The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

It snowed here on Thanksgiving, a shallow white dusting just enough to cover the fallen leaves, mud and brittle herbs of autumn. I had forgotten how much I love winter for its snow, and it struck me that perhaps my adulation of the bitter cold is because, by contrast, it makes the warmth and light of the house seem so much more protected and comforting. All this the day after I received my snowhoes…

I watched Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander over the long weekend, a film I haven’t seen for two or three years. What struck me most about it was how much an expert he is at manipulating color to reflect feeling. The grandmother’s house and the household itself are adorned in red, in varying shades, and feel warm, fairly safe and the kids seem sheltered from the moral pollution of adulthood. It’s contrasted with the house and household of the bishop, which is stone, stark, white, caged up and pent up, so much so that I found myself tensing during the scenes filmed there. So very little is done or said, he’s boiled everything down to its essence, and what remains is an opera of backgrounds and gestures and landscapes, which convey all of the meaning that is necessary. The dialogue can then become a philosophical wonder, something which really hasn’t been achieved by films from this country (well, maybe since Stanley Kubric).

Enough! I am usually not this much of a critic.

And what, Ingmar, in the end, did you decide about God? Or did the possibility that He might not exist frighten you sufficiently enough that you gave up thinking about it…?

As for myself, I claim agnosticism.