Movie Review: Through a Glass Darkly

I just watched another Ingmar Bergman film and I found it very unsettling. I don’t think Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel) is as accomplished a film as Wild Strawberries, but then again, Through a Glass Darkly grapples with much more difficult motifs than Wild Strawberries.

The plot of Through A Glass Darkly (1961) centres around the slow mental decline of a woman with, most likely, schizophrenia. There are only four characters in the film: the mentally ill Karen, her younger brother Minus, her writer father, David and her doctor husband, Martin. Everyone, except Martin, live a life on the border of two worlds. Karen wafts in and out of dementia, David lives for his writing and Minus is in puberty. Only Martin lives in one world – a world in which his wife is slowly slipping away from him and he has no way of helping her.




The title of the movie comes from the Bible – 1 Corinthians 13:12 – and refers to our inability to understand perfectly, because of our own imperfection. However, one day, when the “perfect has come” then our imperfect understanding will be gone. It also implies that trying to understand God is like trying to make out an image in a hazy mirror (“glass”), but one day we will see God face to face. Among other things, the movie asks questions about God. Is God merely the delusions of our (mentally ill) minds? Is God love, as suggested by the writer? Is God unknowable as suggested by the confused teenager? Or maybe there is no God; all we have is hopeless rationality, as presented by doctor.

In one scene Karen sees God and is horrified, as God turns out to be a spider. This may be a reference to Dostoevsky’s book Crime and Punishment where one character speculate about the afterlife, asking: “But what if there are only spiders there...” In a closing scene of the film, after Karen accepts her fate, she puts on a pair of sunglasses and quite literally looks “through a glass darkly”, as if to say it is better not to see clearly; it is better not to have our questions answered, for if God exists He is terrifying. Shortly afterwards Minus asks: “show me a god” and although his father says that God is knowable as love – any type of love – the writer's words feel without substance and the viewer is left empty.

The movie was especially upsetting to me as it reminded me so much of my mother’s mental decline up and to her death. There is a moment in the film where Karen is clear-headed and says: “It’s horrible to see one’s own confusion, and to understand it!” It reminded me of one time when my mother too was once clear of mind after a long time of mental disarray. Looking at me with terrible uncertainty, she asked while crying: “When did I deteriorate so?” Dreadful is man’s ability to contemplate its own fate. There is no greater curse than our ability to reflect on our miseries.

Through a Glass Darkly won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It is also is part of a trilogy of films by Bergman. At the moment I have no intention to watch the other two films. I don’t think I have the emotional reservoir to do so.