Tuesday

Ingmar Bergman died yesterday. Considering how he contested old and proposed new conceptions of death and the meaning of life, I think it would be wrong to reel out platitudes about his work. Yes, he was one of the greatest directors, perhaps my favourite, but that hasn't changed since last week. The man has died, and I didn't know the man. I always felt his writing was similar to my own, or to what I wanted my own to be, but that could as easily be wishful thinking rather than reality. Except for The Seventh Seal two Saturdays ago, I haven't seen his work for a while. His death will make people re-examine his films, which cannot be a bad thing. Personally, last night I picked up his book, Images: My Life in Film, and read a few extracts from it. I like to hope that he wasn't afraid of death and, at least when this book was written, it appears so: 'First you are, then you are not. I find this deeply satisfying... Everything is out of this world. Everything exists and happens inside us, and we flow into and out of one another. It's perfectly fine like that'. He also had something to say about directors, which seems instead to reveal the human condition rather than any particular occupation, and I'll leave you with it: 'Almost everyone has something or someone to blame. Not so with directors. They possess the unfathomable possibility of forging their own realities or fates or lives or whatever you want to call it. I have often found solace in that thought, bitter solace, and some vexation'.