Minutes            7/12/04                                                                        Katie Heath

            Today in class Dr. Reimer passed out Assignment #2 as the introduction to the movie Through a Glass Darkly by Ingmar Bergman, a major European director who has had a large impact on the film industry. The summary of the film is as follows:

            The movie takes place at a family’s home on a coast. The family includes a mentally ill woman named Karin, her seventeen year-old brother, Minus, her husband, Martin, and the father of Karin and Minus. Karin has been in the hospital before for her illness, which is “relatively incurable.” Their father has been away trying to write a book, and he returns in the beginning of the movie explaining that he will be leaving again soon. This is the first implication in the movie that suggests any relationship problems within the family. The first scenes are shot outdoors where the family eats together. The father brings gifts to the others right after he disappoints them with news of his near departure. He immediately runs inside before his family opens the gifts. Bergman holds the camera outside of the room and lets us view from afar the father weeping. He does not let us in the room to get any closer to the father’s emotions. All the while the children open their gifts to find that they are for much smaller children, implying that the father has lost touch with their current lives and does not heed to the fact that they are grown now. The father comes out of the house and pretends that everything is okay. The children invite him to see the play that Minus has written. Karin and Minus act out a dramatic play called “The Artistic Haunting,” which is about a man who is asked to sacrifice life for love by dying in order to be with the woman he loves. Minus feels that the father might be offended by the play because it somehow suggests that a man is not willing to give up his own selfishness to love, but the father says that he loves the play.

            The next main scene takes place in Karin’s room when she and her husband, Martin are going to bed. We see the tension in the their marriage as it is obvious that Martin is wanting affection from Karin, but she seems to be suffering inside of herself too much to be sexual with her husband. She wakes up the next morning very early because her sickness makes her hear things. She goes to an empty room where the voices seem to be calling her. She has a physical and almost sexual experience in mid-air. She goes to see her father who is writing. He puts her back to sleep as if she were a little girl again, and then he goes out with Minus. While he is gone, Karin rummages through his desk and finds his diary. She reads that her illness is incurable, that her father desires to “note her gradual disintegration,” and “to use her.” She feels very hurt by this and goes to tell Martin. Martin goes fishing with the father and confronts him about the diary entry. Martin is angry that Karin is the subject of her father’s study. He tells their father that he is almost perverted in his insensibility and that he has all the words for his work but knows nothing about life. The father tries to explain to Martin about the innermost thoughts one has even if they sound messed up and not being able to control them. He even tries to unlock some of Martin’s innermost thoughts about Karin’s illness.

            While the men are on the boat, Karin and Minus are by the house. Karin is picking on Minus for a porn magazine he has. She teases him, and he gets mad. She is almost flirting with him. Minus then talks metaphorically about being shut in a cube in his life. Karin takes Minus to the empty room where the voices come from and tells him all about these voices. She speaks of another world, which is supposedly waiting for her and calling to her. She tells Minus that she is turning away from Martin because she is choosing to be in the other world. She then has a confusing argument with herself and with Minus about what of all that is real. She yells at her brother and tells him to leave. Then she follows behind as if nothing happened and warns Minus not to tell a soul all that he has just experienced and heard.

            The next main scene is when Karin runs to a desolate boat when the rain comes. She hides inside the boat, having an episode of some kind. Minus finds her in the boat and brings her water and a blanket. In the heat of her episodic emotions, she behaves incestuously with Minus. The father and Martin come in afterward. The others leave while she talks to her father alone. She decides that she does want to go back in the hospital. She cannot live in two worlds at one time. She confronts her father about the terrible things she has done. The father admits to sacrificing his family for his art. He says that he could never bear her illness because it is the same illness that her mother had. He explains how he “draws a magic circle and shuts out everything that does not agree.”

            Before Karin leaves she has another episode in the empty room upstairs where she thinks that she hears voices again. She believes that God is coming for her. The door opens, and she starts screaming hysterically. The men give her a shot as they try to get her downstairs. She calms down and explains that when the door opened she saw a spider trying to force his way into her. She says that she fought the spider, and that she has seen God. She leaves in a helicopter without saying goodbye. Minus closes the door behind her and cries in the corner. Somber music begins playing; it is the same music that is played at the beginning of the film.

            Minus talks to his father and says “Reality burst when I clung to Karin.” Together the two reflect on God and life. They ask each other whether proof of God is found in love or if love is God’s existence. They suggest that Karin is surrounded by God because her family loves her so much. Papa leaves the scene and Minus says out loud with a satisfied look, “Papa talked to me.”   The End.

            When the movie was over, the class filled in two questions. Dr. Reimer further explained Karin’s signs of flirting and teasing leading up to the incestuous moment in the boat with Minus. He clarified that the scene did involve some kind of sexual experience. We also discussed the isolation of the family’s environment and how that is purposeful to represent how isolated the characters feel in their minds. There is a lack of communication and understanding in their family, therefore the outside is to show this. The lack of an outside world underscores the idea of Minus’s cube entrapment and Papa’s circle.

            Questions for this movie are due on 7/13/04 as Assignment #2. Katie Heath