The Walkmen: A Playlist

It's interesting to follow debates about The Walkmen. I say the band's later albums (You & Me, Lisbon, Heaven) are superior to the early ones (Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone, Bows + Arrows, A Hundred Miles Off). Those who believe oppositely won't be fond this playlist, but for better or worse, they are my Walkmen picks, meant to be played in order. Naturally, "The Rat" caps it off -- usually the last song played at concerts -- and I kick it off with "In the New Year", which is not only my favorite Walkmen song but one of my favorite songs of all time.

1. In the New Year. You & Me, 2008.
2. Juveniles. Lisbon, 2010.
3. Louisiana. A Hundred Miles Off, 2006.
4. Line by Line. Heaven, 2012.
5. Song for Leigh. Heaven, 2012.
6. Nightingales. Heaven, 2012.
7. Heaven. Heaven, 2012.
8. Red Moon. You & Me, 2008.
9. Stranded (Live). Lisbon, 2010.
10. The Rat (Live). Bows + Arrows, 2004.

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Get Thee Behind Me, Subjective Genitive

For Paul, salvation is by...?

(a) "faith in Christ" (objective genitive)
(b) "the faithfulness of Christ" (subjective genitive)

Technically speaking, either (a) or (b) could be the accurate translation of pistis Christou in Rom 3:22, 26; Gal 2:16, 20; Gal 3:22; Philip 3:9. So which is it? Years ago I explained why the objective genitive ("faith in Christ") is the better translation, but the subjective genitive demon won't be exorcised so easily. Here's an update of that post reviewing five key points.

(1) The crucial text of Rom 3:21-26 sits between two sections that contrast human activity. The former (1:18-3:20) is about human sin, human works. The latter (3:27-31) contrasts human faith over against all of this boasting and works. The middle section of 3:21-26 thus tells people what to believe in order to achieve this faith. Likewise, a believer's faith (not Christ's) is the focus of Romans 4. Abraham's trust is emphasized, and believers are to follow the example of his faith (Rom 4:12), not Christ's. Abraham believed the initial promise, and believers may now believe in the content of that promise (Christ). The stress of Rom 4 is on believing the promise. To share the faith of Abraham (Rom 4:16) is to believe in Christ (the promise).

* Stephen Carlson (in comments below) suggests that the subjective genitive reading avoids redundancy in Rom 3:21-22. But the repetition isn't a problem. The emphasis of the repetitive part is on the "all", not the "faith". Paul is simply saying that "God's righteousness through faith in Christ is available to all who have such faith." After all, the theme of this section is Gentile rights: ethnic works are excluded from salvation, since "God is One" (Rom 3:29-30) -- the Lord of pagans as much as Jews -- and thus all peoples must be saved on the same basis. In oral cultures repetition is a common technique for getting a point across, and audiences hearing Rom 3:21-22 read out loud would hear the appropriate stress.

(2) Advocates of the subjective genitive need to rely heavily on the transformation doctrine of Rom 5-8, where Paul speaks of imitating the savior's activity -- dying with Christ at baptism, being crucified with him, etc. But it is precisely in this section where Paul does not mention "faith" (aside briefly in 5:1), let alone pistis Christou. He never contrasts Christ's faith with any disbelief of Adam's ("something that would be crying out to be said, if the 'faith of Christ' were the focus of salvation", notes Stephen Finlan), only Christ's obedience vs. Adam's disobedience. It is Rom 3:21-4:25 and Rom 9:30-10:21 which focus on faith: what people must do in order to be saved. Rom 5-8 is about mystical union with the savior: what people do as a natural consequence of being called. (In Galatians the categories mesh briefly (2:19-21).)

* Douglas Campbell argues that the faith claims of Rom 3-4 (& Rom 9-10) should be read through the participationist language of Rom 5-8, which is the heart of Paul's gospel. I agree that Rom 5-8 is the theological center of gravity, but it doesn't follow that its content can be imposed on the other sections and change their meaning. Rom 5-8 is Christocentric, Rom 3-4 is anthropocentric. Pistis Christou is found in the latter and is thus an anthropocentric term. It's about the human decision for Christ. It's not about Christ providing a new template for humanity (the subject of Rom 5-8). Advocates of the subjective genitive reading, to be sure, are bringing out a potential of Paul's thought, but which Paul never developed. Put another way: that Paul's participationist language is compatible with a subjective genitive reading of pistis Christou doesn't make that reading of pistis Christou correct.

(3) For that reading is plainly wrong. If the subjective genitive were really what Paul had in mind when speaking directly about faith, we would expect him to have used Christ as the subject of the verb "believe"/"have faith", but as Thomas Tobin points out (Paul's Rhetoric in its Contexts, p 132), that never happens in the 42 places the verb is found in his letters. On the other hand, Paul used Christ as the object of the verb in clear cases (Rom 9:33, 10:11). And if exegetes then desperately insist that the verb should be translated one way ("believe"/"trust"), the noun another ("faithfulness"), then they will have to contend with Francis Watson's demolition of that distinction (Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective, pp 241-244), based on the evidence of Paul's scriptural interpretations in Rom 4:1-12 and 9:30-10:21 -- where noun and verb are seen to be interchangeable; "believing" and the response of "faith" one and the same. This point alone shows how flimsy the subjective genitive reading is.

(4) There is the glaring and embarrassing fact that later church fathers never read Paul in terms of the subjective genitive. Michael Whitenton thinks he has demonstrated otherwise, and we'll have to await his article to see what he makes of this business. But for now, this fact stands as a serious strike against the subjective genitive reading. [Edit: See comments below. I misunderstood Michael's thesis. He's talking about the earlier apostolic fathers (and not how they read Paul per se) rather than later church fathers (who did in fact read Paul with the objective genitive). So this point will remain standing in any case.]

(5) Finally, a more oblique point. When confronted with faddish readings of the bible, we must always ask what agendas are being served. Here are a few (with thanks to Stephen Carlson for the third). (a) Hyper-Protestant phobias: if faith is the natural outworking of an elective call made by God, then the subjective genitive reading allows one to put to bed the fear that faith itself is a work. Faith becomes less a human summoning of courage to choose Christ ("faith in"), and more an inevitable result of being unified with Christ in baptism and crucifixion ("faithfulness of"). In other words, it allows one to smuggle Calvinism in through the back door fearing that Luther didn't go far enough. (b) Proto-Arianism: if Christ is more a role-model (whose faithfulness is to be followed) than a deity (to have faith in), then the subjective genitive reading allows one to think of Jesus as a buddy/brother more than a proto-trinitarian Father. In other words, for completely different reasons, it could be attractive to liberal theologians as much as conservative Protestants. (c) New frontiers, new paradigms: it could just be that some (especially Duke scholars, in this case) are in love with new paradigms which allow them to read Paul completely on their own terms outside the confines of Lutheran categories; but like it or not -- and the same can be said against the New Perspective -- Luther was not wholly in error. Largely in error, yes, but not entirely.

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The Most Politically Misunderstood Films of the Past Decade

Someone started a Facebook meme of the most politically misunderstood films of the past ten years. It's a great question, and here are my three.

1. Juno, Jason Reitman. 2007. Supposedly anti-abortion. Even if you know nothing about scriptwriter Diablo Cody (a pro-choice feminist) and actress Ellen Page (also a pro-choice liberal who participates in films she believes in), it's ridiculous beyond words to see this film as promoting an anti-abortion agenda. It establishes a girl's choice to have her baby, without glorifying teen pregnancy, and that she would be supported by her friends and family regardless of her choice. It takes choice for granted. As such, it's a film that could never have been made when I grew up in the '80s, which is perhaps why some old-school feminists feel threatened by it -- especially when anti-abortionists are on the cheer-leading deck. Juno is a product of third-wave feminism, assumes hard-won rights, and doesn't need to preach. That's what makes it a great film, on top of being one of the most endearing comedies ever made.

2. Zero Dark Thirty, Kathyrn Bigelow. 2012. Supposedly defends the use of rendition torture in combating terrorism. Even if you're unfamiliar with Bigelow's style (her award-winning Hurt Locker was neither pro- nor anti-military, respecting the army while portraying its personnel with the appropriate shades of gray), it's a dimwitted belief that Zero Dark Thirty's torture scenes serve an apologetic end. That torture produced positive results in hunting down Bin Laden doesn't mean the ends justified the means, and Bigelow assumes viewers have the intelligence to reach this conclusion without having it spelled out. Depiction obviously isn't endorsement -- if it was, filmmakers and novelists would be barred from exploring necessary issues. Zero Dark Thirty is in fact Bigelow's best film to date, finer and more disciplined than even The Hurt Locker.

3. The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson. 2004. Supposedly anti-Semitic, as well as torture porn. I can somewhat forgive the confusion over this one. Mel Gibson, after all, does have a torture fetish and plenty of anti-Semitic baggage. Ironically, neither of these intrude on the integrity of his film. Pornography encourages the viewer to want more, and the torture in Passion does anything but. An example of torture porn would be Eli Roth's Hostel, which excites and fires your blood-lust even as it horrifies. Passion is more like Pascal Laugier's Martyrs: you want the beatings and skin-flayings to stop at every moment. As for anti-Semitism, Passion is no more anti-Semitic than the gospels, and considerably less so than Matthew and John. As Mark Goodacre has noted, Gibson even dilutes the anti-Jewishness of his medieval source material by making Simon of Cyrene a Jew; he's the hero who helps Jesus carry his cross, but Catherine Emmerich insisted he was pagan. If Passion is anti-Semitic, it's only on the trivial level of the gospels themselves (and again, in some ways even less so), and naturally we don't demand that Christians throw away their bibles. (This hilarious review gets the anti-Semitism issue right, but the porn issue wrong, though it's being mostly tongue-in-cheek with the latter.) I have no respect for Gibson as a person, but he's a talented enough film director, and Passion of the Christ is an important contribution that should be acknowledged by the secular and religious alike.

Why have Juno, Zero Dark Thirty, and Passion of the Christ been understood in ways that cut against their own grain? Simple. Anti-abortion, torture, and anti-Semitism are hot button issues, and if you don't decry them, you're seen as endorsing them. They all happen to be excellent films (even Gibson's), and confirm the idea that the best films are often the most misunderstood ones.

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The Greatest Horror Films of All Time

Someone asked me recently for my favorite horror films, which made me wonder why I never got around to blogging such a list. So here's my definitive answer. These rankings cover all the horror sub-genres -- demon possession (1), haunted building (2), psychological (3,6,8), body (4), alien/sci-fic (5), nature (7), vampire (9), and torture (10).

1. The Exorcist, William Friedkin. 1973. Critical approval: 87%. It messed me up so badly when I was a kid and made me afraid to fall asleep, or for that matter to stay awake. It starts out documentary-style in Iraq, then moves to the suburbs of Washington D.C., the terror building slowly -- and with patient character development so typical of '70s scripts -- until it explodes into the mother of all horror films. Somehow Friedkin came up with exactly what you'd imagine a demon to look and sound and act like, and this one proceeds to beat the shit out of a 12-year old girl from the inside out. She speaks like the damned, pukes buckets of green, and reams herself bloody with crucifixes, until two priests finally intervene with a long ritual that kills them both. The girl is saved, but the power of good over evil is far from clear. Some continue to insist that The Exorcist is an unspeakable obscenity, and in many ways it is. It couldn't have made in a decade other than the '70s, and I state for a fact there will never again be a movie so frightening and well done. The influence of Bergman's Cries and Whispers is astonishing, and if not for it, I believe Friedkin would have interpreted Blatty's book very differently.

2. The Shining, Stanley Kubrick. 1980. Critical approval: 90%. Stephen King hated it so much he made a "corrective" version for T.V., but not half as good or scary. Kubrick hit a home run because he took the skeleton of a haunted hotel story and fleshed it out with more uncompromising terrors and a unique tone that doesn't let you tell yourself things are going to be okay. The result may be more minimalist than what King intended, but it's sure as hell more effective, and that's what any true horror artist aims for. Scenes I took to bed too often: Danny's vision of the two hacked-up little girls in the hallway, the look on Wendy's face when she discovers Jack has been typing the same sentence over and over for weeks, Jack's sinister face appearing in a hotel painting in the final shot after he dies. Every frame of this picture, every intonation of the score, is part of an overarching terror that only Kubrick could have realized on screen. Not to ride Bergman too heavily, but the influence of The Silence can't go unmentioned -- the hotel in battle-torn country is just as creepy -- and Kubrick of course loved Bergman as much as Friedkin.

3. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, David Lynch. 1992. Critical approval: 59%. Don't be fooled by this film's awful reputation. It's David Lynch's darkest and most emotionally hurting film (even more so than Blue Velvet), containing scenes in Laura's bedroom so terrifying they make parts of The Shining look tame. It was terribly misjudged based on expectations from the TV series, and anyone who still doesn't like it should listen to Mark Kermode's review, which rightly pronounces it a masterpiece. The question of whether Leland is an innocent man possessed by an evil spirit, or a garden variety sexual molester is never answered, and the ambiguity is powerful. And the ending pays off lovely, where after a repugnant life on earth and her thoroughly degrading final hours, Laura gets her angel in heaven. It actually brought tears to my eyes. Fire Walk With Me is a brilliant psychological horror and focused character piece in contrast to the TV series' focus on town intrigue and multiple-character dynamics, and as such it's an intensely personal film, and a switch in tone that works wonders in the context of a two-hour prequel. The key is getting a distance from the TV series before watching it.

4. Videodrome, David Cronenberg. 1983. Critical approval: 80%. No horror film more earns the cliche "like nothing you've seen before" than Videodrome. The idea that watching videos can somehow physically change and corrupt you is quintessential Cronenberg, and involves everything from torture porn to sadomasochism to mind control, all weaved through the body horrors of flesh guns, male "vagina" slots that play VHS tapes, and cruel metamorphosis. James Woods fits perfectly in this stew as the CEO of a cable station who gets involved with conspiracies behind a snuff-film franchise, and becomes a pawn in a plot to broadcast its signal to millions of viewers. The mission is to create a "new flesh" by merging human consciousness with a media stream of sexualized violence, and the hyper-commentary is obvious: we're becoming dangerously complacent the more we evolve into a mass-media culture. Considering this was made in the early '80s, it's frightening indeed how much of a prophet Cronenberg was.

5. Alien, Ridley Scott. 1979. Critical approval: 97%. By far the most scary sci-fic film ever made. Ridley Scott knew what he was doing by keeping the alien mostly out of sight and making us project our imaginative fears. This is completely unlike James Cameron's sequel, which focused on graphic action and ass-kicking and made the fatal mistake of altering the most terrifying aspect of the alien: its ability to cocoon a victim and cause it to morph into an egg/facehugger. In Aliens all eggs/facehuggers come from a queen alien, but Scott had envisioned a truly horrifying process by which any alien, regardless of gender, "laid eggs" by transforming captives. Cameron's blockbuster also involved military personnel going after the alien threat, and while it's not pleasant that they all die, it's their job to die defending others. In Alien we feel the raw terror of six civilians stranded alone in space, hunted and devoured one by one.

6. Hour of the Wolf, Ingmar Bergman. 1968. Critical approval: 88%. This is known as Bergman's only horror film, though I think he has others that qualify (The Silence, The Virgin Spring). Like his war film Shame (also released in '68), Hour of the Wolf involves the actors Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman as a married couple (Johan and Alma) on an island, with Johan's psyche crumbling under extreme pressure, only this time the pressure is interior rather than exterior. It's a film about inner demons, personal alienation, homosexual guilt, necrophilia, and the intensified blurring of reality and fantasy. We're never quite sure if we're seeing Johan's demons, or those shared by Johan and Alma together, or some combination with reality. The theme of contagious insanity is strangely compelling -- only William Friedkin's Bug has come close to tapping this theme with results just as raw -- and Alma's "If I'd loved him less, would I have been able to protect him more?", shows the devastating liabilities of love in this context. I'm not surprised this was David Lynch's favorite Bergman film. It's the product of a very messed up mind.

7. The Divide, Xavier Gens. 2011. Critical approval: 26%. Ignore the critics, they got it dead wrong; this film is fantastic if you have the right expectations. It's a hard-hitting horror show set in the basement of a New York high rise apartment, where nine strangers gather to survive a nuclear holocaust. Despite uneasiness and distrust, they try working together at first, and do pretty well until cabin fever, radiation sickness, and their own base humanity take over. There's torture, rape, sex slavery, and full-blown lunacy on display, and no light at the end of the tunnel -- which happens to be, literally, a tunnel of shit. The Divide holds humanity completely captive to misanthropy and is the best Lord of the Flies-themed film I've ever seen. The performances are brilliant; even I was deeply chilled by what Gens believes people are really like under our societal conditioning.

8. The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock. 1963. Critical approval: 96%. This classic is nihilistic to the core and unapologetic about nature's savagery. And like the great horror films rarely seen anymore, it has the patience to let its characters breathe and become people we care about before unleashing the terror. The only other man-vs.-nature film that has shattered me so successfully is The Grey. The wolves in that film are fantasy predators like the killer birds on display here, but it doesn't matter. Wolves, birds, whatever, serve as metaphors for unstoppable biological forces -- beasts who suddenly behave in ways we don't and can't grasp -- and for that reason alone convince. By '60s standards the bird attack sequences are bloody terrifying. When nature comes after us, says Hitchcock, things aren't going to turn out okay. I think he's right, and The Birds is my favorite apocalyptic film.

9. Near Dark, Kathryn Bigelow. 1987. Critical approval: 90%. It's a wonder that the vampire holds power anymore. The aristocratic version based on Dracula has been way overused, and the bubblegum pop-model (Blade, Underworld, Buffy, Twilight) is a joke. I prefer the barbarically savage breed that go for the jugular with little fanfare, as in From Dusk Till Dawn, 30 Days of Night... and Near Dark. But Bigelow's film is also driven by a love story that puts it in the same stew with Let the Right One In, and for my money, Caleb and Mae are an even better match than Oskar and Eli. The optimistic ending -- the only one on this list which can be called a happy one, and which shows the '80s trappings of the triumph of the nuclear family -- works surprisingly well for a horror film. Near Dark may not hit the artistic highs of Let the Right One In, but it's my vampire film of choice. I mean seriously, clips like this and this and this speak for themselves.

10. Martyrs, Pascal Laugier. 2008. Critical approval: 54%. A thoroughly demented film about a woman who takes vengeance on people who tortured her when she was a child, while her best friend gets abducted by the same atheist cult. This woman is then also tortured in preparation for her "transfiguration" -- a visit to the great beyond by becoming one with pain. Inevitably, some critics have panned this movie as torture porn, but unwisely. Torture porn (like Hostel) encourages viewers to want more and to act as voyeurs without feeling much empathy for the victims. The torture in Martyrs isn't remotely titillating, and Laugier's purpose is to put us through a horrendously emotional ordeal and share in the victims' hopes (however futile) for mental and physical liberty. The premise behind what drives the cult is terribly fascinating, as is the idea that only women are receptive to transfiguration.

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Pastor Anderson's Greatest Hits

Steven Anderson is famous for his sermon on why men should urinate standing up, but many of his diatribes never made it to youtube and cry for exposure. All of his sermons to date can be downloaded here, but each is about an hour long, and most people don't have the stamina to listen to more than 15 minutes of this kind of preaching. So I compiled an audio-clip of Anderson's "greatest hits". Most of these segments are from his first year as a pastor, and they run under a total of 15 minutes. So sit back and enjoy the hellfire. It's evidently in store for all of us.



0:01-1:01 The evil of Mardi Gras
1:02-2:10 Abortion/birth control
2:11-2:57 "Why I yell when I preach"
2:58-3:26 The King James Bible only
3:27-4:00 The Devil's Bible (the NIV)
4:01-5:00  Booze
5:01-5:46  Against psychiatry
5:47-7:01  Homosexuality
7:02-8:20  Barack Obama
8:21-9:21  Love and hate essential to Christian living
9:22-10:43  The physically handicapped
10:44-12:04  In vitro fertilization (stealing babies from God)
12:05-14:36  Calling on the name of the Lord (renegade members of Anderson's church have been trying to correct his teachings, and he tears them to shreds)

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Ingmar Bergman's Influence on The Exorcist

Forty years ago was a special year. "1973 began and ended with cries of pain," wrote Roger Ebert. "It began with Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers, and it closed with William Friedkin's The Exorcist. Both films are about the weather of the human soul, and no two films could be more different. Yet each in its own way forces us to look inside, to experience horror, to confront the reality of human suffering." Other critics have noted similarities between these two films, but only general ones. When I, on the other hand, watched Cries and Whispers, I saw its direct influence on The Exorcist in practically every other frame.

I've presented some shots of the most obvious homages. Some are general comparisons (like 3 and 9) and may have been more subconscious than deliberate efforts on Friedkin's part. But most of them are rather blatant, and I wonder if Friedkin has ever owned up to them. I'm sure cinephiles and film scholars have noticed them, and probably more.

I'm not faulting Friedkin, on the contrary, I think Bergman's influence is what helped make his own such a great film. Both are favorites of mine (both were nominated for Best Picture of 1973, and both lost to the inferior caper flick The Sting), and that's probably why the similarities jump out at me. I should note that Friedkin finished shooting The Exorcist only four months after the release of Cries and Whispers, so it was evidently hot on his mind. I should also note that in none of my examples can the Exorcist imagery be derived from William Peter Blatty's book (published in 1971) in any meaningful way. In fact, despite closely following Blatty, most of these examples aren't from the book at all -- because in essence, they're from Cries and Whispers.

1. Opening shot of a statue. Blatty's book starts right away in Iraq, but Friedkin's film takes 30 seconds to pan over the McNeil house in Maryland and then linger on the shot of a church statue.

That's exactly how Bergman began Cries and Whispers -- by panning over the grounds of Agnes' household, and in particular a statue.

2. Clock obsession. In Blatty's book, no clock is described in the scene between Father Merrin and the curator of antiquities at Mosul. Friedkin's film follows the book very closely in this scene, but he adds a pendulum clock, the hand of which suddenly stops swinging as Merrin handles the amulet of the demon.

Clock imagery abounds in Cries and Whispers, especially close-ups of pendulum hands.

3. House atmosphere. The success of The Exorcist has as much to do with the atmosphere of the entire McNeil house as what goes on in Regan's bedroom. Long scenes and wide shots of solemn dread escalate an incredible tension that explodes when the screams start.

Cries and Whispers derives much of its success from the same kind of thing, and in this case it's a staggering use of the color red that accentuates the pain and dread filling Agnes' house.

4. Give the poor girl a bath. In Blatty's book, Regan's mother gives her a bath for the obvious reason she soiled herself (urinating on the floor through her nightie), but it's mentioned in a single sentence, in passing. It's something that might have even been skipped in a film, but Friedkin lingered on a bathtub scene...

...that strangely calls to mind the sponge bath given to Agnes in bed by her maid and sisters.

5. Agony on the bed. Superficially of course, Blatty's book provides the basis for all of this. But Friedkin's cinematic realization of Regan's facial contortions and hideous screams owe directly, it seems...

... to those of Agnes, being relentlessly torn apart by the "demon" of womb cancer.

6. Agony on the bed (II). Then too, some of the wide shots with Regan writhing on her back and horrified onlookers...

...are practically lifted from Bergman's film.

7. Vaginal mutilation. The crucifix stabbing/masturbation scene is in Blatty's book, to be sure, but no filmmaker besides Friedkin would have shot a gory close-up like this involving a 12-year old. No filmmaker (outside of hard-core porn) has shot anything so vile ever since.

And when Friedkin filmed that shot, there is simply no way he couldn't have been thinking of this close-up of Karin in Cries and Whispers, who mutilated herself with a piece of glass so that she wouldn't have to suffer sex with her repulsive husband.

8. Relishing the blood. Regan's face is not smeared with blood in Blatty's book. In an interview Friedkin stated that he made her face bloody, to imply that she used the crucifix on her face as much as her crotch.

And that was a great idea, but I'm confident it was inspired by what Karin gleefully did to spite her husband in Cries and Whispers -- smearing her face with the blood of her vaginal wounds.

9. Iconic climaxes. The image of Regan and the demon Pazuzu superimposed next to each other during the height of the exorcism is one of the film's most powerful scenes (and doesn't come from the book).

It makes me think Friedkin was trying for some kind of an arresting image like this -- the bare-breasted Anna holding Agnes in her lap, which unnervingly evokes Michelangelo's Pietà. Regardless of his conscious intentions, Friedkin's shot has become as iconic as Bergman's.

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Ingmar Bergman Revisited

"Most of Bergman's films were about the plague of the modern soul — the demons and doubts, secrets and lies that men and woman evaded but were forced to confront. This agonized Swede was a surgeon who operated on himself. He cut into his own fears, analyzed his failings, perhaps sought forgiveness through art. When he died at 89 [July 2007], he left behind him a worldwide colony of devotees, and a collection of spare, severe dramas unique in their intensity and impact. He must have been surprised at the acclaim for works so personal, they seemed like primal screams, picking at the scabs of his psyche. His films spoke not just to the self-absorption of the therapy generation, but to the human quest to discover the worst and the strongest about ourselves, to make that journey into the darkness with no guide but our need to know." (Richard Corliss, Time, 7/30/07)

I'm not especially savvy when it comes to foreign film directors, but Ingmar Bergman is an exception with the highest honors. Even by arthouse standards he went places undreamed. Bleakness, sickness, eroticism, nihilism, madness, and death were his forte, and I wasn't surprised to learn that when he got old he couldn't watch his own films anymore because they were too damn depressing. But Bergman had a sense of humor too, and he knew tenderness at the right moments. No filmmaker, in my view, has more forcefully examined the human condition and interrogated the soul. I've seen 22 of his films, and here's how I rank them in descending order.

Note: This is a thorough reworking of an earlier post in a monthly blogathon of favorite film directors. See also Carson Lund's rankings of Bergman.

1. Cries and Whispers. 1973. 5+ stars. This is a harrowing meditation on the theme of pain, possibly Bergman's bleakest work (which says a lot), and a perfect exit point for Harriet Andersson who plays the dying Agnes. The hurt on display is relentless; facial contortions, gasps, and screams are so hideous I cringe. Most unforgettable is the use of red color, which permeates everything, and is so effective it's staggering. Cries and Whispers is the world of women, where men are gluttonous oafs and blind to their wives' contempt. But it's not simple male-bashing; the women have complexly repulsive relationships with each other, bruising each other with enough emotional pain to match the physical assault of Agnes' cancer. The late Roger Ebert made a fascinating analogy: "The year 1973 began and ended with cries of pain. It began with Bergman's Cries and Whispers, and it closed with Friedkin's The Exorcist. Both films are about the weather of the human soul, and no two films could be more different. Yet each in its own way forces us to look inside, to experience horror, to confront the reality of suffering." How true: each left me terrified to exist as a human being. I could claim either one as my favorite film of all time.

2. The Seventh Seal. 1957. 5 stars. Bergman's most famous film is richly rewarding, laced with gratifying, cutting-edge humor. It sounds a bit boring when described (a knight plays chess with Death), but it's the knight's journey around the game's intervals, through a land struck by plague and fanaticism, and his attempts to penetrate God's mysteries, that drive the story. His close-to-atheist squire is played hilariously by Gunnar Björnstrand, and he gets in great lines, a perfect counterpart to Max Von Sydow's glacial reserve and tormented anguish. There's so much grand entertainment here -- bar brawls, apocalyptic tirades, insult contests, self-mutilation, and a witch-burning to top it off -- that the theological side helpings make it one of the most balanced arthouse films I know. The Seventh Seal is an ambitious work that somehow, almost effortlessly it seems, tackles death, existential horror, and spiritual uncertainty all at once. And if it's a nihilistic dance of death that awaits us all, then at least Bergman allows us to enjoy some comforts, and through a great cast of characters, before we get there.

3. Fanny and Alexander. 1982. 5 stars. This masterpiece is diminished by accolades; it has to be experienced to feel the magic, and despite the three-hour length (or even five-hour, if you see the extended version), you won't want it to end. It's a Dickens-like wonder, populated by ghosts and magical surrealism, the stuff of rare epic, weaved around a boy's imagination that helps him deal with the death of his father and an abusive new one. There is the wild Christmas party of the first part, the tyranny and bloody lashings of the second, the dazzling dream-flight of the third. What stands out most is the optimistic ending, unique for Bergman. It was intended to be his last film, and I imagine him wanting to leave something more uplifting in his legacy. Fanny and Alexander is pure enchantment, pure storytelling, and its triumphant conclusion is richly earned.

4. Shame. 1968. 5 stars. Shame shows the personal cost of war -- and without any political axe to grind -- by focusing on a simple married couple all the way through. We share their intimacies, then their hopelessness when they're uprooted from home, falsely accused of bad allegiances, then freed on the condition that Eva performs sexual favors for a government official (played by the flawless Gunnar Björnstrand). Things escalate to the point of such humiliation that Jan, clearly a pacifist by nature, snaps and becomes a moral monster. The exodus into a sea of corpses haunts me to this day. It's a miserable ending, but the only one that fits. Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory showed us the politics of war, and Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line looked at war from a cosmic perspective; but Bergman's Shame is all the close-up intimacy.

5. Hour of the Wolf. 1968. 5 stars. Known for being Bergman's only horror film, and like Shame (which was released the same year) it involves the actors Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman as a married couple (Johan and Alma) on an island, with Johan's psyche crumbling under extreme pressure, only this time the pressure is interior rather than exterior. It's a film about inner demons, personal alienation, homosexual guilt, necrophilia, and the intensified blurring of reality and fantasy. We're never quite sure if we're seeing Johan's demons, or those shared by Johan and Alma together, or some combination with reality. The theme of contagious insanity is strangely compelling -- only William Friedkin's Bug has come close to tapping this theme with results just as raw -- and Alma's "If I'd loved him less, would I have been able to protect him more?", shows the devastating liabilities of love in this context.

6. The Silence. 1963. 5 stars. Here Bergman suggests that there's no solution to the riddle of God's existence, and yet the search for a solution remains important. This film is so unnerving, it holds you in a vise and never lets up. The setting is a foreign country that gets few visitors, and where tanks roll down the streets ready to fire; the hotel is a fantastic set piece and like something out of a paranoid dream state (even anticipating The Shining), with the hyper-friendly old porter and the room of circus dwarves, all of whom speak gibberish. The theme of non-communication pervades on every level, carrying "silence" to its symbolic extreme. The visiting sisters resent each other and retreat into their own silences or dysfunctions: sexual promiscuity (Anna) and alcoholism (Ester); by contrast, the boy Johann almost represents unfallen humanity before being corrupted by the world -- he can interact with all of the hotel's grotesqueries with delightful naivete, even despite the language barriers. This is the third part of the so-called "faith trilogy" -- the most intelligent, subtle, and terrifying of the three.

7. Sawdust and Tinsel. 1953. 5 stars. This clash of the sexes shows Bergman funneling his personal guilt, romantic betrayals, and artistic dissatisfaction into a cruel-cutting misanthropic parable. It's such a nasty piece of work, and so refreshingly honest, that it has to be the product of an artist going through his own hell. Albert and Anne are among my favorite cinematic couples, playing off each other with unpleasantries and suffering degradations, unable to escape their miserable relationship in a harsh career. Gunnar Björnstrand is also priceless as the theater director, dishing out insults wrapped in ironic wisdom: he publicly lambastes Albert while cheerfully admitting that his own world (tinsel, the theater) is as degrading as Albert's (sawdust, the circus). Sawdust and Tinsel is one of Bergman's most underrated films, and an unflinching look at artistic humiliation. It's prefaced by a great homage to Christ's Golgotha, as a man struggles to carry his naked wife through crowds of harassing soldiers.

8. Persona. 1966. 5 stars. Many consider this the ultimate masterpiece, and it's certainly been analyzed to death more than any other Bergman film. Oddly, it's not one of my top-notch choices, though there's no denying its excellence. I think its real significance lies in what it represents at a critical turning point in Bergman's career. Persona was forged in the fires of his mental breakdown, and from here on out his strategies changed. He began treating bisexuality seriously. The pre-1966 films typically resigned heterosexual couples to bleak endings; now he felt free to engineer the utter destruction of these relationships (as in Hour of the Wolf and Shame) and veer off into homoeroticism. In the case of Persona, the two women go beyond intimacy so that they merge metaphysically, signaled in the famous disturbing shot where the halves of their faces are combined. Alma craves Elizabeth's identity as much as her affection, and I think that's what makes Persona the legendary experiment it is.

9. The Magician. 1958. 4 ½ stars. A film based on the wisdom that "deception is so generally common that he who tells the truth as a rule is classed as the greatest liar" is a sure winner. All things considered, I don't think The Magician intends the often-supposed clash between science and the supernatural, rather honesty and deception, and in this arena neither reason nor superstition wins. Vogler may be proven a charlatan, but he frankly doesn't come off bad for it, and he's even given royal approval at the end. The morbid climax had my skin crawling, and wondering if he had actually died and come back to life, but when the black show is done, Vogler admits to chicanery without any shame at all, telling Vergérus (whom he succeeded in terrifying out of his wits) that he should be pleased to have received the experience of a lifetime. The Magician vindicates the evolutionary-psychological wisdom that humanity needs its self-deceptions to stay healthy. Besides that, it's a great showcasing of colorful characters, and like Sawdust and Tinsel examines the demeaning lives of traveling artists.

10. The Virgin Spring. 1960. 4 ½ stars. The same year Hitchcock served up the first slasher with Psycho, Bergman gave us rape revenge. But unlike the modern formula that often glorifies retribution, The Virgin Spring puts the screws to it. The father's revenge is portrayed as ugly and self-righteous, and this is what keeps this classic above American copycats like The Last House on the Left. It refuses to allow us moral holidays. The father is almost an anti-Charles Bronson in this light, atoning for his revenge by dedicating a holy shrine on the spot his daughter was killed. Bergman uses the medieval setting to great effect, teasing out conflicts between paganism and Christianity, as in the way the foster-sister worships Odin and even wishes the harm on Karin right before she's attacked. The film's enduring power matches Psycho's, and of course both Hitchcock and Bergman have been abused in imitations, spin-offs, and remakes of their artistry.

11. Through a Glass Darkly. 1961. 4 ½ stars. This was my first Bergman film and will always be special for that reason alone. The isolated island setting and small cast of four makes for an intense character study, and it doesn't hurt that my favorite Harriet Andersson takes the lead, as a schizophrenic affecting her family in complex ways. The theme of spiritual doubt is the subtle undercurrent, always subordinate to the personal relationships, the most fascinating of which is the incestuous one between Karin and her brother Minus. Though the denouement has the father holding out hope for a loving God, that possibility seems disingenuous in the extreme, and raised precisely to call forth the audience's denial given Karin's grim fate. The concept of God as a spider is one of the most sinister and arresting metaphors for the deity I've come across in any film. This is the first part of the "faith trilogy", and the most intimate.

12. Winter Light. 1962. 4 ½ stars. Before The Silence interrogated God's existence, Winter Light tested his benevolence. It does this through the spiritual struggle of a priest, and his relationship with a woman who loves him, but whom he can barely tolerate under his contempt. It's devastating to watch her poleaxed expression when he finally tells her how much he despises her -- fed up with her "loving care, clumsy hands, rashes, and frostbitten cheeks", among other things that don't bear mentioning. Winter Light is essentially about a pastor so furious at God's silence, that he breaks his own "silence" towards the kindest woman with an avalanche of brutality that makes the Almighty's treatment of Job seem almost benign. It's the second part of the "faith trilogy", which most Bergman fans consider the best part; to me, Through a Glass Darkly is slightly superior, and The Silence is way ahead of both.

13. Summer with Monika. 1953. 4 stars. This one is famous for two shots. First is Harriet Andersson's soft-porn sunbathing scene, which got heavily reedited in America, under the sensational retitle of Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl! The second is her phallic drag on a cigarette as she stares out at the camera -- through the camera, it seems, right at the audience -- holding us in contempt for daring to judge her selfishness and infidelities. Summer with Monika is that tale of youthful escapism everyone has fantasized about at some point: two lovers abandon their jobs and families, and run away in a motorboat to spend weeks on an isolated beach in the Stockholm archipelago. They dream the dreams of children, of a blissful married life ahead of them... and then return to the cold reality of poverty, dissatisfied adultery, and unwanted babies. Not especially profound as Bergman films go, but compelling for its modest ambitions.

14. The Passion of Anna. 1969. 4 stars. I have a complicated relationship with The Passion of Anna. On first viewing I didn't care for it. After watching the other Faro-Island pieces -- Persona, Shame, Hour of the Wolf, all excellent -- this one felt derivative and uninspired. Even worse, it shows Bergman's deconstructionism of the '60s getting well out of hand, with actual interviews with the actors interrupting the film at various points. Character narrations and voice-overs (as in Hour of the Wolf) are acceptable cinematic techniques, but here we have the equivalent of modern DVD extras and featurettes mixed throughout the film. However, Anna has gotten much better on subsequent viewings. If you can make yourself forget about the other Faro-Island films, it stands as a remarkably innovative, unflinching look at the pain and meaninglessness of life, around a weird plot of an animal serial killer and the arrest and trauma of an innocent man.

15. Wild Strawberries. 1957. 4 stars. This was Stanley Kubrick's favorite Bergman film, and most fans would consider it a blasphemy to rank below the top five. But I'm underwhelmed by Wild Strawberries, probably because I'm so hopeless that I watch Bergman to get depressed, and this film has cushions of enough optimism to qualify it as "comfort Bergman". Grandpas reminiscing about teen sweethearts in strawberry patches, and where they went wrong in life, only speak so much (to me, anyway) about the human condition. The film, however, has a stunningly gorgeous aesthetic, especially in the shots of Isak's premonitions, daydreams, and nightmares. The empty streets with faceless clocks, and the faceless person who "dies" in front of him, is my favorite scene, and I also love his nightmare of failing graduate exams under the austere gaze of a younger professor. The birthday party from his childhood can't go unmentioned either: the whites here are incredible -- colorful, almost, if there was ever a time that white could be.

16. Autumn Sonata. 1978. 4 stars. This is Cries and Whispers lite -- a relative statement, as there's certainly nothing "lite" about the hurt and anger on display. Bergman was aiming for the same kind of thing but with results less supreme. Again we have a claustrophobic household setting, and again the color red is milked for all its worth. The drama is simple and direct, as a woman wages verbal war on her visiting mother. Ma's offenses are endless: she neglected Eva as a child, yet smothered her with domination; she was eternally angry with her daughter, but kept it under a facade of phony smiles and backhanded praise. This is a superb last role for Igrid Bergman (no relation to the director). Her character is one we end up feeling for despite the laundry list of offenses, primarily because Eva's screeds are so relentlessly self-righteous. They tear her mother to shreds and make her confess that she was always just as terrified and helpless as her daughter.

17. Summer Interlude. 1951. 3 ½ stars. This is Bergman's breakaway from his efforts of the '40s (which were rather rigid cinematic essays), and the one which showed a true master on the horizon. It's not a great film by any means, but it points to greatness, and to a germinating directorial confidence. As Bergman described it: "This was my first film in which I felt I was functioning independently, with a style of my own, making a film all my own, with a particular appearance of its own, which no one could ape. It was like no other film. It was all my own work." It prefigures Summer with Monika, which is also about youths falling in love, though this is a sunnier version, for Marie is sweet as Monika is feral. Bergman as we really know him would come two years later (in Monika, and then the brilliant Sawdust and Tinsel), but this is where the seeds were sown.

18. Smiles of a Summer Night. 1955. 3 ½ stars. I'm hard to please with comedies, and this one has the added disadvantage of being associated with countless rip-offs, including one by (cough) Woody Allen. Smiles is a clever film, and enjoyable enough if you want some light viewing, but it's not all that memorable. There are the characteristic manipulations and infidelities expected from Bergman, but the material becomes a victim of its silliness. The Count is the funnest character, humorless and driven by rigid honor codes, cheating on his wife with abandon, while railing against men who dare make advances on his mistress or wife (professing indifference towards those who hit on the other, depending on his mood). After jealousies and betrayals culminate in the Russian roulette duel, the film ends on perhaps the most touching scene with (my favorite) Harriet Andersson in the fields playfully accepting love without taking the concept, or herself, too seriously.

19. Scenes from a Marriage. 1974. 3 ½ stars. Some consider this a masterpiece, but I wonder if that's over-evaluating a film which is renowned for causing an outbreak in divorce. (Divorce rates nearly doubled in Sweden the year after its release.) Bergman was clearly aiming for something new, and for that should be commended. Gone is his trademark introspection and existentialism, and in their place a direct tale of a married couple's relationship we observe like a fly on the wall for five long hours. As their marriage disintegrates, they run a gamut of emotions: they're content but unsatisfied, strong yet spineless, certain then confused, loving and mean-spirited at once -- childish, really, but in the end able to obtain a reconciliation without any illusions. It's as realistic a look at something like this I've ever watched, and since I love rapid-dialogue films filled with claustrophobic close-up shots, I'm surprised this film doesn't do more for me. Maybe there's something too banal and mundane about this five-hour marathon; I'm not sure. But it's still an impressive work.

20. From the Life of the Marionettes. 1980. 3 stars. This is another film that I feel I should like more, if for no other reason than its morbid premise. It reintroduces two characters briefly seen in Scenes from a Marriage, Peter and Katarina (the dinner friends of Johann and Marianne), whose own relationship descends into something far more ghastly than everyday marital conflicts and separations. Katarina chases wantonly after other men, and Peter is driven to murder a prostitute (who has his wife's name) and then sodomize her corpse. There are no reconciliations to be found here -- Peter ends up in a mental asylum -- and this is admittedly superbly dark material, but it's never fleshed out in a way we can really understand. The idea of obsessing and possessing a loved one is quintessential Bergman, but Life of the Marionettes isn't the artistry of Persona. It's enjoyable enough, but falls a bit short.

21. Face to Face. 1976. 2 stars. I'm shocked that Bergman made this film. It feels more like the work of an aspiring student, vainly evoking dreams and mental anguish without any of the Swede's finesse, depth, and subtlety. And while Liv Ullmann's acting is top-notch (as always), what she portrays doesn't add up to much. She's a psychiatrist who inexplicably grows depressed, attends a party full of gay stereotypes, meets a doctor who will serve as a convenient sounding board to her histrionics, is nearly raped and finds herself wishing she had been, and then rages about mommy-daddy issues on a purely cliche level. Her nightmares are astonishingly crude and blunt (a far cry from the brilliant sort we're used to in Wild Strawberries, Hour of the Wolf, etc.), and in the end, Face to Face feels not only less than the sum of its parts, but less than a fraction of Bergman's talents. Ullman's ferocious performance is all that's left to mesmerize.

22. The Serpent's Egg. 1977. 1 star. Everyone hates this film, and it's fun to read reviews of it. They show that the greater the filmmaker, the more critics revel in tearing him to shreds when they have rare cause. And so, as I began my top slot with a Roger Ebert citation, so I'll finish with one: "The Serpent's Egg is a cry of pain and protest, a loud and jarring assault, but it is not a statement and it is certainly not a whole and organic work of art. The movie attacks us, but in self-defense. There are loud, hurtful noises, shouts, and screams, self-destructive orgies and an overwhelmingly relentless decadence. But there is no form, no pattern, and when Bergman tries to impose one by artsy pseudo-newsreel footage and a solemn narration, he reminds us only of the times he has used both better. He strains for impact. He looks emptiness in the face, and it outstares him. He hurls himself at this material, using excesses of style and content we've never seen from him before, but the subject defeats him." It's the only film on this list I would never watch again.

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