Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls...

Ingmar Bergmen. What to say...what to say. He was definately one of my favorites, dealing with all my favorites, z.B. existence, lonliness, death, sexuality, faith, morality. The human condition. Although I have liked all of his films that I've seen, though I definately haven't seen them all, my most loved is of course The Seventh Seal. How un-original.
Really though...A man comes back from fighting the Crusades to a plague-ridden homeland and meets death. The man plays chess with death! And the dialogue!

Antonius Block: "I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams."

The dialogue!!

Jöns: "Our crusade was such madness that only a real idealist could have thought it up."

The dialogue!!!

Jöns: "Love is as contagious as a cold. It eats away at your strength, morale... If everything is imperfect in this world, love is perfect in its imperfection."
Blacksmith Plog: "You're happy, you with your oily words. You believe your own drivel."
Jöns: "Believe it? Who said? But I love to give pieces of advice."

Of course, it is originally in Swedish, who knows what is lost in the translation, but I feel it! I feel what he is saying.
What I think I love most about his works are that they contain a message, however ambiguous it may be, and everything is always so existential. And I love that. I hate watching all of these blockbuster romantic comedy, action, marketing movies that, even if there is a message, it could be easier found by banging ones head against a wall. Well, anyways, I'm not going to get into that. Whenever I open that can of worms I usually just say the same thing over again anyways, which is that capitalism provides us with the anomalous phenomenon (okay, perhaps anomaly isn't the most true word to use, but it is an anomaly to me) of art without a soul, mock art. I highly disapprove. Let it be known.

Back to Hr. Bergman. Another thing I think is interesting about him is that I guess he grew up in a religious family, Lutheran, but lost his faith when he was at the ripe age of 8. Seriously. At 8 how could you even know? 8 year olds, dude. Respect it.
So now we live in a world without Ingmar Bergman. I wonder if death was everything he imagined it would be? Or, I guess, that is silly. Anyone truelly in touch with the concept of mortality knows that death is nothing concrete beyond it's mere factuality. It is just that, a fact, and the rest is noise, is personal, and thats that. (Three 'that's in one sententce, whew!)
When Hunter S. Thompson went, I felt afraid. Find me another genius of such magnitude that can freak out about politics in such a real, informed, way. And a journalist no less, one that people actually pay attention to. He was a victim of the modern age if there ever was one. I blame the Bush administration.
Then Kurt, my boy. When he went, I felt regret. I think that towards the end, after such a life, living with such a mind, he was also a victim of the modern age. Kurt Vonneguts sci-fi style was the only kind of sci-fi lit that I have ever appriceated outside the dystopic.
So how do I feel now? Hmm, that's tough. Nothing negative, this time. I guess this is because, considering what his work meant, or meant to me...it all seems so much more complete. He has been human and now he is dead, and where he goes, nobody knows.
R.I.P. Ingmar, and thanks.