that David is at least trying. I feel like that story is why David went to cry while everyone opened presents; maybe he understood they were thoughtless gifts and didn’t know how to convey his true feelings to his family.

Things get weirder and weirder between Karin and Minus while Martin and David are gone. She finds Minus looking through a nude magazine and asks him to show her his “favorite.” I don’t have an opposite-sex sibling, but it still seems like it should be weird for a brother and sister to look at porn together. She then tries to describe to Minus what happened to her in the empty room; that basically she entered a room full of people that were waiting for someone to come, someone she thinks is God. Despite all the immaturity we’ve seen from Minus at this point, he seems to clearly recognize that Karin is going through something profound and seems to treat her very delicately. He doesn’t not believe her; he knows that she believes she truly saw all of that. But he lets her know that, at least for him, what she’s saying isn’t real. He’s obviously trying to connect with her while also keeping her at somewhat of a distance.

Later, while David and Martin are still gone, Karin sees a storm coming and hides in an abandonded, falling apart boat. When Minus finds her there, he goes to her and they hold each other. When David and Martin come back, Minus leads them to the boat and Karin asks for everyone to leave except David. She tells him she read his diary but also that she did something worse, something much worse, something to Minus. She never says what happened and no one ever asks. Later though, Minus tells David that reality burst open for him when he was in the boat with Karin and that now anything can happen. So I mean, I think we can safely assume some kind of sex stuff happened in the boat. Probably not straight up sex, but something. I also think it’s pretty safe to assume that this isn’t the first time Karin has done something to Minus, because that would explain a lot of his out-of-the-blue disgust with women and his own sexuality. It’s crazy.

Once she’s out of the boat, Karin decides she needs to be hospitalized again. They call an ambulance but before they can leave Karin once again goes into the empty room, clearly seeing something we can’t see. Martin follows her there and she tells him that she’s waiting for God to come through the door, that he’s almost there. Martin doesn’t knock her out of her trance, instead he just coexists with it. Karin says multiple times that she can’t live in two worlds at once, and this is clearly what’s happening here. Karin starts screaming and convulsing again, and Martin gives her a shot of some kind to calm her down. As she does, she tells everyone what she saw: God came through the room, he was a spider, and he tried to penetrate her. Fucking. Creepy.

Martin and Karin leave in the ambulance together, and Minus tells David about the boat while they watch them go. They have a short, deep conversation about the meaning of God and life and how important love is. When David walks away, Minus says what is maybe one of the saddest last lines of any movie, “Father spoke to me.”

As I’m not schizophrenic and have never been close to anyone that is, I’m not going to pretend to be an expert or have first-hand knowledge. But I feel like so often, especially in old movies and especially with women, a character is just “crazy.” It feels vague. And while Bergman never says schizophrenia, he and Andersson show us such realistic experiences that it’s anything but vague. Karin’s constant struggle to be in two worlds at once feels so true. And she has one of the best lines I’ve ever heard about mental illness: “It’s so horrible to see your own confusion and understand it.” While I’m not schizophrenic, I’ve dealt with serious depression of my own and that’s exactly what it felt like; it was so horrible to know that logically I shouldn’t feel that way but have no control over it anyway. Bergman seems to have such a clear and empathic understanding of Karin’s illness that it never seems cheap or exploitive; it mostly seems sad.

Through A Glass Darkly is fairly minimalist, but it packs so much into 90-something minutes that it’s never boring for a second and also goes by really quickly. It also reminded me of just how gorgeous Bergman movies can be and lucky we are to be able to have something like The Criterion Collection present it in such a beautiful way. No one shoots black and white like Bergman.

If you haven’t seen this, see it. End of story.

COURAGEOUS (2011)

Elizabeth

Here is how the very self-righteously titled Courageous begins: Nathan Hayes (Ken Bevel) stops at a gas station. After filling his tank, he realizes he wants to wash his windshield. He’s already turned the car back on, but walks over to another pump several yards away to find a squeegee . . . with his door open. The entire time he’s there, there’s a very stereotypically gangster-looking guy, lurking behind him. So naturally, when Nathan leaves his giant truck running with the door wide open and completely walks away from it, the gangster guy immediately jumps in and drives off in it. But alas! Nathan chases him down, jumps on the truck and hangs onto the driver’s side door. Eventually he messes with the carjacker enough to cause him to drive off the road, flinging Nathan off. The carjacker’s partner was apparently following them the whole time, because he immediately pulls up behind him and drives off with the carjacker in tow. As a couple of female bystanders (one with a giant cross on) come to help him and tell him not to worry about his truck as he crawls over to it (MEN, AMIRIGHT???), he opens the back door and we see a screaming baby in its carseat.

How courageous are you if you risk your life (by jumping onto the side of a moving truck) to save your child . . . because you walked away from your running car, with its door open, with said child inside, leading to said car getting stolen in the first place? To me that does not make you courageous, but rather a shitty person and a really shitty parent, and also just really fucking stupid.

So that’s actually a pretty good way for Courageous to start because even though the first scene only focuses on Nathan, it gives a pretty good feel for the rest of the movie. Because we soon find out that not only is Nathan a shitty person and a shitty parent – but he’s a shitty cop, too! Yes, a police officer left his baby in his running, door-open car. And he is courageous.

Anyway, so this is about Christian cops. At some kind of cop meeting, the cop boss tells the cops that they, especially fathers, should spend more time with their families because “research” says that being raised without a father present leads to crime. Good discovery! We meet Adam (Alex Kendrick – hilariously also the director) who continues our time-honored tradition of seeing movies with characters who hate their children. Or I guess I should rephrase: Adam only hates his son, he just kind of doesn’t care about his daughter. What makes me say this? Adam comes home from work to his wife, who’s angry. We find out she’s angry because Adam missed Emily (daughter)’s recital – which was that night – which Adam completely forgot about, even though apparently it was a really big deal. And then we find out why Adam hates his son, Dylan: “All he wants to do is run five miles and play video games.” ALL HE WANTS TO DO IS RUN FIVE MILES AND PLAY VIDEO GAMES?? What kind of critique of a teenager is that? He sounds super well-rounded to me. And not only that, Adam is pissed because Dylan keeps wanting to do a father-son 5k with him. Sooooo, you have a son that is desperate to spend time with you, is athletic, but also enjoys video games . . . and you don’t like him because of that? What the fuck? HOW COURAGEOUS?

We also meet David (Ben Davies) whose main characteristic is that he’s stupid, and Shane (Kevin Downes) who’s just kind of a dude (for now). But then we meet one of my favorites . . . Javier (Robert Amaya). Javier has such a comically bad Mexican accent that I looked up Amaya just to confirm that he’s actually Hispanic. Javier also has such a comically pathetic life when we first see him that it’s sort of hard to get behind him. He’s a construction worker who unexpectedly comes home early after getting laid off. His wife, who is of course named Carmen, freaks out and asks Javier why he didn’t have his boss call her. What? She also reminds him that Marcos, their son, needs shoes and all they have for food is beans and rice. Javier hands Carmen $300 (which maybe it’s because I’m not raising a family but that seemed like a lot? Or at least plenty for kids’ shoes and some food) and says he’s going to go look for work – but he refuses to take the car because he won’t let his family walk. He looks like shit (since he just came from that construction job), but decides he’ll just walk out of the house and wander around looking for a job? Because of their food problem, when Javier asks Carmen for a lunch he could take with him, she hands him A TORTILLA. A SINGLE TORTILLA. One of my favorite moments in the whole movie.

There’s a crazy scene that I think is supposed to prove that these guys are not just good cops, but cool cops, except it fails so spectactularly at that that it seems like a weird parody of itself. All of our main cop friends are going after some drug dealers, so they go to a house where they suspect the drug dealers will be. Shane and Adam go inside while David and Nathan keep watch outside . . . except for the fact that David stands with his back to the door of the house the entire time – and then appears shocked when he’s inevitably tackled by one of the drug dealers running out of the house . . . which he didn’t see coming . . . because he had his back to the door. Shane and Adam don’t look in the rooms of the house; instead they go straight to the attic, assuming the drug dealers are hiding there. Wouldn’t you maybe check open rooms, and then check the one room that’s closed off, just to be safe? Because maybe the drug dealers aren’t in the attic like you are for some reason assuming and are going to be able to run out of the house without you reaching them and without your co-worker stoppping them because HIS BACK IS TO THE FUCKING DOOR?? So then the cops have to chase the drug dealers, both on foot and by car, even though David literally does nothing except drive around because he only knows street names – something new guy Nathan apparently knows really well somehow. Then there’s an amazing part in which Adam is driving with Nathan in the passenger seat, and one of them says “Slingshot?” as if that is a totally universal cop thing, considering Nathan is new, they both agree, and Adam does some crazy car thing that involves turning the car really fast so Nathan can roll out of the moving car or something. It’s crazy and it’s hilarious how unnecessary it is.

Eventually, God sends Javier work . . . HAHA oh wait, that’s not what happened. Javier is walking down a residential street, looking for work, because that’s where you go to find construction work. Turns out he’s on Adam’s street, and when Adam sees Javier, he calls his name. Confused, Javier walks over. To make a way too long story short, Adam hired some guy he never met named Javier to help him build something, the real Javier never showed and lo and behold there was our Javier walking down the street, so Adam hires him. He also eventually recommends Javier for a sweet full-time job, thus essentially solving all of Javier’s problems. Thanks, God! I mean miscommunication/Adam!

Geez, I’ve already talked to long about this movie. Other crazy shit happens: Emily is killed by a drunk driver, causing Adam to start liking Dylan again. Nathan gives his teenage daughter a purity ring after she’s asked out by an older boy – who later joined a gang – which she is supposed to wear until it’s replaced by a wedding ring. So I guess it’s not weird that her dad wants her to wear a ring he gave her on her wedding ring finger, which she will presumably wear while trying to date and have sex, until she actually gets married. What if she doesn’t want to get married? Or what if she’s gay and still lives in who-the-fuck-cares Georgia? Oh well! Emily’s death and the realization that he has another child causes Adam to write up a resolution about being a good father that he got out of the bible somehow, and all of the men have a weird ceremony during church for it. Javier is put in a tight situation where his boss basically wants him to steal so he can get promoted, but against his wife’s wishes he goes with his heart and tells his boss he can’t do that . . . only to discover it was a test! And he was the only one that passed! So he got promoted! Does this shit actually happen in real life? What the fuck. Adam discovers Mitchell is stealing drugs and selling them on the street for profit. He goes to jail, and the other guys act like the resolution they signed was a huge fucking success – even though 1/5 of the men are now in prison for stealing drugs and will not be able to raise their child. COOOOOOL!!!!!

This movie is a fucking piece of shit, jesus christ. Literally.

Christopher

The best thing about this movie is how it’s specifically made to make men proud to be God-serving fathers. It’s full of crazy action, death, and a gang member seeking revenge. Unfortunately, nothing about these characters really make you want to change anything about your life. Other than to be nothing like them.

One father hates his kids, another doesn’t think twice about leaving his child alone in a running car and one of them might be evil? We first heard about this movie from a trailer in front of Heaven is for Real and I have to say it was very worth watching. If you enjoy watching crazy Christian films this should be at the top of your list. The best thing about these movies is that there is so much to make fun of that doesn’t even include religion. I think it’s a film for everyone.