Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Marguerite LeDragon In this haunting film, a mentally ill young woman and three of her family members - younger brother, older husband, and aging father - vacation on an idyllic island. While at first her schizophrenia seems to be in remission, family pressures trigger a rapid decline. To the grief of the rest of the family, her future prospects are dim and she, as the person they knew, may be leaving their lives forever. In the end, we are only left with a small glimmer of hope, that even though life seems cruel and unfair, the ability of people to care about each other provides an intimation that somehow things are not hopeless.Rather than a realistic picture of clinical schizophrenia, the film primarily uses her condition to explore how people struggle with the contrast between the "magic circle" of living an outwardly normal, successful life, with the realities and forces operating apparently from the outside that threaten to destroy their tranquility. The illness of the sister represents one possibility in a life where existentially people find themselves continually in deep water, where their constructs of life are constantly threatened. Each of the family members seems poised between their social construct as a happy, nice family member, and their interior and exterior threats.The father is an aging isolated man who poses as a serious writer tackling serious questions such as the existence of God, but who is suicidally depressed by the knowledge that his writing is pop fluff of no real significance, and that his real preoccupation is not universal issues but his personal failure as father and a husband. The son is young and naive, still living the regulated life of a student, but deeply frustrated in his desires for intimacy with women and recognition from his father. Karin, the daughter, is doll-like and cheerful on the surface, but haunted by the depressing undersurface of life, which is expressed by trenchant observations at first but then increasingly by nightmare hallucinations of wolves, owls, spiders, and voices in her head. She is sexually repelled by and emotionally distant from her older husband and prefers the company of her impressionable younger brother.Max von Sydow, playing the husband, is the most sympathetic and normal member of the quartet, as the supportive husband. He is a stolid, kind, somewhat pompous physician who stays easily on keel with positive and normal thoughts and actions, unlike Karin and the rest of her hyper-sensitive family. However, it is implied that this feat is accomplished through lack of imagination and stubborn refusal to notice whatever isn't "fit to be noticed". The harder he tries to pull Karin back from her visionary fantasies, the more she is repulsed by what she sees as his stupidity.Marring the film are some heavy-handed and overly theatrical moments. For example, where the father, played by Gunnar Bjornstrand, pontificates heavily to the point where suspension of disbelief is stretched, or where the Bach soundtrack comes in to underscore somewhat tediously that a moment is "profound". Related to this, the father plays a self-loathing artist who it is not hard to see as Bergman engaging in self-critique that is overly egocentric, not of general interest.Flaws aside, this is a beautiful movie, that manages to make the most miserable family vacation ever a fascinating experience.

ElMaruecan82 As usual with Ingmar Bergman's movies, the power of imagery, its meticulous attention on shadows and lightning have such an effect on eyes, a second viewing becomes an absolute necessity for the distracted mind, and the second effect is so mind-blowing, any use of words becomes pointless.Words and images, light and darkness, harmony lies in pair in Bergman's films and "Through a Glass Darkly" is no exception. The pairing pattern works for faces as the film rarely shows one person in the screen, always two. Four major protagonists are always interacting in pairs. We draw our personal circle, says David (Gunnar Björnstrand) to his young daughter Karyn (Harriett Anderson) in order to protect ourselves from the others' secret games, and when life breaks the circle, as a defensive mechanism, we build another one. Life is made of round-trips between illusion and reality.In an earlier scene, David is confronted to Martin, Karen's husband, played by Max Von Sydow. He told him that Karyn checked into his diary and found out his secret thoughts about her disease. Although never revealed, it's clearly implied that she suffers from schizophrenia, and they're all resting in Faro Island after she spent some time in a mental hospital. Karyn is normal on the surface, but her child-like behavior while she teases her younger brother Minus (Lars Passgård) arises our suspicions. She then explains that her hearing got more accurate, she's awaken up by noises of birds and animal, and is even capable to hear some voices speaking to her from a wallpaper and announcing the arrival of God. Karyn's life, so far, feels like a one-way ticket to a world of illusions.And according to Martin, Karyn's disease is 'relatively incurable'. What is 'relatively'? Is it a light of hope, a euphemism or God having pity of one of HIS firmest believers? Anyway, David only reacts as a writer; he sees an opportunity to fill his mental block, which Martin explicitly condemns. David can barely hide is guilt and his reactions sound like admittance. It's simply amazing how a simple conversation put answers to all the interrogation left in the set-up. Why is David so estranged to his family? Why, after a long trip to Switzerland, he plans another world-traveling period? It might be part of his situation as a successful author, but it doesn't fool anyone, these travels are his escape from reality. According to his personal vision, David drew his personal circle from his reluctance to face the reality of his daughter's sickness, of his boy's unease with the adult world. On the other hand, Martin, is the most compassionate and disinterested protagonist, although Karyn can't bring him sex and happiness, he loves her, and tries desperately to reach her, while witnessing the disintegration of her mental state. David, however, asks him whether he can control his inner feelings, to which Martin retorts that he's too simple and human for that. Is he? Wouldn't he secretly wish for her wife to die in peace, and put an end to a pointless anguish, and wish what would be more of an act of mercy from God?Bergman's started his 'chamber' trilogy with a film whose themes echo his eternal torments, not existential on a personal but on a binary level, how can two people understand each other's condition, how can one break the other's circle? But this is not a philosophizing film, for the simple reason that it is a film and film is an art of imagery and emotions. Bergman, a natural-born playwright, uses a family island, some rooms and an attic as the setting of people's torments. Examine some crucial scenes, two faces are on the screen, looking in different directions, both lit by lights from different sources, as if the source of one's truth was a secret impossible to reach.This device, from the cinematographer and genius Sven Nykvist would culminate with the iconic shots of Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullman half-faces forming one in "Persona". But if "Persona" showed that the line between two souls could be opened, it's this impenetrability that shows in "Through a Glass Darkly". And the narrative is mostly pessimistic on Karyn's case, she's not trapped in a circle, but has a foot in reality, and one in the 'other' one, from which some voices whisper and announce her the imminent intervention of God. This is perhaps one of the greatest enigmas that tormented Bergman, the filmmaker, the existence of God, and the alienating effect of the intellectual and emotional efforts to reach him. Maybe the secret is to find God within the world you exist in, rather than the outside world. Again, as painful and troubling as life is, it's still life. The movie ends with a heart-to-heart discussion between David and his son, both trying to find out the roots of salvation, how to get accommodated with reality. Maybe the essence of life is love, and this is where God must be found out. Love in the broadest meanings, from a brother, a father, a lover or a husband …it's all about approaching our vision of love. There are many interrogations left, notably a controversial moment between Karyn and Minus with many incestuous undertones. Maybe this was another misguided attempt to find love, in the most awkward way, something so unexplainable that even the Master explored it carefully, leaving up to us to see "through the glass", the magic class of his camera.One night, my wife wanted to play to a game of impossible choices. She asked me: what if I had the choice between fulfilling all my dreams, becoming an acclaimed and distinguished filmmaker but losing her love. Like in a Bergman film, my silence said so many words that no answer mattered anymore. I knew how David during that crucial boat ride… and this is how genuinely expert on human's deepest complexities, Ingmar Bergman is, on a universal level.

runamokprods Bergman is still dealing with some of the same big issues (Is there a god?, What's the meaning of art?, etc.) but now on a much more human level. The preachiness is gone, and the characters are no longer archetypes. Just human beings struggling with the difficulties of living. Phenomenal, understated performances all around, and beautiful cinematography more than compensate for occasional hints of staginess in this chamber drama with just 4 characters; a father, his son and schizophrenic daughter, and her husband who loves her in spite of her illness. All the characters are human, identifiable, occasionally ugly, and true. And somehow this led to me thinking much more deeply about my own life then the impressive, but more on-the-nose cosmic questioning of 'The Seventh Seal' or even 'Wild Strawberries'.

tieman64 The first film in director Ingmar Bergman's "faith trilogy" - to be completed several years later with "Winter Light" (1962) and "Silence" (1963) - "Through A Glass Darkly" (1961) stars Harriet Andersson as Karin, a young woman who suffers from a mental illness. This illness resembles schizophrenia, but Bergman cruelly calls it "the disease of faith", a symptom of Karin's theism.Karin habitually sees visions of God, but her visions are warped to the point of parody. Her God takes the form of a salacious spider, and later a helicopter which ferries her sputtering body to a mental hospital. Supporting the increasingly deranged Karin are three men: Karin's brother, husband and father. These men embody three very different approaches to "spirituality" or "love", each of which is contrasted with Karin's more Christian outlook. The father, for example, is a cynic, depressive and writer, and is increasingly detached from a family he loves only insofar as they provide material for his increasingly morbid novels. The husband, in contrast, is a man of science, but his rationality proves unable to cure his wife. Meanwhile, Karin's brother is a naive, budding play-write, who develops an incestuous, sexual attraction toward her. As with Bergman's other "faith" films, Karin's beliefs are mocked for being hollow and borne of delusions, but shown to be far less horrific than those of the apathetic, post faith characters who surround her.The film ends with a macabre parody of romantic, spiritual and familial love. Here, Karin's embrace by God is ushered in by incestuous sex with her brother. An angelic helicopter then lifts her, not up into heaven, but toward a psychiatric ward. Afterwards, Karin's father tells his son that the family's love for one another is proof enough of the existence of God. His words are a self defence mechanism, designed to assuage the pain of watching his family disintegrate. The son, so starved of affection and attention, then accepts the father's drivel. By the film's end, Bergman has shown not only how a love of God is often the displacement of the love we should show for one another, but how even the staunchest unbelievers summon "Gods" to bolster their fragility.Like "Through A Glass Darkly, "Winter Light", the second film in Bergman's trilogy, takes place in a cold, remote part of Sweden. Bergman's tone is austere and chilling throughout, all skies, oceans, rivers, buildings and vistas seemingly bleached and robbed of all depth. Attuned to this suffocating "nothingness" is Tomas Ericsson, a village pastor (named after Bergman's own father, a priest called Erik) who has lost his faith but continues to tend to his dwindling congregation. If Bergman's "faith trilogy" traces a movement away from shaky belief to profound existential abandonment, then "Winter Light" represents the mid-point of this journey: shaky disbelief, God's light wintry, wispy and uncertain.And so Bergman paints Tomas as a man of, not only uncertainty, but contradictions. Tomas uses his position of "divine authority" to absolve himself of blame when one member of his congregation commits suicide, whilst using his certainty that God doesn't exist, and therefore also absolute morality, as an excuse for his treatment of several woman. But the problem, the film goes on to show, isn't that God does or does not exist, but that he has always been summoned and shunted aside whenever it best suits man."Winter Light" ended with two atheists in a church, waiting for God to speak. The silence that greets them becomes the basis of Bergman's "The Silence", arguably the greatest film in his trilogy (and the precursor to his traumatising "Cries and Whispers"). Making heavy use of sound effects and little use of dialogue, the film centres on Anna, Ester and Johan, a young boy. Whether these characters are related (Lovers? Family? Friends?) is never clarified.It isn't long before Bergman is alluding to off-screen wars (expressionistic shots of tanks and war machines) and the on-screen mortality of his characters (Ester coughs blood; she's dying from Tuberculosis), all forms of human suffering which for centuries have cast doubt on the existence of God. The rest of the film then largely takes place in a hotel, which Johan explores whilst Ester remains ill and bed bound. During his explorations he will stumble across various mundane yet disturbing sights and sounds. Think the fan which is placed at Ester's bedside, ostensibly for her comfort, but with each blade spin being a reminder of helplessness. Meanwhile, the click of Johan's toy pistol echoes shadowy military vehicles, whilst typewriters and clocks sing songs of death, each tick-tock bring one closer to oblivion. There's a certain, sickening "finality" to "The Silence's" "noise".Most horrific, though, is the disguised contempt these characters have for one another, despite their seemingly unwavering love. Ester despises Anna for her good health, for the carnal pleasures she indulges in, whilst Anna apathetically views Ester as a constant inconvenience. It's a love-hate tug of war which little Johan is being indoctrinated in.And so more horrific than God's silence is our own silence, our inability to both truly connect with another human being, and to know completely what the other is thinking. Despite Ester and Anna's rituals of human connection, they remain forever apart and forever alone. Ester herself represents the "Mind", a figure of intellect and rationality (linked to Bach, is multilingual etc), while Anna represents the "Body", Bergman stressing her bodily routines (bathes, eats, sex, is facile etc). What the film shows is that Pure Reason eventually withers the body, whilst carnality, unennboled by reason, ultimately leads to similar self destruction. Bergman's cure is the film's final word: "spirit". He closes on a powerful shot of Johan, the boy's future, and dilemma, ours.8/10 – Worth one viewing. The trilogy's cinematography, by Sven Nykvist, suffocates.