7. Through A Glass Darkly (1961)
Described by Ingmar Bergman as a chamber piece whose characters mirror each other, Through a Glass Darkly deals with the psychotic breakdown of Karin, a young woman with intractable schizophrenia. She arrives on an island with her father David, her husband Martin and her little brother Minus. At first things seem to go well but it is all an act to pussyfoot around Karin's illness. She wakes up one night to the sound of a foghorn and hears voices behind peeling wallpaper. She goes to her father, who is a writer, and he puts Karin into his bed. Minus calls him out of the house and Karin rifles through her father's drawers. She finds a diary which reveals her father's callous curiosity as to the progression of her disease. This upsets Karin greatly. Karin tells Minus that she is waiting for God to appear behind the wallpaper. It is strongly intimated that she seduces her own brother. An ambulance is called for and Karin confesses her bad behaviour towards Minus and Martin to her father. She says voices made her look in his drawers and that she wants to stay in the hospital as she cannot stand living between two realities. Karin runs to the attic where Martin and David observe her. She tells them that God is about to appear from behind the closet door and she wishes to enjoy it. She moves towards the door in anticipation and then runs away screaming hysterically. After she has an injection to calm her down, she tells everyone that God appeared to her in the guise of a spider. She is whisked away by Helicopter to the hospital. It is a pivotal point in Karin's life that we meet her in the film. It looks like she must make the choice between reality and insanity and what sphere she wants to live in. But really, the dreadful power of schizophrenia and psychosis has irrevocably taken away any shred of sanity she has or any seeming choice in the matter. It is a terrible, terrible disease which chronically debilitates people who are forced to live in a world where they cannot take anything for granted. Trivial details are ominous, things start to distort and create new nightmares of their own. Karin's plight demonstrates this precisely and like she found in her father's diary, there is a sort of morbid curiosity in watching people slowly go mad. We, the viewers, look on at Karin in morbid fascination. But Bergman has eloquently rendered the tortures of incurable schizophrenia, so he should be lauded for its realism.