Saw Winter Light, an Ingmar Bergman film about a priest who is having a crisis of faith. We open on a celebration of the mass in front of a nearly empty church. The organist yawns as he starts the music. The priest has no emotion in his voice and has the flu. The film is subtle and ambiguous. Famously, Ingmar's wife said of this film "Yes, Ingmar, it's a masterpiece. But it's a dreary masterpiece."
The nature of the priest's crisis of faith is the central point of the film. I felt that the only way to satisfyingly end the film was for the priest to recover his faith (happy ending!) or to reject it in some way (stupid ending!) The film leaves it nicely ambiguous right up to the end though. The priest's plight is likened to Jesus in the garden of gethsemane, praying while his apostles slept and ignored him. As opposed to that image, this priest is merely letting himself down: he has a faithful woman who loves him, his advice is sought by the congregation, he does not seem to be being abandoned.
Despite this lack of abandonment however, the priest finds it hard to have faith in his God, his mission, and himself. This doubt leads to guilt leads to self-loathing which prevents him from being of use and prevents him from receiving help. We sort of leave him there - still acting out the lingering fumes of an exhausted faith. The ending is deliciously ambiguous though: is this the dying gasp or the reclamation I hoped for (the happy ending?) It's a nice little study of a film, a stark yet ambiguous look at a man in crisis.
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