Winter Light (1963)

Chilly drama from Ingmar Bergman that dares to look oblivion in the face and ask: What if we really are alone here? If Persona is, as I was taught in a course on philosophy and film, about Hegelian dynamics and the recognition of the Self in the Other and whatnot, this then represents an inability to get beyond the Self, with its main character so wrapped up in his crisis of faith and his own loss that he can offer no help to his congregation (and, indeed, he maybe be the worst thing for them). Opaque, frustrating, occasionally reminiscent of bad teenage poetry... but also pretty fucking devastating.

Grade: B