One of the truly great ones is gone. After 89 years, Ingmar Bergman has finally resigned his lifelong chess game with the Grim Reaper.Here's something I wrote about him a few years ago, for a retrospective review of The Seventh Seal:
Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman's obsession with life's unfathomable questions began at an early age. The son of a strict pastor, Bergman developed the love/hate relationship with God that would eventually define his life and career. Combining his crisis of faith with his towering talent as a writer and director, he has forged a body of work as profound as it is prolific. His films are distinguished by an astonishing beauty that coexists with intense and unflinching emotional honesty.
In case that didn't make it obvious, I'm a fan. At least three of my all-time favourite films are Bergman films. Not because they're enjoyable; quite the opposite. They're excruciating. He challenges you with the big questions—life, death, love, even identity itself. He puts the ugliness and horror and beauty of the human right in front of your face, and doesn't let you look away. His films make you think in a way that is rare even among the greatest works of art. And when you come out of one—that's how it feels, like coming out of a dream—you know you've seen things that will live with you, quietly haunting your night thoughts like that white-faced figure in The Seventh Seal, until it comes your turn to tip your king.
As for Bergman, his work will play on. Whether or not he has now resolved those God issues, his immortality is assured.
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