It is odd– when I started this website, I wondered if I would ever have anything really interesting to write about. After all, wouldn’t all posts be course specific and for points of information vs. musings and contemplations? It seemly oddly poetic that my first contemplation would come after learning that Ingmar Bergman, the landmark Swedish film director, has died.
I love Sweden. I don’t know when my fascination started but I’ve loved that country for a very long time. I even took Swedish in college. What an experience– it was so different from French and Latin! I finally understood why English is purported to be so hard to learn. Germanic languages just didn’t work in my brain, but I still try to keep what little bit I learned active and present. Hej. Mon heter Amy och jag bor i Columbia. The greatest thing is counting in Swedish: ett, två, tre, fyra, fem, sex, sju, och, nio, tio. The word seven in Swedish is, by far, the most fun a person can have saying a word. I just love it. Ask me some time. Seven nurses is even more fun.
It’s no surprise that I became acquainted with Ingmar Bergman. Not just because he is one of the most highly regarded film directors in all of film history, but because he helped to remind the world of that small country in Scandinavia. The Seventh Seal still frightens me. I cannot sit through it. If you’ve never seen it, you’ve certainly seen a reference to it. Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey makes reference to it with their own ‘twist’. The Seventh Seal is incredibly important to film history– from content, to style, to it’s place as an art house constant. To understand the art of cinema, you must experience a Bergman film. You can’t say that about a lot of directors. Do you have to see a Woody Allen film to understand film? A Michael Bay film? A Sally Potter film? I don’t think so. You can certainly learn something…but I believe you have to see a Bergman film. I know that many students in my film history class didn’t like Wild Strawberries, but on a day like today, I am so glad they saw it. And that’s the point about film, film history: it’s about opening yourself up to the elements and seeing the much larger world, the much darker, lighter, softer, harder, funnier, sadder world that a particular film makes available to you.
On this day, I think it only appropriate that I think of wild strawberries, vow to spend my chances well, enjoy the long day’s sunlight, and thank Ingmar Bergman.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/30/bergman.obit.ap/index.html
http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0000005/
