I think you guys were watching a movie here instead of experiencing a film.

It's essential. The animal cruelty is not background. It's essential to understanding the meaningless cruelty that infuses this wonderful, if bleak, film. All I can say is make a connection symbolically with the way Andreas finds his puppy hanging and the swinging toy bear hanging from the car's rear view mirror at the end. It's not's Bergman's intention to "reveal" the killer. It could be anybody. "THIS time his name was Andreas Winkleman." We're all in this mess together.

This film is together with my two other alltime favorit films the most depressing and devestating films I've seen. In the world.

I disagree that The Passion is not essential. I think it is. It is a difficult film in many respects. But there is too much of value in the film to say it is below standard. One key element I would point to in understanding the film is the scene where Elis discusses his photography "hobby" with Andreas. "I don't imagine that I reach into the soul with these photographs. They only show an interplay of forces." As with Persona Bergman uses several, but different, devices to make clear this work is fictional. These include the opening title of L 182, apparently a reference to the production number of the film. More significant are the to my mind experimental interviews with the four principle actors. Many find these disconcerting and distracting, but I merely see them as an attempt to reflect the point of Elis's statement to Andreas, which I think is Bergman's point in The Passion - after conluding earlier in his career that film has limited value, but still has value, in exploring man's relation to God (or lack thereof), in this concluding film of the Island Trilogy Bergman is saying we cannot pretend that what are really filmic enterprises can truly reach into the soul. And yet, particularly with "the use" of excellent and committed actors, and as is somewhat the case with Elis's photos, we still achieve something of value in viewing the film. We see four main characters using different approaches to search for meaning in being with others, in love, and finding how limitations, both inside each, but also inside the others, place limits on what can be achieved. I would also add that the film is more thematic than plot driven, to be sure, and it is a mistake to look too much at it in narrative terms. It is in short perhaps bleak but really a heroic, if flawed, work in that respect. Add in the beautiful visuals and the context provided by the violent sub-plots and their anomic emptiness, and this film rates highly in Bergman's overall work.

Dear David and Sonia! The L 182 is not as exciting or mysterious as one might think. It's simply the technical production number of the film company, as Winter Light has L 136 and so on...keep up the good work and interesting discussions.

I don't think that your criticisms are entirely fair. For example, on the point of character development where you complain that characters don't learn or grow. I think that's entirely the point - one of the themes of this film is the cyclical nature of human suffering where we continue the same patterns of behaviour. Regarding the ambiguity and lack of closure - same thing. In life often there is no closure.

If Bergman wasn't trying to pull a Godard here, I'll be shocked.

The first 50 minutes were better than the last 50 minutes. Hence, the viewer is let down. Yet I think a meaningful film of relationships and human weakness. None of the four principal characters is 'whole', yet Eva is the most sincere and attractive. And Andreas is the most attractive male, yet his lack of self worth is his weakness. Eva and Andreas were meant for each other. And the beauty is that Bergman recognized that there would be no interest in continuing that story. The dead animals - a side story, as in reality, extraneous events happen outside our main interests. We can't ignore, them, but they are part of life. Hence Bergman's realism. It is disconnected, but that means it is more like reality. Think of De Sica's Italian Neo-Realism films.

didnt any movie critics ask Bergman what he intended by those butchering of animals?