[roshiq]

The Virgin Spring (1960)

Finally very glad to see the most original tale of Craven's "The Last House on the Left" last night. And Bergman portrayed it by his unique delegate hand where faith collide with confusion & anger and the most merciful God's judgments shivered in the old war between the good & the evil.
The master filmmaker captured the tale in a genuine heartbreaking way. This is one of his most moving works I have seen so far, a film to be admired and pondered for a long time. One of the most outstanding scenes was when Tore (Max Von Sydow) wrestling with a tree that almost more than doubled than his height. He exercises it out of the ground so that he may whip himself with its leaves in a ritualistic fashion, as if to purify himself of the vengeance he plans to unleash. Tore is a man of deep faith and strict self-discipline who suddenly shocked both by the God who would allow such a tragedy to grief him and by his own wrongdoing, in savagely killing his daughter's murderers where even a young boy gets no mercy.
There was an interesting note when one of the farm hands explains at one point how the smoke from the fire finds its way up to the ceiling, but cannot go out through the opening into the free sky. The smoke doesn't know what's up there, he explains, so it stays indoors, trapped among what it does know. This could be an alternate viewpoint to the film's purely religious themes. Like all good works of art, there is no final, absolute answer. As in the final scenes when Tore made the promise to God that he'd built a church at the death place of his daughter....isn't that symbolize mankind's tired less belief & search for salvation in religion in a try to bury all the pains & restore the mercy & peace again & again in life?

>>: A+


Knowing (2009)

Decent time passing sci fi thriller.

>>: B-