Posted by Honore on August 5, 2007, at 11:02:48
In reply to Re: Ingmar Bergman, posted by Sigismund on August 4, 2007, at 16:38:19
Ozland -- finally I can rest! Definitely Sleeper. I can't imagine how I forgot -- it's always been one of my favorite Woody Allen movies. Although I also like "Love and Death" and some of the Annie Hall movies, especially "Manhattan." For one thing I like the images of Manhattan (the city); they really are the best ones in movies.
One of the lines I love in those movies is about hating the country because it's so quiet. I used to connect totally with that--I found the woods really frightening because they're so quiet and there's no one for miles-- something one never experiences in the city, and which usually signifies some sort of danger. But the noise in the city lately has become so deafening and shrill that it's become oppressive.
I also have been pulled deeper into despair and violent self-questioning, to the point of being in a lot of emotional (and even physical danger)-- but mostly in danger in terms of suffering-- by novels and books, and movies mostly about insanity or suffering or the older, more theoretical books describing schizophrenia, that I read while very vulnerable. People rarely question or remember the psychic damage that certain types of books and movies can do-- that literature is not all spiritually uplifting but can be corrosive-- not in terms of morality, or anything like that-- but merely that one can be pulled into an artist's evocation of disorganized or deeply disturbed states. Their beauty and power create an even stronger lure or compulsion to reimmerse oneself in the very thing one most dreads, or is threatened by-- and yet these very same things can be the greatest works. Novels by Dostoevsky had that effect on me and I could rarely finish them. It could be why I turned to lighter types of literature and movies and plays, out of anxiety at reexperiencing those feelings.
I'd very much like to see some Bergman movies, although the more benign and depressive, rather than the scary ones.
There was an article in the NY Times yesterday, about Bergman and Antonioni's differing approaches to religious questions that you might find interesting. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/04/us/04beliefs.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)
Thanks again, Ozland, for helping me out.
Honore
poster:Honore
thread:773398
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070726/msgs/774106.html