Vengeance is mine: The Virgin Spring

Today I contemplated, as I sometimes do, that unique paradox of the human condition: the thirst for revenge. Yes, that all-consuming desire to get even with those who wrong us, juxtaposed against the futility – perhaps the folly? – of seizing our own justice. Most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, can acknowledge that at least once in our lives we harbored a need to strike back savagely against someone who had committed an unspeakable and incomprehensible act of cruelty against us. The desire to settle the score wraps itself around the spinal cord, creeps upward, and penetrates subconscious thought with all manner of delicious scenarios that result in the excruciating pain and suffering of the evil person who has caused us harm. Yes. And yet, how we answer that call for vengeance is a measure of character that only each individual can demonstrate through his reaction to those who trespass against him. Do we choose to forgive or do we fight to the death? It’s really one or the other. Philosophical method suggests there is no middle ground. And if we choose the satisfaction of blood, that ol’ Biblical eye for an eye, what then? What have we gained? Where is God when we so desperately need someone to adjudicate our sins before we make them worse?

This is the theme that Swedish director Ingmar Bergman explores in one of his greatest works, Jungfrukällan, known in this country as The Virgin Spring (1960). I offer a review of the stunning Criterion edition of this film, below. Ah, but please note: here be spoilers that reveal significant plot points.

“You saw it, God. You saw it. The innocent child's death and my revenge. You allowed it. I don't understand you. Yet now I beg your forgiveness.” ~ Töre (Max von Sydow)

Criterion presents a sumptuous edition of master director Ingmar Bergman's harrowing tale of revenge and redemption in 14th century Sweden. One of the most visually beautiful of all black-and-white films, The Virgin Spring won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1960. The picture remains a powerful parable of good and evil, of faith lost and recovered. Adapted from a folk ballad, it is a study in contrasts, but not extremes. Set in a society struggling with the transition to Christianity from Norse paganism and a feudal economy, the film depicts savage violence that begets savage retribution. But there is also hope, and light and shadow, dappled in shades of gray both symbolic and literal, as with the stunning chiaroscuro cinematography—one of many quiet wonders in this rich, deeply moving cinematic experience that challenges, provokes and ultimately rewards the careful viewer.

A bit of plot:

Medieval Sweden. A devoutly Christian farming family begins their morning ritual with prayer. The family patriarch Töre (longtime Bergman collaborator Max Von Sydow) and his wife Märeta (Birgitta Valberg) intone their prayers before joining the servants for breakfast at the family table. Their pagan foster daughter Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom, The Seventh Seal), who is unwed and pregnant, despises the couple's biological daughter Karin. As played by Birgitta Pettersson, Karin is a spoiled and foolish girl who would rather spend all night at the village dance and sleep through the next morning, than join her hardworking family for breakfast.

Töre directs his wife to rouse Karin and get her ready for the long journey to the village church where Karin must deliver the family's votive candles. Religious custom dictates that only a virgin may offer candles to the Virgin Mary. Karin insists on wearing her finest embroidered dress. Ingeri accompanies her on the journey and they debate many aspects of life, although Karin is mostly frivolous in her thoughts. Disgusted with the naïve and vain girl, Ingeri lingers at a hermit's shack, leaving Karin to continue her journey alone on horseback. Later, Karin encounters two corrupt goatherds and their young brother wandering the woods with their flock. Frightened by their intense stares, she offers to share her simple lunch with the men, but their tone changes abruptly. Drooling over the young woman, licking their tongues over rotting black teeth, the men rape and murder her, then strip the valuable clothes from her body as a light snow falls silently on her corpse in the cold forest. Ingeri arrives on this obscene tableau. She grabs a rock to strike the attackers, but she is paralyzed; unable or unwilling to fight.

Now desperate for food and shelter, the goatherds make their way back along the path Karin had traveled. In a righteous twist of fate, the men arrive at the farm of Töre, seeking refuge from the cold. They are oblivious to their mistake. Later, when the herdsmen offer to sell a beautiful, embroidered dress to Karin's mother, the shock of realization creases the woman's pale face as she examines the garment made by her own hands. She knows her daughter is dead. Trembling, she confronts her husband with this discovery.

Swift and terrible retribution comes to the goat herders at dawn.

As Töre grieves the death of his only child—railing against the unknowable motives of God—his foster daughter Ingeri abandons her pagan beliefs, cleansing her spirit with a symbolic Baptism in the forest.

The plot description above, revealing though it may be, does not begin to cover the layers of symbolism and meaning with which Bergman constructed this disturbing film. By turns deeply religious and blasphemous, his characters whiplash across extreme emotional reactions brought on by unbearable trauma. Faith, compassion, and inner strength are as thematically critical to The Virgin Spring as human cruelty and revenge. But again: This is a film of jagged contrasts delivered with impeccable talent from all involved.

Bergman was reportedly influenced by director Akira Kurosawa (The Seven Samurai) when filming Jungfrukällan (literally, The Virgin Spring in Swedish), especially in the long passages of silence where characters say more with their expressions than words could convey. He delivers an uncompromising presentation of psychological motives driving people to acts of which they would not have believed themselves capable.

The cinematography by famed director of photography Sven Nykvist is achingly beautiful, and by itself sufficient reason to watch and own this film. Scholars could conduct a seminar on lighting and cinematography technique using this film as text. A frequent Bergman collaborator (he also shot Persona, The Serpent's Egg, and Fanny and Alexander), during his long career Nykvist also framed exquisitely photographed films for Philip Kaufman (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) and Woody Allen (Crimes and Misdemeanors), whose own admiration for Bergman has been well documented.

Disc extras include a beautifully illustrated 28-page booklet of essays and notes on the making of the film and its cultural impact. The booklet includes the complete text of the 13th-century ballad on which the film is based. Special features also include an introduction by director Ang Lee (The Ice Storm), a commentary track by a Bergman scholar, and an improved English subtitle translation (which is to be preferred over the optional English-dubbed audio track).

Video and audio are peerless.

Caveat lector: Despite far more graphic atrocities depicted in contemporary film, the rape and murder of young Karin still has the capacity to shock and devastate. It is a desolating, unforgettable moment that will lease permanent space in a viewer's mind. Töre's animalistic revenge for his daughter is less disturbing, but only by a matter of degrees.

This is a poignant and unflinching art film, shamelessly copied and degenerated 13 years later as the sleazy exploitation horror movie Last House on the Left, directed by Wes Craven. In a film that uses extreme contrast as a stylistic device, the distinctions between The Virgin Spring and Last House on the Left could not be more profound. The former is the work of a cinematic visionary conveying a message of hope, faith, and human frailty in the face of helplessness and rage. The latter is the work of cretins with cameras whose pornographic violence exists as an endurance test for people so jaded they feel nothing unless bludgeoned with cruelty for its own sake. It is mentioned here solely in the interest of a thorough review.

I continue to be impressed with the cineastes at the Criterion Collection. They are, quite simply, the best in the business, delivering time and again the absolute reference standard in important classic and contemporary films on DVD. This is a company that truly wields the power of the DVD format for presenting major cinema. Criterion always includes generous supplemental features that give insight and context into great works of art, of which The Virgin Spring is a pristine example. This disc comes highly recommended as an addition to any serious film collection. It is essential viewing.

An emotionally devastating experience, The Virgin Spring elicits a deep appreciation of life through its depiction of senseless death and the futility of revenge. Bergman, who died in July 2007, urges his audience to cherish the time we do have, even in the face of incomprehensible cruelty.

That sweet sentiment softens a harsh reminder of the fleeting hours ahead.

Copyright © 2009 by Steve Evans // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

A Re-Evaluation of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut

Eyes Wide Shut

Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Starring Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Sydney Pollack

Cerebral, brooding and darkly comic, Stanley Kubrick’s swansong, like his greatest films, requires multiple viewings before a full appreciation begins to sink in. And that is unfortunate, since this ambitious art film - even with two major stars – had a hard time competing for a repeat audience during the 1999 summer blockbuster season when it was originally released. Worse, few movies could live up to the expectations for Eyes Wide Shut. Fueled by more than a year of rumors about the plot, nearly all of them untrue, audiences were looking for the ultimate erotic film. This isn’t it. To say Cruise and Kidman do nothing more than nibble earlobes isn’t giving anything away. Rather, I’m doing film fans a favor by letting them know if they’ve come for a hot time, they’ll be disappointed. And that’s not their fault. It’s easy to get the wrong ideas about this picture.

Despite a teasing ad campaign from Warner Bros., this is not a movie about kinky sex featuring Hollywood’s most famous then-married couple. Or even yawn-inducing sex. In fact, in this picture they don’t have sex at all. Hardly does anyone else, except for the infamous orgy sequence. More on that in a moment.

Eyes Wide Shut is a tale of sexual obsession, with deep psychological undertones, told with the logic of a nightmare. Warner Bros. didn’t know how to market the film, so they botched the job. Kubrick didn’t help matters by dropping dead in March 1999 – mere days after delivering his final, approved cut of the film to the studio.I have seen this picture 15 times in the 9 years since it was released. On first viewing I was overwhelmingly disappointed. Kubrick, an unequivocal cinematic genius and one of my heroes, was dead and this was his last film and I thought it was a failure. But like so many other Kubrick films, time has a way of altering critical opinion.It was only by happenstance that I stumbled upon two keys that help unlock the mysteries of Eyes Wide Shut:-- I re-read James Joyce’s Ulysses about the same time I recently re-watched the picture. And it suddenly dawned on me – the structure of Eyes Wide Shut is remarkably similar to the episodic nature of Ulysses, which is divided into 18 episodes as protagonist Stephen Dedalus wanders the streets of Dublin during a single, eventful day. Kubrick tightens his film to one-third of the novel’s situations, with six episodes as Tom Cruise wanders the streets of Manhattan, and further into the Hamptons for a fateful encounter with powerful and dangerous individuals whose thirst for deviance nearly destroys him -- and his marriage.

-- Eyes Wide Shut is a meditation on the politics of marriage and the interplay of psychology, trust and fidelity that either defines the success of a union or leads to its dissolution.And now for a bit of plot:

Cruise and Kidman are wealthy Manhattanites (although the film was shot entirely in England) with a darling seven-year-old daughter and a well-appointed apartment. As Dr. William Harford, Cruise is a man at ease in high society, overly confident with himself and his place in the world. Kidman is Alice Harford, an art curator and seemingly devoted wife whose sexual fantasies threaten the couple’s complacent, insular life.

Their intimacy is established from the beginning, and not in an erotic way. The movie opens with a shot of Kidman slinking out of her black dress. Later, while her husband dresses for a Christmas party, they chat casually while she sits on the toilet, then wipes. It may be a cinematic first.

They attend a party hosted by the fabulously wealthy but decadent Victor Ziegler (Pollack), whose lifestyle provides a stunning peek inside the world of the super-rich.

The Harfords are an attractive, desirable couple. And they are not immune to temptation.
Alice dances and flirts at the party with an oily Hungarian aristocrat, while Dr. Harford soon finds two willing companions clinging to each arm. The Harfords barely rise above these attempted seductions. The doctor is about to wander off with his two bimbettes when his host sends for him. It’s urgent, a servant implores.

Upstairs, a beautiful model slumps in an upholstered chair in Ziegler’s bedroom.

"I think she OD’d," Ziegler says, seemingly more concerned about the impact this could have on him.

The doctor intervenes, calmly and without judgment. "You know," Harford tells the young woman as her eyelids flutter. "You really need to get into rehab."
He rejoins Alice and they leave the party, but all the attention and a head full of champagne have put hinky ideas in her mind by the time they get home.

Back at their apartment, Dr. Harford and Alice relax with a joint. But something’s turning in her mind. They argue about jealousy, fantasies and sexual politics. In a stunning sequence that illustrates the sudden chasm that can divide even the most committed couples, Alice confesses while stoned that she once saw a young naval officer who she would willingly have thrown away her marriage and family for a single night of sex.

The revelation shocks her husband, who is actually quite repressed and naive, unable to grasp the possibility that his wife could be unfaithful, even though it’s never made explicit that she actually would. But the possibility is enough to send the doctor reeling into the New York night, where he begins an odyssey of temptation and sexual obsession, flavored with syrupy decadence. Harford’s ego is so fragile that a chance comment from his stoned wife sends him out of the house on a dark quest for...indeed. For what? This is where the film begins to take on the tone and structure of Joyce’s greatest novel as the plot spirals into a stream-of consciousness string of increasingly bizarre situations.

Each stop along his journey draws Harford, fascinated, to a deeper level of sexual deviance. Each new encounter is more perverse than the preceding event. This isn’t as titillating as it sounds. I was reminded of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985), with less humor, more nudity and approximately the same weirdness quotient.

Following a chance encounter with an old college chum, now stroking the ivories at a smoky, midtown Manhattan jazz club, Harford learns of strange parties where his friend is forced to play blindfolded. But the piano player admits the blindfold once slipped and he saw garishly costumed men and mostly naked women doing, well, unspeakable things. The jazz player gives Harford the password to the party and slips away. (I note with amusement that the password is "Fidelio," the Latin for "Fidelity." It is also the title of Beethoven’s only opera).

For a troubled soul like Harford, this mysterious party provokes curiosity of a very high order. He persuades the owner of an uptown costume shop to reopen after midnight so Harford can rent a black cape and demonic mask. After an interminably long, silent ride, a taxi drops him at the gate of a mansion where a costumed Black Mass orgy is in full swing. This is the sequence where digital shadows and computer-generated "observers" were added to some scenes to obscure the copulation so the picture could qualify for an R rating, as opposed to the box-office poison of NC-17. (This illustrates the ridiculous problems with the rating system, since it deprives adults of the chance to experience what Kubrick intended, while actually making an adult-themed film more – not less – accessible to children.)

Harford certainly stares with eyes wide open as his conception of his comfortable world splinters like the glass shards in a kaleidoscope.

To reveal more would be unfair.

Kubrick’s stock-in-trade is metaphor and allegory. Here, he has created the cinematic equivalent of a fever dream. And that’s appropriate, since the source material is a 1926 novella Traumnovelle, or Dream Novel, by Arthur Schnitzler, a friend and student of Freud.

Stunningly photographed in the ultra-formal compositions that Kubrick favored, this is an often fascinating but flawed look at the complexities of marriage, sex and love, informed by a highly flexible notion of morality. Eyes Wide Shut may not be the final masterpiece I had hoped for from the late director, although in its dispassionate, darkly humorous view of humanity it is without question a Kubrick film. His imprimatur saturates every frame. And even mediocre Kubrick is more challenging than a dozen contemporary pictures, vying for audience attention at the octoplex.
I note with a final irony that feminists expressed some outrage at the seemingly gratuitous nudity and occasional objectification of women that permeates the picture. To that I say, "nonsense." It’s important when analyzing this film to remember that Alice merely gives voice to a sexual fantasy. Her husband goes out into the night and attempts to bring his fantasies to life. The difference is, of course, profound. And so, in the former, we see once again that pondering temptation is not a sin. Succumbing to temptation is. Dr. Harford salivates like Pavlov’s dog every time nubile female flesh is thrust before him. Depictions of the nudity merely underscore the overarching theme Kubrick was laying out for his audience.It is this: when it comes to fantasizing, talking about and engaging in sex, men can be such flaccid hypocrites.

Rated R for considerable nudity, sex and language.

Cinema Uprising © 2008 by Cinematic Cteve. All rights reserved.