Books, Arts & Manners: Chronicle

In a little museum of Flemish art in Bruges, Belgium, there is a painting by Gerard David of a man whose skin has been removed and neatly tacked down at his sides by men who stand around scrutinizing him. Whether the artist is describing torture or medieval surgery I don’t recall. The painting came to mind as I watched Ingmar Bergman’s latest film, A Passion (misrepresented in this country as The Passion of Anna). As in Persona and Hour of the Wolf, Bergman is ripping off, rather painfully, the façades of his characters’ personalities. But is his purpose surgical or sadistic? Probably both. Bergman is fascinated by the inner layers of personality, and by the difficulties that film, a visceral and usually superficial medium, presents in peeling off those layers. But for a good part of A Passion, the fatal suspicion grows that Bergman enjoys the peeling more than finding the core. Besides, the characters here seem to be doing Bergman’s work for him; there’s a touch of the exhibitionist in the way they strip off their super-egos, and a lot of the masochist in their relentless self-flagellation— Bergman’s own form of Swedish massage.

Again, as in Persona and Hour of the Wolf, Bergman sees the individual personality as a post-Christian version of the Soul, and uses vampirism as a metaphor for the theft of personality provoked by one’s entrance into any human relationship. Put in the least elegant possible terms, A Passion is about a woman who is driven to destroy people named Andreas, and about the particularly vulnerable Andreas she chooses “this time.”

RC

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Richard Corliss

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In a little museum of Flemish art in Bruges, Belgium, there is a painting by Gerard David of a man whose skin has been removed and neatly tacked down at his sides by men who stand around scrutinizing him. Whether the artist is describing torture or medieval surgery I don’t recall. The painting came to mind as I watched Ingmar Bergman’s latest film, A Passion (misrepresented in this country as The Passion of Anna). As in Persona and Hour of the Wolf, Bergman is ripping off, rather painfully, the façades of his characters’ personalities. But is his purpose surgical or sadistic? Probably both. Bergman is fascinated by the inner layers of personality, and by the difficulties that film, a visceral and usually superficial medium, presents in peeling off those layers. But for a good part of A Passion, the fatal suspicion grows that Bergman enjoys the peeling more than finding the core. Besides, the characters here seem to be doing Bergman’s work for him; there’s a touch of the exhibitionist in the way they strip off their super-egos, and a lot of the masochist in their relentless self-flagellation— Bergman’s own form of Swedish massage.

Again, as in Persona and Hour of the Wolf, Bergman sees the individual personality as a post-Christian version of the Soul, and uses vampirism as a metaphor for the theft of personality provoked by one’s entrance into any human relationship. Put in the least elegant possible terms, A Passion is about a woman who is driven to destroy people named Andreas, and about the particularly vulnerable Andreas she chooses “this time.”