冬日之光

（写于2010-11-10）

伯格曼大多电影就像一个死寂般宁静并充斥着晦涩与压抑的边缘世界，让人难以企及与困顿，但从中所体现出来的深刻思想与望尘莫及的智慧，又叫人不得不为之沉迷与折服，这种独特的氛围与感染力也延续到了电影《冬日之光》中，伯格曼就像一个高深莫测看透尘世的哲学家与思想家，以极为冷静与沉重的态度诉说着他对于人生意义与宗教信仰的洞察、质疑与理解。

这部电影并没有什么故事性，更多的只是以一种诉说与谈论的方式来呈现本片的深刻内涵和主旨，虽然感觉上会显得有些沉闷与枯燥，但细细地品味与理解后会发现这些寓意深刻的独白与对话，反而给我们提供了更多思考的线索与空间，值得铭记在心百般回味。而在这部电影中也不乏一些典型伯格曼式象征性的细节与片段。

例如影片一开始那一张张清晰的人物特写，从他们那形象具体的面部表情中仿佛可以窥探到他们游走于残酷现实与美好信仰中的迷茫、无奈、哀愁与落寞。熟悉的时钟和烛光也出现在了本片中，像是对于时光匆匆中生命与信仰脆弱一面的体现，同时对深化主题也起到了一定关键性的辅助作用。影片中伯格曼还利用了两个小孩来体现出他对于宗教信仰的反感与冷漠，以及通过片中人物冷漠的交流表达出一种人与人之间沟通的无用与无望。

影片中有三个重要的人物，在我看来他们更像是伯格曼的分身，以迥异的身份从不同的视角去体现他的观点与疑问。第一个是个郁郁寡欢悲观主义的渔夫，在诚心的祷告并接受完洗礼后，渔夫的妻子带着他跑去找牧师希望他可以以神的名义开导并助他走出精神困境，但经过了解，让人啼笑皆非的是使他抑郁恐惧的原因竟然是当时中国的“日益强大”带给他的恐惧与威胁。后来自我矛盾的牧师也没能拉他一把，转眼间他就走上一条不归路。

看到渔夫的命运，让人不禁感叹就连很多人（包括他自己）坚信的能给人类带来无限美好希望与安定生活的上帝也未能将他救赎，反而这种让人难以理解与酷似神经质似的信仰还让他更加沉沦于生活的残酷无常中，以至于一个八竿子打不到一起的消息就能触及到他敏感的细胞，让他深陷消极的情感氛围中难以自拔。而更引人深思的就是他向牧师提出的那个问题：为什么我们要继续生活？就算放在如今来看也依旧是个可以让人不断扪心自问却难以给予确切答案并索绕终身的人生命题。

整体来看影片的中轴人物其实是牧师。他一面慷慨激昂的赞扬着上帝存在的美好意义所在，以及上帝对于人类的付出与牺牲，因对上帝的信仰而塑造出来的令人无比崇敬与向往的幸福生活等。但当他摘掉这个如同工具般的身份头衔后，在周遭真实事实的驱动下，以及信仰所赋予的虚无缥缈的美好与现实所赋予的真实的残酷的反差中开始动摇、迷茫与困惑了起来。就像影片最后牧师的助手对他阐述着自己对耶稣受难极为精辟的见解，仿佛也道出了牧师与伯格曼的心声，疾病与肉体上的折磨根本算不了什么，精神上的伤才是最致命的打击。

“赐予我生活的意义，我会做你顺从的奴隶。”这是影片中一个中年女教师说的话，也是三个角色中的重要一员。她疯狂爱恋着牧师，甚至为了他甘愿付出一切。影片中女教师送给牧师一封信，伯格曼将信的内容转换成女教师坐在镜头前的独白，她深沉犹豫内敛的神情透露出一股悲凉而忧伤的气息，她诉说着对于宗教信仰的反感与不解，并告知牧师她是多么的爱他。本段的第一句话就是女教师独白中的一句，其实影片中的牧师就相当于是女教师的信仰与存在的价值，但后来当她在教室里得知牧师对于自身一切的反感与厌恶时，他自认活着的希望与意义在瞬间就变成了浮云。其实她与牧师之间，牧师与他死去的妻子之间的关系就是一种人与上帝的关系。

牧师厌恶她的原因除了他所说的一大堆毫无说服力的理由外，真正的原因其实是女教师对他的爱和纠缠让他意识到自己的信仰正在被慢慢地瓦解，在他的眼中上帝犹如他妻子一般的存在，他害怕自己对于妻子的依恋会被女教师取代，无法再依靠精神上的这种寄托过活，才会对她冷嘲热讽渐行渐远，而她百般的接近诱惑也只是想在牧师身上体会到活着的意义，所以两人才会以一种极为矛盾纠结的关系牵连在一起。其实很多时候信仰只是以一种作为逃避现实的借口与理由而存在，用一层自认刀枪不入实则虚无缥缈的盔甲伪装自己的痛苦与哀伤，在残酷现实的侵蚀下，作为一种如同救命稻草般的精神需求与心理安慰。无论是对的人的迷恋，还是对上帝的崇拜，大多都只不过是在寻获一个生存的意义与精神的寄托而已，

在我看来这部电影就像是伯格曼的内心独白，借他人之口道出了自己内心对于人生意义和宗教信仰独到的见解与领悟，以及引人深思的质疑，带给观众对于生活的一种更加透彻的认识与自省。虽然在伯格曼的电影中没有现代电影中炫目的电脑技术与科技含量，没有娱乐大众的电影元素与明星大腕，却拥有着当下电影中难得一见的深刻哲思和崇高的思想境界，带给我们更多价值非凡的触动。影片最后除了女教师外，教堂里空无一人，牧师还是一如既往如同例行公事般做着礼拜。不禁让人心生疑虑，是他在自欺欺人？还是所处时代的悲哀？

伯格曼最钟爱的两个主题，一是探讨信仰的“信”与“疑”，一是探讨人与人之间沟通的可能和不可能。《冬之光》是“信仰三部曲”或者“上帝的沉默”三部曲的第二部，讨论的自然是前者。

《冬之光》保持着伯格曼“室内剧”的特性，人物关系单纯，故事结构单一，以内景为主，对白冗长，主要人物都内心丰盈。但是，我一向就觉得，室内剧场景的单一，并不意味着画面或者镜头的单调。在伯格曼的电影中，一些细节的处理，让室内剧的场景和人物细腻的内心化的表演相映成趣，既增加了画面的层次和内容，也丰富了主题的表达。在《冬之光》中，这样的细节元素非“光”莫属。

整个电影的故事，都是发生在瑞典冬日的一天，纬度高，不到3点天就黑了，因为下雪，天气阴沉。奠定基调的是2分26秒至2分40秒的两个镜头（CC一区版），灰暗的雪野、布满鸟窝的大树、冰楞措综的河道，映着不知来自何处的光。而1小时8分50秒1小时9分15秒牧师和恋人在车内的长镜头，摄像机细致地捕捉到了极昼地区黄昏的天际。然后二人来到第二个教堂的外景，灰色调层次极其丰富，可以媲美《乡愁》中最美丽的段落。这些有限的外景中，光感是一种若有若无的荒凉，有着永世将临的调子。

而内景中细腻的光线，尤为让人感念大师的辞世。

在第一个组合段中，教堂的光线来自四面八方窗户，人物有些黯淡的影子。在领受圣体那一节，人物脸部的光，来自上方，显得光洁明丽，喻示着虚假的上帝之光。在10分37秒处，一个老人站在窗前，光从外面照进来，窗台上光影斑驳，而且，窗户上能看见雨滴滑落！注意了，一会就能看见，在高纬度的冬日，一边下雨，一边有阳光的景像了。在13分53秒处，牧师趴到窗台上咳嗽，也出现了光影斑驳的窗台。后来在这个房间中进行的第二组合段和第四组合段（牧师与渔夫谈话）中，光源全来自这个窗户，用得相当整齐。

比较厉害的地方是第四组合段结束时，43分左右开始，牧师站在窗前的带胸小特写，推成大特写，再拉成小特写，光线慢慢变亮。咋看起来不太好理解，接着我们就发现，是太阳出来了，所以光线变亮了。牧师还朝窗外看了一眼。光线的变化相当好地略微嘲弄了牧师的信仰：在感觉上帝抛弃自己，确认了信仰的丢失后，阳光出现了……

44分8秒的时侯，阳光穿过玻璃，照在女主角脸上。44分17秒，光线射入黑暗，隐约可见。光线成为这个组合段的主角，牧师走过扶廊，光线从高大的拱窗中照进来，是信仰之光，也是怀疑之光，很有点“天地不仁”的意味。他说出了他的怀疑，在阳光中，他说他自由了，可是他并没有。

渔夫的死马上让阳光淡去。接下来一个组合段中，溪水轰鸣，淹没了内心的声音。更重要的是，我们看见了满天飘飞的雪花，而同时，河面上依然映着淡淡阳光，这一段的影像和音响都相当狂暴。预示着接下来一个组合段（学校争吵）的狂暴和牧师内心在丢失信仰、得到自由后的另一种焦渴。

再下一个组合段（探访渔夫的妻子）中，最重要的场景发生在门厅的楼梯上，牧师怀孕的妻子是在顶部光源的照射下，陷入平静的痛苦。这是继牧师和渔夫之外，第三个在信与疑之间挣扎的形象，所以享有了跟牧师一样的用光。

接下来，1小时8分50秒附近，牧师走过渔夫家阴暗的庭院，有一个容易忽视的细节：在门外，一滩水面映着斜阳，像个电影屏幕，怎么也无法穿越黑暗的所在。

最后一个组合段中，1小时11分，我们看见了同题材电影中最常见的烛光。在《乡愁》中，烛光的信仰的标志物。在这里，烛光却含义暧昧，似乎是喻指虚弱的信仰（还是次品）。在这一段中，我们还能欣赏到女主角坐在窗户是唯一光源的长椅上的画面，以及光线打出的她的侧面轮廓，实际上，爱也不能成为信仰，爱是怀疑，信也是怀疑。

礼拜开始后，我们有了最后一组光线效果，代着非常强的嘲讽色彩，灯坐的蜡烛亮了，教堂亮了，庄严的音乐响起了。在信仰被怀疑的时代，应该用什么样的姿态去坚守？

在《冬之逛》中，很多场景的切换，都用了“溶”这种并不是很为艺术电影所采用的古典技法，应该也是为了配合光影的变化吧。

上世纪60年代初期，伯格曼祭出了影史留名的“信仰三部曲”。延续《犹在镜中》对上帝是否存在的探讨，《冬日之光》用教职人员这个更为密切的角度，在集约的时空中完成了关于信仰与怀疑的思辨，如今回望当年测探的深度，仍觉轰然作响。

上帝失声

“信仰三部曲”是伯格曼电影生涯中的又一座高峰，独立成章时能在宗教思辨与人性哲思上独当一面，串联成片后又在同一主题下汇聚出强劲的穿透力。虽然承上启下的《冬日之光》在评奖上未能承继《犹在镜中》的好运，但并不能否认这部作品的艺术性与思想性。

这部电影的瑞士原名“Nattvardsgästerna”主要有两重意思，一是英文名片“冬日之光”，二是指在圣餐典礼间的心境，或者直译为“受圣餐的人”、“教友”或“信使”，也不无不可。

既然要探讨上帝存在与否，以中世纪戏剧为雏形的《冬日之光》索性把故事背景架设在瑞典小镇的教堂里，由御用男演员甘纳尔·布耶恩施特兰德担纲主角牧师托马斯。托马斯身上有着强烈的矛盾性，作为神职人员，他向信众布道，主持圣餐礼，还要为人解惑，但另一方面，当妻子去世后，最初因为家人才当上牧师的他逐渐丧失了对主的信仰，深陷重重怀疑，备受折磨。甚至，当深受中国研究原子弹困扰的约拿在妻子建议下咨询托马斯，对方反而向他大吐自己怀疑的苦水，最终约拿走向自杀之路，这一段极尽无奈的嘲讽。

当局者迷，旁观者清。在托马斯迷失的同时，他身边最紧密的三个人都看得清透，对于信仰的思量，也有了不同的参照体系。

依恋他的玛塔并无强烈的宗教信仰，前往教堂只为托马斯。但这份感情是不对等的，哪怕玛塔愿意做他“顺从的奴仆”，以此作为“生命的意义”，托马斯对此只感到强烈的厌恶。他丧失了爱人的能力，枯萎死寂的心境让人惊恐。最终玛塔说出了真相，托马斯没有办法活得下去，因为什么事都没法救他，他只会把自己恨死。后来教堂的琴师在玛塔面前说，恰是“爱”毁掉了托马斯，这种论调嘲讽的正是“上帝是爱，爱是上帝”，顺理成章地接续了《犹在镜中》的辩题，尽管持了相悖的方向。

而托马斯的助手艾格特最后所谈及的疑惑充实、固话甚至升华了全片的思考。艾格特新近读《圣经》，觉得每天与耶稣在一起生活的人都不理解他，还在最后弃他而去。耶稣死前，天问没有得到上帝回应，最终，耶稣在怀疑中死去。这一说法也呼应了托马斯长久思忖的困境，两个角色的重叠，带出沉痛感与无力感。而跳脱出宗教主题，这种世俗命理还是能够唤起现代人的共鸣。

在已拍摄的众多电影中，《冬日之光》是伯格曼的最爱。他曾表示，即便经过四分之一个世纪再回头看《冬日之光》，仍然令人满意。那种“完整，没有变质”的论断，指向的便是这种超越时空的对话可能性。

电影拍摄之前，伯格曼在斯德哥尔摩剧院，努力研究美籍俄罗斯作曲家伊戈尔·斯特拉文斯基的《圣诗交响曲》，他觉得这部作品相当了不起，而《冬日之光》也受其启发。早春时期伯格曼开始筹备《冬日之光》，他常在乌帕岭那一带去探寻各家教堂，在那坐上几个小时，思索如何为电影收尾。那时伯格曼的母亲因为心脏病发作而住院，父亲的身体状况也每况愈下，但即便需要借助于拐杖与矫形鞋，他还是会竭尽所能在皇家礼拜堂内履行职责。某天伯格曼带着父亲前往教堂，结果牧师因病迟到，并说只能做一个短礼拜，不领圣餐，伯格曼的父亲愤而争辩，继而协助主持。当唱完圣诗，他转向所有人平静念到：“神圣的主啊！天地之间充满你的荣耀。荣耀归于你，噢！至高无上的主！”恰是这一幕，给了《冬日之光》绝好的结局。

《冬日之光》的剧本从7月初写到了7月28日，效率非常高，毕竟，这部电影虽然看似很简单，但是包圆在促狭空间中的故事相当复杂。

在最初，伯格曼想过场景会是一座废弃教堂，大门常闭，内里放置一架破旧的风琴，长椅间有老鼠四处流窜，而主角则被自己锁在此间，面对种种幻觉。这种于死寂中对峙的设置，在伯格曼看来，也许更像是剧场的模式，而非电影的做派。但从《犹在镜中》那种信仰的质问转到《冬日之光》这种世俗的诘问，伯格曼觉得还是要选用不一样的场景和光线。

他急于表明这两部电影有着极大差异，并在《伯格曼论电影》中评论说，“充满着虚矫的《犹在镜中》，具有浪漫而且卖弄风骚的调性。没有人敢说《冬日之光》也有同样的缺点。两部电影之间唯一的关联，就是前者是后者的起点。那个时候我已强烈地想摒弃《犹在镜中》，只是尚未对外宣布而已。”兴许，这也是为何伯格曼并不赞同把他这两部作品连同《沉默》一起并称为三部曲。

然而，伯格曼当时还罕见地为《犹在镜中》摇旗呐喊，说是这部电影无论是技术还是戏剧角度去看的话，都无可指责。对比来看，伯格曼自身趣味与思辨角度的更变，其实非常迅疾。不过，当时《冬日之光》被外界排斥的程度反而很高。对伯格曼来说，正巧制片组的负责人患病，他获得了随心调配资源的权力，于是愿意破釜沉舟地拍摄《冬日之光》。这是一名电影人的坚持，哪怕他长久以来都在努力讨观众的欢心，但当《冬日之光》需要冒险的时候，仍会决定放手一搏。

这种情况下，老搭档布耶恩施特兰德也经受了不少煎熬。托马斯缺乏同情心，布耶恩施特兰德在诠释的过程中感到了前所未有的痛苦，甚至会出现记不清台词的状况，对于身体抱恙的他来说，确实不易。为迁就他的身体状况，伯格曼选在在白天拍摄不长的时间。而镜头架设在阴霾与雾气之下，反倒造就出迷蒙但特殊的氛围，这样萎靡的气质，恰好契合托马斯本人，甚至现实的绝境。

诚如伯格曼当时的妻子凯比·拉雷特所说，“这是一部杰作。但这是一部沉郁的杰作。”

（连载于《看电影》）

主要参考来源：
《魔灯：伯格曼自传》
《伯格曼论电影》
《英格玛·伯格曼》
Google、Wiki
IMDb、豆瓣、时光等电影网站

Fear and Trembling
Michael Joshua Rowin on Winter Light


The published screenplays of Ingmar Bergman’s “religious trilogy” contain, as a sort of introduction, a single-page announcement of the director’s intentions. “The theme of these three films is a “reduction”—in the metaphysical sense of the word.” Then, as if Bergman wanted to descriptively reduce these films of reduction, one-line summations of each film of the trilogy follow: “Through a Glass Darkly—certainty achieved. Winter Light—certainty unmasked. The Silence—God’s silence: the negative impression.” While the first and the last entries seem inadequate to their respective films’ complexities, it is the middle that, if one has seen Winter Light, brings pause. “Certainty unmasked”: the two words at once totally evoke and yet only hint at what might be the greatest achievement of Bergman’s mature work, an incredibly—almost painful—personal struggle with the nonexistence of God and the responsibility to oneself and others in the harsh light of doubt. The unmasking of religious certainty informs Winter Light’s sparse, skeletal story and structure, in which Bergman sheds any artistic ornamentation that remained from earlier films like The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. But, like a leafless tree in the dead of January, the film also contains jutting branches, subtle articulations of concept and character that touch upon a multitude of emotions, ideas, and considerations, eventually extending into one of the most spiritually ambiguous endings in all of cinema and provoking a profound and haunting transformation.

In Through a Glass Darkly Bergman first presented his vision of the “spider-god,” an insidious, corrupt obverse to the benevolent Christian God, a tormenting idea of God’s failure within a meaningless reality. As Bergman himself described the concept in interview, “It’s a question of the total dissolution of all notions of an otherworldly salvation.” Everything in this first film of the religious trilogy points to an Inferno, and yet Bergman backs off. Creating the character of Karin as a schizophrenic allowed him, as well as the viewer, to keep a safe distance from the consequences and possibilities of God-as-evil-manipulator. And after Karin completely succumbs to insanity, her father closes the film by letting son Minus and the viewer know that all is not lost, that “God is love” and that Karin is surrounded by this love. One senses that this speech ends the film on an utterly false note, offering a facile solution in face of an enormous existential dilemma—the director even admitted as much later on. While Bergman begins to grapple with religious uncertainty in Through a Glass Darkly, the process is undertaken with trepidation and lacks sustained moral conviction.

Winter Light, on the other hand, tackles the issue of a sick or absent God directly, with a greater sense of gravity and with precise mastery of form. For one thing, the mise-en-scène of Winter Light never overwhelms or startles as it does in the previous film, instead becoming quietly and effectively integrated with the action. The various settings of Through a Glass Darkly provide natural habitats for a spider-god, allowing Bergman to create expressionistic cinematic set pieces like the sea-wrecked ship and the room with ripped wallpaper. But in Winter Light the surroundings become muted, hushed, as if God’s silence had left a palpable expectancy in the very air the characters breathe. Bergman, like Ozu, is a seasonal director (Summer Interlude, Virgin Spring, Autumn Sonata, etc.), and the role winter plays is as important as the Reverend Tomas’s church, providing a cover of gray, melancholic resignation and suffering.


 
    The film opens, however, within the interior of a cold, humble church in the rural Swedish town of Mittsunda. A service is in progress, with Rev. Tomas Eriksson leading the congregation. Tomas tells the story of Christ’s last supper with the disciples, in which he offers them his body and blood as eternal salvation. Thus Bergman introduces the film’s main theme—communication, a true giving and receiving between beings that redeems the meaninglessness of existence. As visual commentary, something occurs soon after that is, cinematically, almost preternatural in its simplicity and power. As the Reverend says the Lord’s Prayer, Bergman cuts to three exteriors (each fading into one another) that normally would serve as opening establishing shots, with the church looking like an abandoned ruin among winter trees, the hardened ground, and a half-frozen river. This unconventional but structurally integral insertion of a montage sequence at this point in the film creates a feeling of extreme alienation and loneliness—through a seemingly gratuitous move to the bitter outside world during a prayer of great strength and confiding, Bergman undermines the potential warmth of the words and transforms a God’s-eye-view into its opposite, a hollow, empty space where a caring God cannot reside. Communication and solace seem remote.

Similar in environmental effect is a scene in which Tomas visits the place where Jonas, the man whose fear of nuclear war he had previously attempted to address, has killed himself. The body lies near that same earlier shown river and, over the course of five long shots handled from two strategic camera positions, the viewer sees, in documentary-like footage, Tomas’s encounter with the rote process of tending to a fresh corpse: the body is covered with tarp, kept company by Tomas when the doctors leave the scene, and finally transported to a hospital van. Bergman shoots all of this in as subjective a manner as possible by remaining completely objective—that is, as Tomas now sees the world as being absent of any higher power, Bergman films the scene with attention to the concreteness, the pure materiality of the landscape, as if existence were pressing itself upon Tomas for the first time. There is no recourse to a close-up which would neatly spell out Tomas’s emotional state—Bergman demonstrates here his aesthetic restraint in creating a sorrow rooted in nature, in the half-glow of the dreary surroundings and the relentless rushing water nearby.

The languishing sadness of Jonas’s suicide comes from its particular pertinence to Tomas. Bergman unmistakably links both in their individual torments, Tomas’s an intensely personal one in his relationship to God, Jonas’s a global one in a sane assessment of an insane world’s death drive. The reverend’s earlier offhand, routine remark to Jonas—a seemingly pathetic try to dispel anxiety—haunts the screen during his lonely stay with the body: “We all go with the same dread, more or less.” Both fears emanate from the same, desperate place in the soul, the annihilation of the earth deeply related to the annihilation of the self’s significance in reality. Tomas’s existential dread carries with it a terrible possibility—might not the winter light that accompanied Tomas’s acceptance of meaninglessness also be the blinding flash of the A-bomb?


 
    Tomas’s openness with Jonas is the crux around which the film revolves. Tomas reveals that God for him was once a secure “echo-god . . . who loved mankind, of course, but myself most of all,” one that became “a spider-god, a monster” emerging after his wife’s death. Although the nursing, unchallenging God of his conventional Christian upbringing and practice revealed its perversity in the face of personal tragedy, Tomas’ desperation is unlike Karin’s madness. Tomas’s spiritual and emotional breakthrough, his realization of God’s silence and the falsity of his role as a man of the cloth, brings with it freedom, a terrible existential vertigo. Winter Light here answers Through a Glass Darkly by allowing the “spider-god” a positive manifestation without falling back onto evasive reassurances like “God is love.” Thus, when Tomas cries out, in the midst of his consuming illness and after his monumental admission, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” the question is answered by the expressionist winter light of the title streaming through the windows, mysteriously illuminating the features of a man reborn.

The passage from exterior to the interior, from the absurdity of existence to the individual’s realization of that absurdity, takes place within this crucial moment. It was initiated, in part by Marta, Tomas’s mistress and the local schoolteacher. Marta is one of Bergman’s most complex characters, a substitute mother/wife, searching atheist, and stigmatized Christ figure all at once. In her extended letter to Tomas, Marta details her own struggle with God, reminding him of how one day she prayed “to be of use,” to put her abundant strength to a task that will give her life meaning. The prayer was prompted by eczema that, symbolically, afflicted her hands, feet and crown. The Christ symbolism is clear, and Marta easily sees Tomas’s religious compromises corresponding with the breakdown in their relationship—after mentioning the moment she realized Tomas didn’t love her she pinpoints his lack of faith, his “peculiar indifference to the gospels and to Jesus Christ.”

Tomas’s reading of the letter while waiting for Jonas is another example of Bergman’s simple, delicate and yet rich approach in dealing with storytelling. When the reverend begins to read Marta’s words it becomes rendered as—instead of, typically, a voiceover or flashback—a four-and-a-half minute shot of Marta, seated in front of a bare wall, talking directly at Tomas and the viewer. This is unmediated communication, openness and expressivity, the spiritual and emotional nakedness that has been lacking ever since the service that was conducted entirely with foreign (i.e., the Church’s) words, and not the characters’ own. Prefiguring the radical forms of address in Persona and Hour of the Wolf, it is as if Bergman announces the intent of the entire trilogy with this shot (a similar two minute shot follows a minute-long flashback scene), a complete demolition and removal of psychological, emotional, and cinematic defenses—an unmasking.

Marta’s confession of finding meaning in wanting to share a life with Tomas, as well as her critical insight into Tomas’s hidden jealousy and hatred toward God, shifts the focus of the film. Later, in reaction to Jonas’s suicide, in reaction to a meaninglessness that only further exasperates questions of responsibility and duty, Tomas flees from individual salvation by bluntly confronting Marta. His grievances—that she treats him like a child, repulses him with her various illnesses that require constant attention, and her failure to replace his true love, his late wife—come as a shock. So accustomed have we been to Tomas’s resignation that this outburst comes across as a frantic testing of freedom and at the same time a return to the spiritual stalemate in the struggle to understand God’s silence. Marta (the praying, physically suffering atheist) offers a new kind of faith in the form of human love and companionship for Tomas (the atheistic, physically suffering reverend) but—as the location of their conversation, a schoolhouse, suggests—the teacher’s lessons in love and connection cannot reach the confused, bitter priest-turned-pupil. Tomas’s renunciation of a dead God now only allows him to burrow deeper into his own pity and coldness.


 
    Ironically, Tomas finds redemption in a church, a place he earlier damned for stifling his life with the false cover of servile Christian faith. There, Algot, the hunchback sexton, tells Tomas before the service something that has been troubling him about the Gospels: Christ’s physical agony could not have been as bad as his own. The true agony was Christ’s abandonment by the disciples and his ultimate moment of doubt on the cross when demanding to know why God had forsaken him. “To understand that no one has understood you. To be abandoned when one really needs someone to rely on . . . Surely that must have been his most monstrous suffering of all? I mean God’s silence.” Tomas responds in the form of a decision—will the service proceed in the absence of any congregates, save Marta? Bergman moves the entire sequence from gothic, candle-illuminated lighting to electric, reflecting both the otherworldliness of the atmosphere and its unbeautiful blandness. As Marta herself offers a silent prayer (“If we could dare to show each other affection . . . if we could believe in a truth . . . if we could believe . . .”), Tomas comes out to lead the service: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. All the earth is full of His glory . . .”

In unmasking the certainty of religious faith, Bergman ends Winter Light with the almost unfathomable image of a godless reverend conducting a service for no reason other than his own sense of religious responsibility. Tomas’s final gesture suggests neither a reconciliation with God nor a turn toward self-parody, but a Sisyphian struggle in coming to terms with the absurdity of life. Marta’s prayer calls for the aspects (affection, truth, belief) still missing in the lives of damaged souls, while Tomas’s prayer confirms the ability to continually search for them, not through hollow ritual which made the first church service a theater of the grotesque, but through a personal, austere dedication to challenging and helping oneself and others in the face of meaninglessness. If God exists anywhere in Winter Light it is in that “absurd image,” as Tomas calls it, of Jesus on the cross questioning God as to the purpose of the Passion. The anguish of doubt, magnified in the cavernous, nearly empty church, proves that God need not exist for us “to be of use.” Instead, it proves that communication of that doubt—even absurdities like Tomas’s prayer to an empty church and a dead god—renders the silence bearable, makes it know that we are not dead in life, that we are constantly rediscovering ourselves in the midst of chaos and inertia, in the brilliance of that winter light which casts itself upon the valley of woe.

Bergman would complete the religious trilogy with The Silence, taking doubt to what is perhaps its inevitable flowering: communication, but for the faint candle that is Ester’s letter to Johan, becomes completely obliterated; war, only talked of in Winter Light, literally comes to town; and disease—that consistent Bergman metaphor—destroys mercilessly, hardly abated by human kindness or prayer. Persona moves further in this direction, with the relationship between Alma and Elisabeth a distillation of all the trilogy’s stumbling attempts at understanding. Winter Light, then, located in the middle of Bergman’s film career, stands as Bergman’s strongest testament to the nature of doubt, that paralytic wavering over the waters of faith and skepticism that infuses this singular film with its world-weary eyes and shivering soul.
 
 
 
 

 

《犹在镜中》通过严谨的音乐结构所达到的人物关系的对立和变奏，从而达到对上帝沉默的一种解说。从某种角度来讲，这部电影是三部曲的基础，如果上帝根本不存在，那么信仰问题（《冬之光》主要探讨）就根本不会提出。《冬之光》这部电影的风格相比另外两部，更加趋向于一种文学性，电影主体是通过大量的对白所构建，因此主题的把握深深地隐藏在角色大量、冗长而晦涩的独白或对话之中。

电影截取了一个牧师在早晚两次布道这段时间内发生的几件事情。这部电影不像《犹在镜中》那样所有人物都是至关重要的，因为主题是通过人物关系的转变而被推动，《冬之光》中的牧师成为了绝对的主角，他总是试图向别人表达一种上帝沉默的思想，包括求助于他的渔夫，他的情人和一个教堂的管理人员。他不仅怀疑自己信仰的力量，而且将这种思想作为自己自私虚伪的借口。下面我要引用电影中一段对白：

“现在我读到耶稣受难那部分了，那部分使我停了下来，所以我想和您讨论一下，艾里克森牧师，我觉得，对于耶稣的受难，他的痛苦，您说过于强调是不是全错了？这个对于肉体痛苦的强调，其实有些专横，或者并没有那么坏。以我的愚见，我受到的肉体痛苦也有耶稣这么多，而他的痛苦非常短，我想那大约持续了四个小时。我觉得他在另一方面受到的苦要深地多。也许是我想错了，但想一下蒙难地，牧师，耶稣的门徒都睡着了，他们不明白最后的晚餐的意义。当执法者出现时，他们都跑了，还有人否定自己是耶稣的门徒，而耶稣却被人出卖了。耶稣已经认识他的门徒三年了，他们一天到晚住在一起，却不知道耶稣说的做的什么意思，门徒们抛弃了他，全部都这样。他被抛下一个人了，意识到没有人明白他，当他需要人依靠时却被抛弃了。那一定是无比的痛苦，但最糟糕的还没来。当耶稣被钉在十字架上时，吊在那里受苦时，他叫到：“神，神啊，你为什么抛弃我？”他有多大声叫多大声。他以为他神圣的父亲抛弃了他，他觉得自己鼓吹的都是谎言，在他临死前他都怀疑。这不是他最大的痛苦么？上帝的沉默！”

假使我们相信上帝的存在，然而在任何事件发生过程中（就好像耶稣的受难），他都是沉默的，他不为信仰他的人指明道路，总是在事情发生之后通过神迹来补偿，那么信仰就是一种痛苦的事情，因为在信仰的过程中，并不知道信仰是否有效。在电影中的牧师，已经丧失了信仰的能力，他却试图通过祈祷（祈祷应该建立在信仰之上），重新获得信仰的能力，或者可以说，试图通过祈祷可以从上帝那里寻求祈祷的理由。