image courtesy: movies.yahoo.com
INGMAR BERGMAN (1918-2007)
The first film I watched by "the gloomy Swede" was Cries and Whispers. I now think that perhaps I wasnt quite ready at the time to soak in the melancholic strain of the film. It distressed me at the time and left me feeling incredibly vacant. Just as I felt today when I heard of his death.
It takes great courage and fortitude to be able to make films the way Bergman did. Delving deep and often confronting his own demons by asking questions we didn't dare ask ourselves. Intensely personal yet universally humane, his work raised the bar of cinematic practice by diminishing the distance between artistic enterprise and narrative capabilities of the medium.
He will be missed. But more importantly he will be remembered.
