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PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 23.3 (2001) 64-69



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The Hopeless Dream of "Being"
Ingmar Bergman's The Ghost Sonata

Gautam Dasgupta

[Figures]

for Stanley Kauffmann

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August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata, The Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden (Dramaten), presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, June 20-24, 2001. Director: Ingmar Bergman.

Upon encountering a work--any work, be it in film, theatre, transcribed screenplays, dramatic texts, and memoirs--by Ingmar Bergman, there is scant little that any critic can add as testimonial to the inarguable artistic genius--and there is no other word for it--associated with the name of that distinguished Swede. His legendary output in films from the 1950s on until the early 80s is munificence enough to nourish a sensate soul's appetite for human discernment and spiritual longings. To even suggest that works such as Persona, Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, and Through a Glass Darkly are masterpieces is to state the obvious. Through piercing psychological insights into all-too-human foibles, an eye for the telling detail that lies deep and unknowable in the vast recesses of our complex psyches, and an unerring ability to mine the richly evocative personae of his actors--each of them (and I expect the reader to know who they are) a signal and equal collaborator in degree and kind to the director's vision--Bergman's searing depictions of relationships between people as they struggle to make sense out of their existence is unparalleled in the history of film, if not in the art of recent decades.

That Bergman should bring the same acute sensibility to his theatrical productions is to be expected, but nowhere is that more evident, and resoundingly amplified, than when he joins forces with that other, earlier, giant of Swedish letters, August Strindberg. Both artists have struggled resolutely with religious faith, dissected with precision the ongoing battles between the sexes, and, above all else, employed their artistry to strip away the illusions that becloud "the hopeless dream of 'being.'" It is in that quest for survival where Strindberg's plays and novels, as well as Bergman's films, locate their overriding philosophy. [End Page 64] [Begin Page 66] In the face of nature's inscrutable silence, and that other more deafening silence that emanates from up on high, when we seek solace in the face of life's twists and turns, there is little to do but fall back on our mortal, bodily selves, and the body becomes the site upon which is played out life's unending struggles.

It is this scarred, tormented body that is central to Bergman's vision, always given visual prominence in his work, be it in the close-ups of his actors in film or in the iconic displays that mark his stage techniques. I am reminded, of course, of the scar that mars the cheek of Miss Julie in his 1985 staging of that other Strindberg classic (also presented at BAM in 1991, see PAJ 40); in the recent The Ghost Sonata, we see a thin red line of blood on Hummel's hand as he holds on to The Student with vampire-like tenacity and later the red splotches that stain the undergarment of The Girl in the final scene of the play. In a curious bit of added stage business, not to be found in the play's text, but hinted at by Strindberg in the image of the Buddha on whose lap rests a bulb of an Allium ascalonicum with its roots in the muck, Bergman has the Maid Servant empty the contents of a slop bucket into a lime pit at one end of the stage, not far from the fountain where moments earlier The Student is lovingly administered to by The Milkmaid. Instances of moral goodness are always countenanced by reminders of our bodily needs and functions. In a telling juxtaposition, rendered much more ominous in the staging than in the reading of the play, Bergman has The Cook and Bengtsson, the Colonel's servant, frame the final moment...

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