Introduction to Byakki Smoker

Introduction to Byakki Smoker | Appreciation | Reflection

196 1 black-and-white film 92 minutes.

Produced by Swedish film industry company

Director: ingmar bergman Photography: Sven Nikvester The main actors: Kharit anderson (Karin), Gounard Buyo Engstrand (David), Max von Seedorf (Martin) and Lars Pasogade (Frederic).

This film won the 1962 Best Foreign Language Film Award of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts.

abstract

The endless sea. Four people waded to the distant shore. They are father David, daughter Karin, Karin's husband Martin and Karin's brother Frederic. After landing, they talked and quarreled and hurried to a house not far away.

It turns out that this is a family of four who spent their summer vacation on an island in the Baltic Sea. Father David is a writer who has just returned from Switzerland. Martin, a doctor, accompanied his wife Karin, who had just returned from a mental hospital, to recuperate on the island. Karin's younger brother Frederick, 17 years old, also lives with them.

David and Martin are chatting at the seaside while collecting fishing nets. At the same time, Karin went to milk with her brother. On the way, Karin heard voices and birds chirping. Since she suffered from schizophrenia, her hearing has been particularly sensitive and she can hear all kinds of voices. As they walked, they talked about their father and Martin. Karin also asked her brother if he had a girlfriend with concern. Frederick was angry and told his sister not to joke.

David and Martin cast nets in a small boat and fished offshore. On the boat, they talked about Karin's illness and were all worried about her. Martin assured David that he loved Karin deeply and that he would be alone with her no matter what happened. He said Karin looks fine now, but she is a little upset at night. He thinks there is still hope for her illness, because there have been cured cases before.

Karin and her brother went home together after milking. My brother doesn't like to answer his sister, and he always avoids her all the way. He also sulked inexplicably and spilled his hard-earned milk all over the floor. He said angrily to Karin, "I don't like the way you look at me and kiss me." Seeing you naked in the sun makes me sick. Anyway, women hate it. "Karin patiently comforted her brother and told him to calm down. My brother told my sister about his depression. He said, "I wish I could talk to my father! "But he always revolves around himself." Frederick is in adolescence. He feels neglected by his father. He can't communicate with his father, and his heart is very painful.

Before Karin and Frederick came back, David and Martin had prepared dinner, and the family ate it happily. David said that he always missed his family during his stay in Switzerland, and Frederick said that he was glad that his father had returned to everyone. However, when David mentioned that he would go to Yugoslavia soon, it aroused the dissatisfaction of Frederick and Karin.

David gave everyone a present from Switzerland at dinner. When everyone was busy opening presents, he went to a corner of the room and cried alone. When he returned to the outdoor, everyone said that they would give him an unexpected "gift" and blindfold him. It turns out that the three of them prepared a costume one-act drama "Art haunts me" to surprise David. He is the only audience. After the play, he praised it greatly. After a busy day, everyone is tired. Martin, Karin and Frederick went back to the bedroom to rest, while David stayed outside and sat at the table thinking.

Karin slept until midnight and heard voices again. She was awakened by a strange bird song. She got dressed, got out of bed, crossed the corridor and came to an empty room upstairs, with her ear pressed against the wall. At this time, the illusion of light appeared in her mind again. She fell on the ground as if listening to something, then stood up and went to her father's room. It's not even four o'clock in the morning. Father comforted her, helped her to lie in bed, and then continued to write.

The next morning, Frederick called his father out. When Karin woke up, she found that her father was not in the house, so she casually looked through what her father had written and found her father's diary in the drawer. It is hopeless to record her illness in the diary. She also found from her diary that her father had been secretly observing her symptoms and recorded the observation results in detail as the material for her writing. She felt that her father was taking advantage of her and was greatly influenced mentally. She went back to her bedroom, woke Martin up and told him that she had read her father's diary and knew that she had an incurable disease. Martin said that his father misunderstood him and assured her that no one had said that her illness was impossible to cure. However, after the blow, her condition deteriorated.

One day, David and Martin went shopping by boat, leaving Karin and Frederic alone at home. Before he left, David told Karin to take care of his brother and help him learn Latin.

Karin took Frederick to the empty room where she had been at night and told her brother that she saw many people waiting for the arrival of Jesus, and she was eager to see God with her own eyes. She told her brother that she was leaving Martin. She said that she had to choose between Martin and "another person", and she chose "another person". My brother knew that she was hallucinating again and suggested going to the beach together. Karin was so angry that she kicked her brother out of the room. Soon, she woke up from the illusion, walked out of the mysterious hut for her, took her brother to learn Latin, and made Frederick promise not to tell anyone what had just happened, because she said he was the only person she trusted in the world. Frederick agreed to his sister's request.

On the boat, David and Martin argued endlessly about David's diary. Both sides blamed each other, but both expressed their deep love for Karin. Then, the two argued endlessly about the authenticity of the writing, and Martin accused David of never writing a word. David felt very painful. He told Martin that when he was in Switzerland, he tried to commit suicide by car, but it didn't work. He said he had nothing to hide.

Karin and Frederick are walking on the beach. It's getting dark and it's going to rain. Suddenly, Karin disappeared. Frederick searched everywhere and finally found Karin in a broken boat by the sea. She was lying in the mud, hugging Frederick tightly, and they had sex in the storm.

When David and Martin returned to the island, Frederick told them that Karin's mental illness had relapsed and was very serious. They hurried to the boathouse to meet Karin. Karin admitted to her father that she had just done a very bad thing. She said it was not voluntary, but forced, because she couldn't control herself. David also opened his heart to Karin and apologized.

Martin called an ambulance helicopter to take Karin to the hospital for treatment. Martin accompanied Karin back to her room to pack. At this time, David looked everywhere for Frederick, ready to talk to him, but Frederick timidly hid.

Martin and Karin are packing in the room. Suddenly, Karin made an excuse to push Martin away, ran to the empty room again, and said to herself against the wall, "I see, I see … I can't leave." Martin found Karin and told her that there was no God and nothing.

When the ambulance helicopter arrived, Karin had a mental attack, made a scene and refused to go to the hospital for treatment. Martin was forced to sedate her before putting her on the helicopter.

Frederick watched his sister leave. At this time, David had a chance to be alone with his son and explain his views on love to him. He said that love proves the existence of God, and love is God himself. After years of estrangement, the father and son can finally talk to each other. Frederick finally said happily, "Dad and I talked."

Distinguish and appreciate

Bergman's trilogy of silence or trilogy of indoor drama (still in the mirror, light and silence in winter) created in the early 1960s marked a new stage of his artistic development: gradually getting rid of God and facing reality. If the father-son dialogue at the end of Byakki Smoker praises God as "love, all forms of love", it is somewhat optimistic, then in Winter Light, Bergman has lost his faith in religion, and in Silence, God has completely disappeared.

The original name of this film was Wallpaper, and later it was named Byakki Smoker, which was obviously related to religion. At the beginning of the film, a passage written by Paul to Corinth in the New Testament is quoted, among which the title is "Still in the Mirror".

Although the ending of "Byakki Smoker" gives people hope, the tone is still inseparable from Bergman's favorite theme: the loneliness and pain of human beings, and people can't communicate with each other.

The shooting location of the film is Faroe Island in the Baltic Sea, which is consistent with the overall atmosphere of the film. This is an isolated island, uninhabited, full of rocks, and the surrounding sea water is calm, with few waves. Here, you can't hear the roar of the sea, and you don't have the kind of turbulent ocean momentum that is full of Ma Benteng. It is this isolated silence that attracts Bergman. While he was struggling to find a suitable place, a friend mentioned Faroe Island. On a rainy day, he came to the island by ferry. He said: "I don't know why, I fell in love with this island at once. I think this is my dream scenery. " His artistic conception found "home" here, which made him excited. A few years later, he moved to the island to live permanently and reveled in this quiet and uncontroversial environment.

At the beginning of the film, Bergman used a large panoramic lens, from far to near, presenting all the only four characters in the film to the audience in a concise way. Within 10 minutes, the relationship between the characters, their respective occupations or situations, and the purpose of coming to the island have been clearly explained through pictures and short conversations. But it indicates the key plot of Karin's schizophrenia. This fact was later told to the audience not by words but by eyes: one of her eyes emerged from behind the quilt and stared at the distance. We only saw one eye, but her eyes told us everything. Bergman rarely uses "cinematic skills" to emphasize visual effects, but once used, the effect is very outstanding. For example, when David was having dinner with his family, he was scolded by his children and felt deeply guilty. Suddenly, under the pretext of taking a pipe, he left the outdoor dining table and began to cry on the indoor wall. At this point, his spirit is on the verge of collapse. He stretched out his arms at the window and looked like a cross from behind. Then, Bergman projected David's gray figure on the wall through photography, which seemed to be "falling apart". Here, the connotation revealed by the picture far exceeds the meaning of language. In Bergman's image world, people can only seek spiritual peace through repentance and atonement.

Karin and Frederic can't get warmth and fatherly love from their father. After their mother died, it was difficult for David, as a father, to communicate with his children, as if there was an insurmountable gap between them. When David came back from Switzerland, the gifts he brought to everyone were either inappropriate or heavy, which vividly reflected David's incomprehension and indifference to his family. Frederick and Karin wrote and performed a one-act play to welcome their father back. In the moonlight, David is the only audience in this "play in play" with Martin as the announcer. This play describes a conceited artist who has no courage to make sacrifices for love, but dares to tie the knot with the dead princess in another world. Obviously, the prototype of this conceited artist is David. By creating this short play, Frederick accused his father of being unwilling to sacrifice his future for love (love for family and children) and his bright future as a famous writer.

Although David felt deeply guilty, his strong desire to become famous prompted him to collect all kinds of materials for his creation by any means, including his daughter's illness, which further deepened the existing gap between him and Karin and Martin. Karin accidentally found that her father's diary recorded that there was no cure for her schizophrenia, and she was deeply desperate. Especially when she found that her father recorded her illness process and symptoms in detail as writing materials, she was greatly affected mentally, and she had a rebellious mentality, refused to have any contact with the real world, and hid in her own unique little world, a world full of fantasies and strange sounds. After listening to his wife's account of the diary, Martin became disgusted with his father-in-law. When he went out by boat with his father-in-law, on the boat, he accused his father-in-law of being indifferent to Karin's fate and only caring about his own writing. He condemned: "You are insensitive and completely abnormal", "You are always looking for a topic of writing: your daughter's mental illness. Very good theme! " "The most important thing you desire is to become a famous writer." David retorted and asked Martin, "Can you control your innermost thoughts forever?" "How many times have you wished Karin was dead?" "This is very logical. You know that her illness is hopeless, and you believe that there is no need to make both of them suffer. In this case, she is still dead. " Here, Bergman reveals the indifference between people in the modern capitalist society where money and reputation corrode people's souls through the mutual condemnation of Martin and David. Even so, the indifference of interpersonal relationships in society can be seen. The early 1960s was an important turning point in Bergman's artistic career: from "heaven" to "earth" and from "God" to "earth". Byakki Smoker was the beginning of this turning point, and his focus turned to the status and value of an artist in the real society. He goes deep into people's inner world to discuss people's weaknesses and depression, which is often pessimistic.

God is another theme that Bergman often touches on in his films. Before the 1960s, God had supreme authority in his films, which was sacred and embodied specific moral principles. But in the "Silent Trilogy" filmed in the early 1960s, God was no longer an idol, but gradually became the object of suspicion and even condemnation.

Bergman described God as cold and inhuman through the hallucinations and auditory hallucinations of Karin, the heroine of Byakki Smoker. In Karin's eyes, God became a "spider god" and an elusive shadow. When talking about this change, Bergman said: "My concept of God has gone through a development process, and the change began here (meaning still in the mirror) ... I think God is destructive, very dangerous and harmful to mankind. God unleashed the destructive power of human darkness, not the other way around. "

But in this film, Bergman has not completely lost confidence in God and still has hope. At the end of the film, God reappears as the embodiment of "love". Look at the following conversation between father and son:

Frederick: I can't live in this new world, Dad.

David: Yes, you can, son. But you have to catch something.

Frederick: Catch what? God? Give me a proof that God exists.

David: I can only give you a vague idea about my hopes. Everyone knows that love really exists in human society.

Frederick: Of course, this is a special kind of love!

David: All kinds of love, Frederick! Lofty and low, grotesque and beautiful. All kinds.

Frederick: So love proves the existence of God?

David: I don't know whether love proves the existence of God or whether love itself is God.

Frederick: So to you, love and God are the same thing?

David: This idea helped me when I was empty and desperate. Suddenly, emptiness became wealth, and despair gave birth to life. It's like probation, Frederick. Probation.

Frederick: Dad, according to you, Karin is surrounded by God because we all love her.

David: Yes.

In a movie, the views on life and God are so different and contradictory that it will naturally attract the attention and criticism of critics. In response to this criticism, Bergman said: "The reason is very simple. There is no emotional bridge between some hopeful information at the end of the film and the pessimism in other parts of the film. " This sentence may help us to analyze the inner contradictions of this great artist. Bergman observed the indifference between people from real life and gradually lost confidence in God's role as savior. But as a serious artist, he wants the world to be full of love in his heart and places the embodiment of love on God. Doesn't this contradiction between reality and ideal reflect the inner anguish of a great artist?