Ingmar Bergman RIP

Apparently peacefully, at home, at the age of 89.

From the last interview I saw with him he was happy and calm, and ready for his life and his work to end, so that’s not so bad. 

Obviously I’m sad – I don’t have any heroes any more, but he was up there in the next rank, whatever you call people like that. It does make me want to say a couple of things.

Firstly, in every single one of his movies that I have seen (and I’ve seen a good few) he never took his eye off the ball. By which I mean he always made something worthwhile.  I’ve never seen him bow to the pressure of the lowest common denominator. He could be lightweight, very funny, yet he was never trivial – he always aimed for big ideas and emotions. He kept it primal. He kept it clever. He kept it real.

That’s a lesson to us all.  In working as a pro screenwriter there is considerable pressure to do junk. Bergman served his apprenticeship in television, making hours of mass market tv and (apparently) soap commercials. Yet in all that he kept his vision – and only built on it as the years went by.

The pressure to do rubbish comes at you every day from the networks and the studios – ‘the audience won’t get it; you can’t say that, you’ll upset people; people won’t go there, don’t even try; that’s too wierd, people won’t like it…’

For whatever drove you to being a writer in the first place, you have to fight those pressures, even if only a little.

It can be done. You can get the good stuff in. Not every time, but you just have to carve out a corner of the episode or movie that you can make your own and defend it to the hilt. And the best bit of all is that I think a lot of the audience have given up on popular television and movies because they are ravenous for serious content. You will find those people in the end.

If you don’t try to do this, then you will go slightly crazy after a while. And if you don’t go crazy, then it means you have stopped caring. Which will end you as a good writer.

Finally, if you haven’t seen any of Ingmar Bergman’s movies, then why not have a look. Amit’s comments on The Seventh Seal (previous blog) are typical of the effect his work has on me, and a vast number of people.

You could do worse with an evening than try any of the following:

Fanny and Alexander. This is just the most complete work of cinema I have ever seen. It’s long, but unlike, say, Transformers, it earns every second. Says all you can imagine about life, has both ghost story and magic, baudy humour, joy and pain, tragedy, love, and hope – and an absolutely cracking story.

Summer With Monika. A simple, apparently slight piece, yet it’s full of wisdom. Two young people meet, fall in love, escape into their own magical summer, have a baby – and with the coming of Autumn things get harder. It’s simple, poignant, truthful, and the storytelling is phenomenal – it has space for the most transcendental summer moments, yet the emotional narrative moves along like an express train.

The Virgin Spring. Simple, shattering, sexually charged revenge drama. Charles Bronson eat your heart out, because this movie has heart, and mind, and real soul.