by Cláudio Alves

Ingmar Bergman is my favorite filmmaker of all-time. That being said, I'm aware of the difficult reputation his cinema has earned over the decades. As Nick Taylor wrote in his fabulous piece about Harriet Andersson, few directors have so masterfully captured the overwhelming pain of unhappiness as Ingmar Bergman did. In his films, God is either dead or a giant stony-faced spider, a monster intent on causing suffering to everyone, making for a cinematic cosmos where agony is the most universal experience of all. It's heavy stuff which justly earns the fame of depressing art, though I'd argue that there's more to Bergman's cinema than constant unbearable ache.

Just look at his 1957 masterpieces, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries…