Review - The Virgin Spring
The Castro Theater in San Francisco, a snazzy place to see a movie if ever there was one, has been holding a sporadic Ingmar Bergman festival, to which I've been sneaking off some late afternoons. There, eyes glued to the big screen, I and a motley handful of other unemployed cinephiles have come to pay obligatory reverence to the master. 
While you may be reading this only by dint of taking a break from your job calculating the number of yards of dental floss your firm has sold, do not wax resentful just yet. Because believe me, Bergman is no day at the beach. The Passion of Anna, Shame, and Through a Glass Darkly, for instance, all suffer from a certain redundancy of themes -- not to mention an allusive, meandering quality that can sometimes trigger thoughts in the less-disciplined mind of last season's "Project Runway," or one's poor choices at the concession stand. (Chocolate and a medium popcorn? What was I thin- Hey why is Liv Ullman shrieking into what appears to be a pitiless universal void? Again.)
There are, however, four Bergman films that strike me as great masterpieces, brimming with vast sensibility and stark acknowledgment of the sad, maddening mystery that we know as existence: The Seventh Seal, Persona, Cries and Whispers, and The Virgin Spring. These are revelations, communication from a mind that has stared into the abyss and just barely survived to tell the tale. Last week I saw The Virgin Spring for the first time in 20 years, and I jujifruit you not when I say I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. The film is set in middle ages northern Europe. A prosperous family sends their surviving daughter, who they have pampered and held in a state of child-like innocence, to deliver candles to a church. This is a time before Christianity had completely supplanted paganism, which survived in secret worshippings and furtive pleas to Odin. This undercurrent of violent mysticism and underground passions bursts onto screen when the daughter, a gracious beauty, is raped and murdered by brigands. The murderers then descend, by chance, on the family's farm, where they are given food and shelter, until they unwittingly betray their heinous act. As the story unfolds, the spirits of innocence, betrayal, revenge, or mercy inhabit every frame -- primal forces vying for control of what feels like mankind's very soul. Sven Nykvist’s black and white cinematography paints this battle in equally vivid brush strokes -- it's among the finest cinematography I've seen.
You should really see The Virgin Spring, and on the big screen. This compact film resonates with all the big themes and grave mystery of a Lord of the Rings absent talking trees. That's not to say there isn't a place for talking trees, as long as it's remembered that great cinematic deeds have been performed on a much simpler plane.
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