On the Horrible Forces

The Silence is so preoccupied with vice that its virtues are all but obscured.

Written and directed by Sweden's Ingmar Bergman, the film closes the ring of the trilogy that began with Through a Glass Darkly and continued with Winter Light. In those films Bergman sought to illuminate the ills of men by poking through the ashes of religious faith. His concluding statement is a bold, unpredictable work, touched with genius, but at the same time murky, exasperating, and occasionally dull. Those expecting a magnum opus will be disappointed; so will those looking solely for sensation. For the blunt dialogue and the erotic scenes--shortened by 55 seconds for U.S. distribution--seem justified as part of the film's theme and development.

The visible story is slow and simple. A lesbian named Ester, her younger sister Anna, and Anna's young son Johan are passing by train through a country whose inhabitants speak a foreign tongue, devised by Bergman to subvert communication. When Ester falls ill, they stop at a hotel. An incestuous relationship between the women has ended in bitterness, and Anna--after a few days of taunting her sister with a series of heterosexual escapades--takes the boy and goes away, leaving her to die alone.

The silence is the silence between and within human beings when faith has failed. Pivotal character in the story is the restless, questioning boy Johan (Jorgen Lindstrom), who begins his search on the train by pointing to an unintelligible sign and asking, "What does that mean?" No one can say. Later, as he wanders through an endless maze of hotel corridors, his quest and his confusion seem to be Bergman's own. Johan fleetingly finds comfort in make believe with a troupe of performing dwarfs, then with a kindly old waiter. But always, large-eyed and secretive, he observes the women.

As Ester, Ingrid Thulin seethes with the conflicts that kill, projecting a sad heroism that may well surpass the script's intentions. "I am known for my clear logic," she cries, but her body betrays her. During a hot, restless afternoon, she seeks escape from "horrible forces" in liquor, distracted reading, and autoeroticism.

The forces triumph in Anna, played with slow-burning sensuality by Gunnel Lindblom. Anna's substitute for love is blind animal warmth. "How nice that we don't understand each other," she babbles, unburdening herself to the sullen waiter (Birger Malmsten) she has invited into bed, dumbly grateful that all they have in common is the language of desire. Then, "I wish Ester were dead." To hasten the process, she lets Ester come in and watch.

In the final scene on the train, Anna and Johan are homeward-bound, and the boy fingers a letter from his aunt. "Words in a foreign language--" begins

Ester's farewell. Wholly indifferent, Anna turns toward the open window, sensating, reviving her spirits with the shock of rain and wind against her flesh. The boy continues reading, still driven by his own need to know all that is knowable.

Parts of the film shimmer with breathtaking virtuosity. Natural sound has rarely been used to such effect: a rumbling armored tank, a fan, a running faucet, a plane overhead, a gliding hairbrush, a gasp of anguish, all combine in a vividly orchestrated accompaniment to the drama. Dialogue is sparse, but Bergman's closeups pry secrets from a human face with uncommon skill. One harrowing sequence has Actress Thulin yawning one moment, fighting off death by suffocation the next. And Actress Lindblom, cruising a crowded street in an alien city in search of any man at all, writes a whole chapter in promiscuity in one perfervid glance.

Bergman errs in The Silence because he will not, or cannot, control orgies of symbolism that often shroud what he hopes to reveal. He has a poet's eye, but he is a tongue-tied prophet. The film fails at last because of its essential coldness. Though Bergman's own involvement with his theme is awesome, he has not achieved that elusive blend of situation, conflict, character and heart that forces an audience to share it.

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