Through a Glass Darkly

Director: Ingmar Bergman

1961 / 90min / DCP

Harriet Andersson gives an arresting performance of the tragic cycles of sedation and mania as Karin, a schizophrenic woman on 24-hour leave from institutional oversight who, while visiting a remote island retreat with her novelist father (Gunnar Björnstrand), husband (Max von Sydow), and teenage brother (Lars Passgård), begins to lose her already slack grip on reality. Invested with a solemn majesty by cinematographer Sven Nykvist’s black-and-white photography and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Bergman’s lacerating film offers, among other things, a clear-eyed analysis of the troubling overlap between caregiving and exploitation.

Part of Ethics of Care