This film, the second in the "Through a Glass Darkly" trilogy, follows a day in the life of pastor Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Bjornstrand) as he confronts his dwindling faith in the face of the woman who loves him and a distraught parishioner's personal crisis.
Peter Cowie, in an essay on this film, explains how the work is about the search for connectedness. This seems, after even an initial viewing, quite apt. From the film's beginning moments we witness communication failure, as the all-too-familiar rituals of a Lutheran church service utterly fail to rise above the mundane for the few present parishioners. Cowie explains how the congregation, in going through the motions of Communion, not only fail to connect with God, but with each other as well.
A Crisis of Faith
Tomas, the church's pastor and the film's central focus, represents the culmination of this failure. His entire existence has become vapid, as he cannot bring himself to return the love of Karin (Gunnel Lindblom), a woman who gives up so much of herself for him, and neither can he offer convincing advice to Jonas (Max Von Sydow), a parishioner in need (leading, ultimately, to that character's suicide). Tomas no longer believes in the God whom he has dedicated his life to. He does believe in God's existence, but not in his ability (or, perhaps, willingness) to benefit Mankind, depicted by Tomas's utterance of Christ's famous last words on the cross, "why have you forsaken me?"
Redemption through the Human Condition
Yet, for all this doubt, for all this failure on Man's part and on God's, the film refuses, in the end, to fully accept this picture of sheer hopelessness that it has created. This beam of hope comes from an unlikely source in the form of Algot (Allan Edwall), the handicapped church caretaker. In conversation with Tomas in the film's final minutes, Algot speculates on the Passion of Christ, stating that he does not believe the physical torment of the crucifixion was Christ's most painful ordeal, but that, rather, his abandonment by his disciples, by all those around him and finally by God himself, must have been far harder to endure. It is then that the viewer realizes simultaneously with Tomas that it is in this, in the shared plight of the Human Condition, shared, too, with God-made-Man, that Mankind may find his connection with that which is greater, may find his faith.
Bergman's Warning
Just as in Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Bergman paints for his viewer a world of isolation, even amongst others, and of what seems insurmountable separation from God. Yet, Bergman does not allow the film to end without providing some glimmer of hope, some chance of finding ourselves, those we love (or ought to love), and God himself, even amongst the gravest of challenges. There is a warning embedded within Winter Light, a warning against such self-imposed isolation, against distancing oneself too far from those who will help, who will try and understand. Perhaps, had Tomas heeded this warning and taken the time to listen to Algot when the caretaker first approached him nearer the film's beginning, Von Sydow's distraught parishioner may have received more comforting words than he did, and found within them a reason to live, to reconnect himself with the human race.
