X

Art Cinema and Theology
Justin Ponder
Art Cinema and

Theology
The Word Was Made Film
Justin Ponder
Marian University in Fond du Lac
Fond du Lac, WI, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-58555-0 ISBN 978-3-319-58556-7 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58556-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948722
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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For Deanna
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the community of anonymous reviewers and editors who

improved my thinking throughout this process. The chapter on Ordet is
a modified and expanded version of an article published as “‘I Bid Thee
Arise!’ Reverse-Editing and Reversal Miracles in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s
Ordet” in Religion and the Arts (March 2012): 100–121. And the
beginnings of the chapter on Diary of a Country Priest appear in “‘All is
Grace’: Sound and Grace in Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest”
in Imaginatio et Ratio 4 (2015): 16–26.
I am grateful to John C. Lyden for professional encouragement,
support, and advice throughout the years, as well as to Lina Aboujieb
and Karina Jakupsdottir for taking a chance and providing helpful and
inspiring guidance along the way. I also want to thank Denise Guibord
Meister for her careful reading and thoughtful suggestions. Special grati-
tude remains for all the friends and family who gave hours of their lives
listening to me talk through this project, especially my father Darryl
Ponder and my mother Judi Schlesner.
Finally, I’d like to thank my wife Deanna Singh for her patience dur-
ing the many years of early mornings, late nights, and distracted days it
took to write this book. For her understanding, unwavering support, and
boundless love, I dedicate The Word Was Made Film to her.
vii
Contents
1 Introduction: The Word was Made Film 1
2 “All Is Grace”: Sound and Grace in Robert

Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest 25
3 “Life. Yes. Life.”: Editing and Miracles in

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet 67
4 “The Whole Earth Is Full of His Glory”: Lighting

and Suffering in Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light 115
5 “No One Must Know of This”: Close-up and

Heresy in Luis Buñuel’s The Milky Way 161
6 Conclusion: … And Dwelt Among Us 203
Index 211
ix
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 (47:34, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). The camera

(panning left) follows the Borgens’ carriage ride 77
Fig. 3.2 (47:37, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). The camera match cuts
to the mannequin at Petersen’s sermon before
panning left 78
Fig. 3.3 (27:11, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Inger exits to backstage
screen left 84
Fig. 3.4 (27:31, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Inger enters from backstage
screen right 85
Fig. 3.5 (1:27:00, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Morten exits screen left 89
Fig. 3.6 (1:27:25, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Morten enters screen right 90
Fig. 3.7 (2:01:47, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Johannes exits screen left 108
Fig. 3.8 (2:01:49, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Match on action has
Mikkel enter from screen right 109
Fig. 4.1 (43:22, Winter Light, Bergman, 1962). Lights rise
on Tomas 130
Fig. 4.2 (1:13:04, Winter Light, Bergman, 1962). Algot comforts
Tomas by the light of the desk lamp 148
Fig. 4.3 (9:19, Winter Light, Bergman, 1962). Tomas during the
opening Eucharist 155
Fig. 4.4 (1:21:00, Winter Light, Bergman, 1962). Tomas during
the concluding Sanctus 156
xi
xii List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 (11:11, The Milky Way, Buñuel, 1969). Close-up on

the mad priest 169
Fig. 5.2 (46:13, The Milky Way, Buñuel, 1969). Close-up on
the Inquisitor 178
Fig. 5.3 (1:28:07, The Milky Way, Buñuel, 1969). Close-up on
the priest who declares, “We must believe dogma.” 192
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Word was Made Film
Before the cleaving of earth from heaven, soil from bliss, and dirt from
air, the earth was without form and void. Before the carving of day from
night, morning from evening, and firmament from the waters, all was
darkness upon the face of the deep. Before the gathering of seas and the
drying of lands, the grasses from earth and the herbs from seeds, the
Spirit moved upon the face of the waters. Before the skies split seasons
into days and years, before the air divided fish, fowl, cattle, creeping
things, beasts of the earth, and man and woman—before Genesis and
before the divisions required for meaning and speech, there was oneness.
After the creation that required sundering, after the becoming that
required uncoupling, and after the definition that required distancing,
the darkness separated from the light. After the tree desired to make
one wise, after their eyes had been opened, after the brother’s blood had
cried from the ground, after the end of all flesh had come before him,
after the rain was upon the earth for forty days and forty nights, after
architects were confounded and their builders scattered abroad upon the
face of all the earth, there came witness. After those born of blood with
the will and flesh of man, there was one born of God, full of glory that
humans could behold, the glory begotten of the Father who is the full-
ness of grace and truth. After creation, he entered the world that he cre-
ated, and the world knew him not; even after he came unto his own,
his people received him not. And so the logos that inspired creation grew
incomprehensible to those it had created. Nevertheless, it is written,
“The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”
© The Author(s) 2017 1

J. Ponder, Art Cinema and Theology,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58556-7_1
2 J. Ponder
This passage from the Gospel According to St. John articulates the
mystery of Christ. Genesis details the moment where God spoke the
separations between light and dark, sea and land, and human and beast
that brought existence into being. But John suggests creation culmi-
nates in the instant when the universe reunites with its speaker, and
the distinction between the words that uttered flesh into life give way
to the moment where the flesh reconciles with the word. Here, God
became man, the divine became human, and the infinite became finite.
Dualistic faiths split the universe into light and dark, good and evil,
secular and sacred, but this verse links the word and flesh. According
to John, creatures fail to comprehend the Father’s reason for crea-
tion, so the Son dwells among them so he might reveal its meaning.
In this cosmology, spiritual knowledge relies on analogy. Christ repre-
sents God, the visible reflects the invisible, and sarx signifies logos. The
mysteries of the universe lie bare for all to see, and if believers wish
to know spiritual truths, they must analyze the physical representations
that dwell among them.
As Christianity holds that the word was made flesh so believers might
understand God’s will through Christ’s body, The Word Was Made Film
maintains that viewers might illuminate a movie’s conceptual themes
through its stylistic techniques. As sinews, hairs, and pores reveal some-
thing about the body, a few decibels of diegetic noise, seconds of cross
editing, watts of lighting, or frames of a close-up contribute to a film’s
central theme. At the same time, this project maintains that theoretical
controversies surrounding the word are essential to the flesh. For exam-
ple, broad surveys of ancient doctrine, Enlightenment theology, mod-
ern philosophy, and postmodernism situate a text’s central theme within
intertextual discourse. Therefore, this book relates the cinematographic
sarx and conceptual logos of particular films, considers close readings of
filmic technique alongside broad surveys of thematic issues, and explores
how minuscule elements of a single frame might suggest the rhetorical
structure of an entire text. Ultimately, The Word Was Made Film reads
the flesh of films to interpret the “word” that underpins them.
Scholars have analyzed particular elements to draw general conclu-
sions in different ways. Theorists have inspected narrow filmic conven-
tions, and theologians have connected broad religious themes. Film
studies provide the vocabulary for examining microscopic components,
such as sound, editing, lighting, and shot, while the field of religious
studies charts the path for recognizing macroscopic issues, such as grace,
1 INTRODUCTION: THE WORD WAS MADE FILM 3
miracles, suffering, and heresy. Both of these approaches have their vir-
tues, and this book merges film theory and theology to inherit the
benefits of both disciplines. Before embarking on this task, however, it
would be valuable to detail the history of film theory, survey the field of
theology and film, and situate The Word Was Made Film between these
disciplines.
The Flesh
One of the virtues of film studies is its attention to the “flesh.” From its
formalist beginnings to its identity politics, this discipline has bridged the
gap between filmic technique and ideological consequence, shown the
broad implications of specific devices, and detailed the political repercus-
sions of the slightest features. Throughout its history, this approach has
undergone many instantiations and splintered into different schools, each
providing particular ways to interpret cinema.
Some forms of film analysis concentrate on the technologies that
facilitate communication. Russian formalists sought an almost-scientific
account of how film conveys meaning, and their modern heirs analyze
how elements, such as mise-en-scène, focus, and camera movement,
affect audiences.1 Similar to formalism, semiotics develops a general
theory of filmic signs as some critics apply linguistic analyses of verbal
language to the audiovisual lexicon of movies. Other critics show how
narrative structures of particular films conform to “spheres of action”
that reappear over millennia of storytelling.2
Formalist theory examines how a film creates meaning, but psycho-
analytic approaches consider how a movie impacts viewers. For example,
some theorists show how formal techniques encourage viewers to objec-
tify women, others use Freudian thought to explore what happens in the
minds of filmgoers, and numerous anthologies solidify the importance of
psychoanalytic film theory.3 Despite their differences, all these psycho-
analytic analyses scrutinize the slightest detail, showing how the subtlest
elements of film influence human perception.
This concentration on film techniques also appears in Marxist the-
ory. Scholars from this broad approach investigate how movies trans-
mit ideology through shot duration, camera proxemics, and depth
of field. Some show how changes in cinematic conventions reflect
changes in social values, and others explore the ways in which film
questions hegemony by undermining filmic standards. Many detail
4 J. Ponder
how rewriting the rules of scene transition, causal plots, and sound
mixing reshape society, while peers challenge viewers to consider how
cinematic vocabulary interpolates audiences to view the world in hier-
archical ways.4
These Marxist approaches analyze how movies relate to classism, but
feminist theory considers how films relate to sexism. Some examine how
film stereotypes women, while others explore the social implications of
such stereotyping. From claiming horror movies subvert gender roles
to detailing how reading films closely can resist ideology, texts like these
show the long history in which feminist theory has critiqued patriarchal
culture by scrutinizing cinematic conventions.5
Another important school of film studies is queer theory, which
explores how cinema perpetuates and challenges heteronormativity.
Some survey the degree to which filmic conventions have represented
homosexuality throughout history, and others explore how the Motion
Picture Production Code’s moral guidelines forced filmmakers to use
subtle techniques to code the sexual identities of their protagonists.6
While many look at representations of gay characters, others examine
works by gay filmmakers. Investigating the history of lesbian and gay
filmmaking, charting how this industry produced unique aesthetic val-
ues, or chronicling how LGBT independent media culture challenges
heteronormative movies, queer theory scholars connect film to sexual
politics.7
As these approaches have become some of the most important in film
theory, scholars have applied them to some of the most significant direc-
tors in cinema history. For example, scholars analyze Robert Bresson’s
formal techniques or employ semiotic theory to examine his system of
signs.8 Some conduct psychoanalytic readings of his oeuvre or chronicle
how he engages with Marxism. Others consider feminist explorations of
Bresson’s style or read homoeroticism in his close-ups.9
Film studies also examine the work of Carl Theodor Dreyer. Some
chart the formal qualities of the auteur’s technique, while others con-
trast the filmmaker’s methods with the semiotic context in which he
operated.10 Particular works consider psychoanalytic concerns in the
director’s camera movements or claim Dreyer’s long takes are disem-
powering.11 Some scholars consider the way this auteur’s mise-en-scène
might challenge patriarchy, and other critics examine how these works
threaten heteronormativity.12
Many also apply these approaches to Ingmar Bergman. Studying

the moviemaker’s formal conventions, examining how his films fit into
archetypes, or connecting stylistic features to psychoanalytic issues, crit-
ics have interpreted the auteur’s métier through multiple angles.13 At the
same time, others have considered how Bergman’s films relate to poli-
tics, feminism, and queer theory in ways that demonstrate theory’s long
engagement with this director.14
Finally, the major schools of film studies also cover the work of Luis
Buñuel. Formalists have concentrated on his editing, and semioti-
cians have linked his films to the esperpento tradition.15 Psychoanalytic
scholars analyze his surrealistic imagery, while Marxists examine his
political content.16 With feminist writers exploring the auteur’s gen-
der politics and queer theorists discussing sexual dissidence in his films,
Buñuel proves to be another director who has received meticulous atten-
tion from film studies.17
While theory covers these auteurs, some of their films require more.
Formalist, semiotic, psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, and queer
approaches reveal interesting aspects in work by these auteurs, but some
of their works invite interpretations from other discourses. Bresson’s
films critique capitalism, ridicule patriarchy, and glorify homosocial-
ity, but they also portray rebels, wretches, donkeys, and priests as they
struggle with grace. Dreyer’s oeuvre lambasts oppression, sides with
women, and exposes hypocrisy, while also concentrating on saints,
witches, and miracle workers. Most acknowledge Bergman’s spiritual
upbringing before moving on to political readings, but religious issues
remain vital to many of his films. Finally, Buñuel arranges a flurry of
surreal images that seem incoherent, though his montages include so
many Christian references that they would benefit from theological
interpretations.
While the value of film studies is its attention to the “flesh” of a
movie, scholarship on Bresson, Dreyer, Bergman, and Buñuel leaves
plenty of room for more. Because many of their films contemplate
Christianity, examinations of these works involve explorations of this reli-
gion. Because the filmographies of these auteurs converge on theological
issues, investigating their identity politics means researching the religious
identities central to them. Because close readings of these audiovisual
texts require broad surveys of their theological contexts, film studies ana-
lyzes the flesh but could also examine the word.
6 J. Ponder
The Word
While scholars in film studies inspect the flesh, those in religious studies
analyze the word. For decades, writers in the field of religion and film
have considered the relationship between movies and theology, making
great strides to show the connections between scriptures and movies.
During its short existence, this school of criticism has developed differ-
ent approaches to recognize the holy behind the profane, the religious
within the entertaining, and the theology of film.
One perspective that argues movies warrant theological interpretation
belongs to apologists. Instead of branding a film blasphemous or virtu-
ous, scholars in this camp argue that cinema merits respect. These crit-
ics formulate a “theology of culture” and claim that religion and society
inhabit each other.18 History abounds with examples of Christians who
have insisted the movie house defiles their faith, while others argue that
popular forms of expression can teach believers. For millennia, theolo-
gians have accepted the religious value of the high arts, such as music,
painting, and literature, with apologists asserting that movies deserve
similar attention because filmic texts can reveal spiritual truths.
While the apologist approach interprets cinema in general, another
interprets the religious work of auteurs in particular. To legitimate theo-
logical ventures into movies, some turn to the work of respected direc-
tors like Federico Fellini, Eric Rohmer, and Roberto Rossellini. These
acclaimed filmmakers depict spiritual issues, and theologians weave
auteur movies into Christian discourse. Some examine a selection of films
from La Strada to My Night at Maud’s alongside a sampling of theologi-
ans from Barth to Bultmann.19 Others argue that the rise of cinema sig-
nals a shift in the zeitgeist, noting that postwar society proclaims God’s
death while auteur cinema resurrects Christian values.20 Rather than con-
duct close readings of individual films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Luc
Godard, or François Truffaut, auteurist criticism often explores the con-
nection between cinema and spirituality, using film in particular to con-
sider postwar spirituality in general.21
Auteurists survey a broad swath of art cinema, but scholars from
the populist approach open the field even wider. The former concen-
trates on foreign religious art films, but a second wave of scholars dis-
cuss blockbusters.22 They apply “highbrow” concepts like Christology,
eschatology, and ethics to “lowbrow” movies. Some find Pauline doc-
trine in films such as Star Wars, Forrest Gump, and Babe while others
create conversation between Hollywood and Christianity via Gladiator,

E.T., and The Godfather.23 As this approach illustrates ancient concepts
through contemporary films and difficult arguments through accessible
movies, the populist technique has provided scholars a way to use film
to explain theology. One fundamental work in this line of thinking is
Gerard Loughlin’s Alien Sex, a text which has had a profound effect on
the field of theology and film—as well as on The Word Was Made Film
because it demonstrates a way to connect broad theological concepts and
particular cinematic devices to articulate a concept of “cinematic the-
ology.” Most interesting is the way Loughlin explores the relationship
between film and religious concerns to analyze the theology of popular
culture itself. 24
While populists employ movies to understand Christianity, cultural
studies scholars examine popular films to interpret pop culture. Such
thinkers consider how secular films still imply religious values, and these
critics challenge readers to recognize how nonreligious films espouse
sacrificial love, social justice, and human dignity to an almost religious
extent.25 As they connect movies such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest, Blade Runner, and Saving Private Ryan to Christianity, these stud-
ies make the deeper argument that even movies that seem to reject reli-
gious traditions retain spiritual values, and blockbusters that might not
profess Christianity can still articulate the beliefs of the culture that pro-
duces them.
As scholars interpret film to analyze culture, others survey filmgoers to
examine the film experience. Many interview audiences about their expe-
riences, considering how viewers turn a movie viewing into a spiritual
encounter, while others show how audiences even go so far as to make
a film hierophantic, despite what filmmakers intend.26 In these ways,
scholars who contribute to reception studies do not analyze the religious
content of film as much as the individual perception that makes a film
religious.
As these approaches have become some of the most important in
theology and film, scholars apply them to some of the most influential
auteurs in film history. For example, before turning to blockbusters such
as Apocalypse Now, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or Jurassic Park,
John R. May concedes that Bresson marked “a turning point in the
interpretation of religious film.”27 He confesses that films by this master
challenged simplistic divisions in the conversation between theology and
film that split the world between pro-Christian epics and anti-Christian
8 J. Ponder
propaganda. With films that depict faith without extolling it, Bresson’s
work changed the way theologians analyze film, and this change proves
significant even to scholars who concentrate on the flicks packing the
multiplex.
Theology and film also gestures toward Dreyer’s importance. While
criticizing scholars for making implausible links between religion and cin-
ema, Antonio Sison invites them to excavate scholarship from the ’70s
that analyze this master.28 He notes that the style of most religious mov-
ies remains conventional, but points out that Danish director Dreyer
crafted a technique of his own, one with seven-minute takes, mini-
mal set design, and actors who didn’t face each other during dialogue.
Applying this kind of stark modernism to religious themes, the auteur
married cinematic style and theology. For creating this kind of cinematic
theology, Dreyer even receives acknowledgment in examinations of more
popular films, such as Amistad, Apocalypse Now, Hotel Rwanda, and The
Motorcycle Diaries.
Bergman also stands on the periphery of theology and film. In “The
‘Religious’ in Film: From King of Kings to The Fisher King,” Peter
Hasenberg contrasts the secularism of American cinema with the reli-
gious engagement of its European counterpart. He notes how Bergman
discussed the role of religion in his childhood and points out how
Christianity appears in his films, before moving on to suggest that the
director’s work encapsulates a time period where moviegoers struggled
to reconcile the Almighty with Auschwitz.29 In this example as well
as many others, the famous auteur—who has devoted more films to
Christianity than perhaps any other director—receives mention even in
discussions of American movies.
Finally, Buñuel gets recognition from critics in theology and film. Like
his colleagues, he collects bylines for his contributions to a contempo-
rary discipline that otherwise ignores him. Ambros Eichenberger per-
forms one such tip of the hat when he claims, “Great filmmakers like
Luis Buñuel have suffered from the ‘clerical’ mentality that is ready to
control and to condemn rather than to analyze, to engage, and to under-
stand.”30 Such passages ignore Buñuel’s work and concentrate on his
biography as a victim of ecumenical censorship and a warring tale that
exemplifies why theology and film must distance itself from “questiona-
ble past experiences with certain organs of the churches.”31 Scholars have
pressed their peers to analyze more overtly religious movies and examine
cinematographic devices, and Buñuel’s filmography contains movies that
most directly confront Christianity through a unique style. Nevertheless,

theology and film has regulated Buñuel to its mausoleum, sealed in place
to receive eulogies without any actual examination.
Despite the tendency to acknowledge European auteurs from the
1950s and 1960s, only to concentrate on popular American movies
from the twenty-first century, theology and film can benefit from exam-
ining these old masters. Many insist cinematic theology must analyze
cinematographic style, and others note that Bresson is one of the most
unique cinematographers in film history. Some criticize scholars in the
discipline for appropriating non-Christian movies with Christian pur-
poses, but Dreyer focuses on religious content so much that his work
almost requires theological exploration. Likewise, Bergman’s movies use
the stunning mise-en-scène, camerawork, and lighting that come from
an auteur who confronts spiritual issues through a unique style, and
Buñuel’s films about religion use disorienting montage, unsettling close-
ups, and anachronistic costuming to confuse viewers and challenge their
beliefs.
The value of theology and film is its attention to the “word” of a film,
but examining Bresson, Dreyer, Bergman, and Buñuel could benefit
scholarship in this discipline. Because this field seeks to explore religion
in film, it remains incomplete without explorations of these auteurs who
return to Christianity again and again. These directors rely on uncon-
ventional flourishes, giving scholars the chance to appreciate how cine-
matographic devices imply alternative theologies. Those in the discipline
reference these filmmakers in sprawling overviews of spiritual discourses,
but the work of these auteurs commands detailed examinations of their
cinematic style. While broad surveys of theological contexts require close
readings of these audiovisual texts, religious studies analyze the word,
but they could also examine the flesh.
Bresson, Dreyer, Bergman, and Buñuel

If film studies analyze the flesh but overlook the word, and religious
studies concentrate on the logos but deemphasize the sarx, merging the
two approaches could yield interesting results. Formalist interpreta-
tions explore cinematography but miss theological issues, and apologist
investigations scrutinize religion but neglect style. Marxist, feminist, and
queer theory use close reading but attach less attention to Christianity,
while populist, cultural, and reception studies inspect spirituality but give
10 J. Ponder
less weight to filmic particulars. If this is the case, one could combine a
film scholar’s ability to analyze a movie’s flesh and a theologian’s apti-
tude to evaluate its word.
Methods that blend these strengths are important when it comes to
interpreting filmmakers that make the word into flesh. Directors such as
Bresson, Dreyer, Bergman, and Buñuel fall between the cracks of film
studies and religious studies because they confront theological content
that is overlooked by the former with cinematic form that is neglected
by the latter. Because they depict religious subjects in a “spiritual style,”
theological interpretations of cinematographic elements seem appro-
priate when interpreting their work. They demand religious studies to
understand their content, but they also compel film studies to appreciate
their form.
A few texts have sought to read both word and flesh by relating spe-
cific audiovisuals to grand theologies. For example, in Transcendental
Style in Film, Paul Schrader dissects work by Bresson and Dreyer, and he
connects the particular and the general by linking things such as mise-
en-scène and icons, editing and predestination, or camera angle and
meditation in one of the first and most in-depth analyses of the relation-
ship between style and spirituality to which The Word Was Made Film
is greatly indebted.32 Beyond this work, Holloway’s Beyond the Image
joins the visual elements used by auteurs with the religious features
foregrounded by Christianity in a work that bridges the divide between
Christian film viewers and humanist filmmakers.33 Thirdly, in Cinema,
Religion, and the Romantic Legacy, Paul Coates connects art cinema and
theology, showing the way in which the visual form of this genre reveals
much about the spiritual values of its culture.34
While these texts often ground centuries of theology in the filmic fea-
tures of a single frame, they are broad. Schrader, Holloway, and Coates
concentrate on the style of film, but they address a vast array of mov-
ies. Schrader leaps from the Catholicism of Bresson to the Protestantism
of Dreyer to the Buddhism of Yasujirō Ozu to analyze the “transcen-
dental,” but he weaves too many religions, movies, and artistic periods
together to define what that term means. Similarly, Holloway provides
a dizzying survey of so many films across so many years that he has time
to do little more than list every movie that has dealt with Christianity.
Because Coates references everything from The Curse of the Cat People
to Dostoevsky to The Matrix to Rilke, he intermingles romanticism and
religion more than he interconnects film style and theological concepts.
While some cover multiple directors, others concentrate on single

auteurs. For example, Joseph Cunneen’s Robert Bresson: A Spiritual Style
in Film merges grand issues, such as Jansenism, postmodern religion,
and youth culture, with specific elements, such as close-ups, sound, and
editing.35 Similarly, Tom Milne’s The Cinema of Carl Dreyer connects
the director with his religious views and acknowledges the far-reaching
theological issues that appear in Dreyer’s feature films while concen-
trating on particular frames with meticulous scrutiny.36 Arthur Gibson
begins to analyze how style informs content in The Silence of God:
Creative Responses to the Films of Ingmar Bergman as he remains broad
enough to discuss existentialist, Lutheran, and mystic contexts but keeps
close enough to examine the cinematographic features that comprise the
auteur’s actual texts.37
While these texts narrow their focus to a single filmmaker, they still
cover a wide range of films. Cunneen’s study of Bressonian cinema jams
thirteen features into 200 pages, which wades through each film without
diving into any one. The same applies to Milne’s examination; because
Dreyer produced fewer films than Bresson, a book on the Danish direc-
tor allows for longer chapters on each, but the more movies this text
covers, the thinner the treatment. Books on Bergman and Buñuel skim
the surface because these prolific filmmakers made dozens of movies, and
given the sheer number of movies these auteurs released, works that try
to address them all must become sweeping overviews.
To connect theology and film in convincing ways, The Word Was
Made Film strives to be narrow. Film studies can improve examina-
tions of Bresson, Dreyer, Bergman, and Buñuel by acknowledging the
religious aspects of their films, and theology might advance analyses of
religious films by paying more attention to these auteurs. Even those
rare texts that have explored the transcendental style of a single director
could benefit from covering fewer films in greater detail. Persuasive argu-
ments about cinematic style require more concentrated analyses than a
text that focuses on an individual filmmaker would allow, and compelling
bridges between a particular shot and a specific theology demand that
more monographs address fewer films.
Beyond narrowness, linking theology and film requires specificity.
Scholars have placed Bresson’s broad theological concerns in general
conversation with Christianity, but scholarship on the director has yet
to pair his exploration of grace in general with charisological discourse
in particular. Platitudes abound regarding the auteur’s ascetic style,
12 J. Ponder
predestinationism, or mystical art, but more convincing connections

between his cinematographic vocabulary and the study of grace would
be helpful. Rather than linking the French filmmaker’s broad narrative
themes with the grand philosophies of Jansen, Pascal, and other thinkers
who influenced French culture, theological analyses of Bresson require
detailed links between particular cinematographic elements and specific
theories regarding grace.
The same goes for Dreyer. Scholarship contains many references to
how he depicts miracles in unique ways, as scholars associate his lum-
bering camera movements and drawn-out takes with predestination.
These interesting but uninvestigated claims place his slow style beside
Calvinism, but studies could go beyond simply inferring these relation-
ships. To flesh out these connections, one must survey different theolog-
ical stances on marvels and show how various elements of Dreyer’s work
espouse or contradict them.
Scholarship on Bergman could also improve with greater particular-
ity. Passages teem with sweeping generalizations about how he expresses
atheism, agnosticism, or nihilism, but these terms could be defined more
fully. Parenthetical asides claim that his movies consider the death of
God, but more could investigate how aspects of his filmography relate to
particular theologies. His corpus mostly struggles to reconcile the sub-
lime with suffering in ways that contend with theodicy, so scholarship
on Bergman might survey theodicians or theodicial concepts or at least
show how his films voice different theodicies.
Finally, scholars issue grand statements about Buñuel’s theological
import and note the ways he tackles heresy, but they could provide more
detailed examinations of Buñuel’s heresiology. They might chronicle the
thinking of Docetists, Nestorians, and Monarchians, but narrow treat-
ments of specific sects spiral into broad generalizations about theology.
Most claim he praises nonconformity or scolds the orthodox, but such
explorations must go beyond analyzing the director’s position regarding
heretical issues to analyze what his style suggests about the nature of her-
esy itself, scouring theological history and scrutinizing the auteur’s work
to determine how plot, symbolism, close-ups, and editing represent dif-
ferent arguments regarding heresy.
This book seeks to realize these possibilities by combining the formal
analyses of film studies with the theological approach of religious studies.
To make this link, it provides close readings, because surveying enough
theological arguments about grace to interpret how Bresson represents
grace calls for more than a thirty-page chapter. Chronicling how characters
articulate different opinions about miracles in Dreyer’s work requires more
than a ten-page section. Connecting enough theological, philosophical,
and fictional views on suffering to interpret what Bergman’s films suggest
about God’s benevolence demands more than a few paragraphs; and link-
ing the interpretations of heresy with the cinematography of Buñuel war-
rants more than a footnote. To connect theological concepts from 2000
years with individual frames from two-hour movies, this project links close
readings of filmic flesh with broad surveys of religious word, and to facil-
itate an approach with these conflicting demands, it poses the following
premises about film:
Premises
1.
Film concentrates on a theme. The plots of Bresson, Dreyer,
Bergman, and Buñuel meander more than those of their
Hollywood counterparts, but their narrative texts still focus on
central issues. These character-driven stories might concentrate
on psychology, disrupt causal plots, and cover a myriad of issues
more than most blockbusters, but these films focus on certain top-
ics more than others. Bresson’s characters discuss will and grace
enough that charisology becomes a central theme of his movies,
and Dreyer’s figures debate miracles enough for thaumatology to
emerge as a controlling purpose of his films. Bergman’s protago-
nists contemplate suffering enough for theodicy to surface as a the-
sis for his work, and Buñuel’s archetypes raise heresy enough for
heresiology to be one of his ultimate concerns. Because even these
ambling plots gravitate toward a subject, they show that even films
with the loosest narratives remain thematic.
2.
Film dialogue surveys different opinions regarding a theme. As
movies concentrate on an issue, they chronicle various assertions
regarding that concept: In Bresson’s work, characters debate grace;
in Dreyer’s, they disagree over miracles; in Bergman’s, they argue
about suffering; and in Buñuel’s, they fight over orthodoxy. These
films concentrate on certain themes, and they sample many opin-
ions regarding those topics through moments of conversation.
Auteurs might excise propaganda, but their characters do not. In
these films, the voice of God doesn’t roar from a burning bush
to tell viewers what to think, but discussions articulate the many
14 J. Ponder
things they could think. As different lines within an exchange

debate the theme, a film catalogs the multiple approaches one
could take on that subject.
3. Film dialogue cites discourse. Different characters might assert
opinions, but those positions are not unique. Particular lines might
represent the beliefs of a character, but the assertions of fictional
figures resonate with the arguments of historical thinkers. These
passages can relate to quotes from philosophers, theologians, or
artists, or they might resemble a certain treatise, sermon, or scrip-
ture. Either way, these lines of dialogue suggest different writings.
For example, Diary of a Country Priest’s Torcy emphasizes will in
ways that resemble Pelagius, and Ordet’s doctor discusses miracles
with assertions that match those of Newton. Winter Light’s Tomas
wonders if the absence of God permits all action with a tenor that
parallels Sartre, and the various historical figures that appear in The
Milky Way recite the words attributed to their nonfictional sources.
When dialogue surveys different positions regarding a theme, it
also cites historical arguments concerning that topic.38 As it places
fictional characters in conversation and their contributions refer-
ence historical arguments, film places the theological positions of
thinkers from different time periods in the same scene. When mov-
ies assemble old arguments in these ahistorical ways, they make it
possible to explore new issues, debates, and opinions.
4. Film suggests arguments about its content. Characters articulate
their arguments with words, but films imply theirs through tone,
and one can determine a film’s values by examining the tone that
it uses to depict various assertions. Because fictional works do not
document factual encounters between various theological asser-
tions, they cannot be objective. Acting out fictional events that
have not happened, these movies go beyond representing reality
to present new realities. To analyze the rhetorical structure behind
these cinematic universes, the viewers can scrutinize moments of
editorializing where the text goes beyond chronicling the actions of
real people and starts evaluating those characters. Because film con-
veys meaning through so many audiovisual elements, it becomes
difficult to portray characters neutrally. Whether through sight
or sound, story or style, film depicts some positively and others
negatively. Some receive favor; others disdain. Whatever the case,
when films place characters in a debate, movies treat their opinions

in different ways.
5. Film favors certain arguments through characterization. Instead
of telling viewers what to believe, narratives let characters voice
different arguments. Characters state what they think through
textual assertions, but film exposes its presuppositions through
contextual factors. For example, in Bresson’s Diary of a Country
Priest, the priest of Torcy tells his protégé to fortify his will, but
the film depicts him as a disgruntled clergyman more concerned
with getting his way than with helping others. He insists on hard
work, but the fact that he mistreats others suggests his toiling
has been for nothing. Here, dialogue represents what a figure
thinks, characterization taints who a character is, and one’s ethos
can prove or disprove what she thinks more than anything she
says. If a film portrays a person as likable, it might make their
ideas seem likable; and if a movie depicts another as distasteful,
it casts their views in an unfavorable light. In this way, a movie
might appear to endorse opinions if they come from confident,
sincere, and peaceful figures, and it may appear to undermine
beliefs if they come from arrogant, deceptive, or erratic ones.
Ultimately, the structure of narrative cinema encourages viewers
to affirm the opinions of positive characters and negate the views
of negative ones.
6.
Film validates claims through plot. Once characters express an
argument through dialogue, they become the physical represen-
tation of that philosophical position. What happens to those rep-
resentatives suggests the validity of their beliefs, and the fate to
which the film subjects these agents implies much about the worth
of their views. Characterization shades what figures say with who
they are, but plot mitigates what they say against what happens to
them. If a narrative rewards characters with desirable experiences,
their ideas seem worthwhile, but if it punishes characters with disa-
greeable ones, their views seem useless. For example, in Dreyer’s
Ordet, Inger claims many little miracles happen every day, but
when she dies and a big, rare marvel resurrects her, irony disproves
her assertion. With this kind of event, what happens to a figure can
contradict her ideas, and plot can favor the claims made by charac-
ters that enjoy positive experiences.
16 J. Ponder
In addition to narrative elements, such as dialogue, characterization,

and plot, movies can also promote certain arguments through filmic ele-
ments. This fact leads to another set of premises.
7.
Films favor assertions through sound. Film is an audiovisual
medium that commands both the eye and the ear. Talkies allow
characters to speak their beliefs into existence, but movies place
other sounds alongside dialogue. A character may declare their
worldview verbally, but a film might editorialize on those beliefs
aurally. In Diary of a Country Priest, the curé and countess debate
grace as the priest presses her to repent, and during this exchange,
the grating of a rake clawing the yard leaps onto the soundscape.
To appraise this dialogue, one must analyze the noises that sur-
round it, and as the priest discusses grace with the countess amidst
the scratching of dead leaves, the gardener’s clatter becomes a met-
aphor for the priest’s argument. While the landscaper scrapes refuse
aside so new grass can grow, the minister prunes the countess’s
soul so she might see the sun. Presuming that raking away death so
life can emerge is a positive thing, it would seem the sound of that
grating is beneficial, and if this favorable noise coincides with the
priest’s dialogue about grace, it seems the film represents his views
favorably. Ultimately, characters state their arguments through dia-
logue, but one can analyze how sound comments on the words of
characters.
8.
Film privileges arguments through editing. Characters voice
opinions through dialogue, but film represents their conversa-
tions through different splices, transitions, and shot durations.
Convention dictates that characters obey the 180-degree rule,
transitions move from wide shots to closer ones, and takes cut
every four to six seconds. Deviations from these standards are
unusual, and unconventional cutting often occurs for extraordi-
nary purposes. Having characters walk behind the camera empha-
sizes the camera’s physical placement in the room, cutting between
scenes with close-ups disorients viewers, and forcing audiences
to endure long takes creates a glacial pace. Dreyer’s characters
assert different opinions about miracles, but his style represents
those claims in various ways. For example, in Ordet, Morten uses
dialogue to dispute wonders, but that dialogue unfolds in an
extraordinarily long take. He rejects miracles in a minutes-long

shot that drags the film to an anemic pace, and the sluggish tempo
that conveys his views suggests his thoughts lack vigor. In this way,
films can comment on the arguments of their characters through
different editing techniques.
9.
Film commends certain stances through lighting. Cinema has
a longstanding tradition of associating light with goodness and
dark with evil. Halos illuminate saints to signify their holiness, and
shadows befall villains to represent their depravity. When protag-
onists descend into despair, cinematography casts them in black-
ness, but when they receive a glimmer of hope, lighting envelops
them. These filmic conventions establish a value system, and the
way a movie lights characters suggests how it values them. In
Bergman’s Winter Light, Tomas struggles with doubt between one
service and the next. As he moves from Mittsunda to Frostnäs,
he declares many things about the goodness of God in different
lines of dialogue and also under various kinds of lighting. With
each statement about the benevolence of the Almighty, the parson
articulates a different argument about the point of pain, and with
each floodlight and shadow, the film evaluates those assertions.
The views that Tomas articulates in radiance seem enlightened,
while the opinions he confesses in darkness seem blinded, and this
lighting scheme that casts certain assertions in blackness and oth-
ers in brightness provides a kind of commentary on the beliefs of
characters.
10. Film extols particular theologies through shot length. On the one
hand, long shots can make figures appear standoffishly distant or
comfortably far, passively small or confidently removed. On the
other hand, close-ups can make characters seem intimately near or
intimidatingly close, aggressively powerful or welcomingly attrac-
tive. Buñuel’s The Milky Way varies shot length for satirical pur-
poses. Because a close-up of an orthodox cleric might make him
seem oppressively large, a tight shot could make his dogma seem
tyrannical. At the same time, filling the frame with the face of a
heretic as he wishes salvation for all might make his heresy appear
to be compassionate. These instances show how scholars can ana-
lyze dialogue to determine the arguments of characters, but one
might also examine shot length to interpret the film itself.
18 J. Ponder
The Word was Made Film

This book explores the relationship between cinematic flesh and
Christian word, and it examines how that connection dwells in specific
films. Each case study scrutinizes a different movie, but each shares a
similar methodology. The following chapters divide into sections that
pair film characters with theologians, showing how the former reso-
nates with the latter. Then each section considers how narrative elements
depict that dialogue in flattering or unfavorable ways, moving on to illus-
trate how one cinematic aspect represents that character’s assertion. If
certain figures articulate theological arguments and films privilege them,
movies might favor their claims.
This project pursues this task through four chapters and a conclu-
sion. Chap. 2, “‘All is Grace’: Sound and Grace in Robert Bresson’s
Diary of a Country Priest,” explores what the film’s soundtrack sug-
gests about divine will. Many claim the auteur’s set design, editing,
and dialogue exemplify Jansenism, but his sonic mixing might also do
something more. When characters declare arguments regarding the rela-
tionship between desire and fate, their statements resemble those articu-
lated by Pelagius, Camus, Jansen, Lacan, Irenaeus, and Milbank. Some
suggest one must foster will, reject hope, submit to predestination, make
peace with longing, return to nature, or find grace in faith communities.
Regardless of what these characters articulate, sound complements, con-
tradicts, and complicates what they say. Diegetic noise mocks self-deter-
mination, musical score undermines will, and voice-over interweaves
the human community required for mercy to exist. While most theolo-
gians focus on the relationship between God and the individual, sound
in Diary of a Country Priest suggests grace is a gift exchanged between
people.
Chapter 3, “‘Life. Yes. Life.’: Editing and Miracles in Carl Theodor
Dreyer’s Ordet,” asserts that the film foregrounds wondrous experience.
As various characters articulate different beliefs about wonders, different
editing styles represent these figures. When these characters extol various
theologies, their ideas reverberate with those articulated by Augustine,
Origen, Hume, Spinoza, Newton, C.S. Lewis, and Badiou. During these
moments of representation, the 180-degree rule shatters, crosscutting
detaches, and seven-minute shots bore audiences. Each of these devices
comments on the arguments that characters articulate, casting some as
supernatural, disconnected, or lifeless. Ultimately, Ordet concentrates on
unconventional editing techniques to resurrect conventional ones. The

film revives reverse editing in ways that assert the miraculous connection
between the worker, the object, and the witness of miracles. The movie
relies on single takes that divide people, but its final moments use reac-
tion shots that relate them. In doing so, editing advocates Alain Badiou’s
concept of the intersubjective “evental” site. If Ordet privileges a stance
on marvels, it is one that links people who wait together for an event
without the guarantee that one will ever occur.
Chapter 4, “‘The Whole Earth is Full of His Glory’: Lighting and
Suffering in Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light,” analyzes how the film uses
light to examine God’s silence. When characters discuss anguish, they
sound like Augustine, Kant, Leibniz, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Nietzsche,
Barth, and Hauerwas, and lighting portrays these figures in different
ways. Doing everything from staring at sunshine to lurking in a shadow
to standing in candlelight, these characters articulate theologies under a
special glow, and cinematography casts their thinking in a certain light.
Some inhabit the dark where they cannot see, and some are blinded by
luminescence. A few have the endurance to brave the shadows, while
fewer have the courage to light the way for others. In the end, the film
privileges those who leave the comfort of their sunshine and head into
the singeing radiance needed to enlighten peers. This lighting criticizes
explanations for torment that concentrate on subjective suffering and
condones those that focus on intersubjective communities seeking to
alleviate anguish. Overall, elements from chandeliers to candlelight extol
the fragile light made by humanity that can light the darkness even when
the Lord’s sun has set.
Chapter 5, “‘No One Must Know of This’: Close-up and Heresy in
Luis Buñuel’s The Milky Way,” examines how the film relates tight shots
and heresiology. While La Voie lactée recounts different takes on heresy
that resemble those held by Origen, Irenaeus, Walter Bauer, Helmut
Koester, Karl Rahner, Harold O.J. Brown, Tertullian, and Slavoj Žižek,
tight shots comment on the characters that articulate these views. When
religious figures proclaim doctrine, close-ups make them appear foolish,
and when heretics declare their creeds, tight shots make them seem mis-
guided. In both cases, camera proxemics mock any character who makes
truth claims. Undercutting the orthodox and heretical alike, cinematog-
raphy in La Voie lactée advocates certain theological stances regarding
Christianity less than it reveres a particular attitude concerning human
perception. These close-ups disparage characters who claim to know the
20 J. Ponder
truth and invite viewers to appreciate the unknowable. At the same time,
these tight shots also criticize neutrality. The film’s best characters act
by following a set of claims without insisting those claims are true. This
commitment without truth claims rejects dogmatic fanaticism as well as
solipsistic neutrality. Ultimately, close-ups in The Milky Way prevent audi-
ences from knowing the whole picture, press them to embrace ambigu-
ity, and push them to act without guarantee.
The Chap. 6, “… And Dwelt Among Us,” explores the logical implica-
tions of these chapters. After analyzing audiovisual elements to determine
what they suggest about theological arguments, this chapter interprets the
style of these films in particular to draw more general conclusions. With
unconventionally lush soundscapes, extended shots, exaggerated light-
ing, and disorienting close-ups, these movies explicitly challenge viewers
to question their individual powers of perception. Rather than overtly
striving for the verisimilitude that creates an accessible dream world, these
films fragment solitary perspective and construct universes that rely on
many viewpoints. Through these experimental techniques, these movies
press audiences to view the world in a way that articulates interdepend-
ent worldviews. Ultimately, the style of these films imply that reading the
flesh can reveal the word but only through the intersubjective conversa-
tion one conducts with those who dwell among us.
Notes
1. Viktor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique,” in Russian Formalist Criticism:
Four Essays, ed. and trans. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis (Lincoln:
U of Nebraska P, 1917/1965), 3–24; Sergei Eisenstein, “Dickens,
Griffith, and Film Today,” in Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, ed.
and trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1949),
195–256; Victor Perkins, Film as Film: Understanding and Judging
Movies (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972); David Bordwell, Narration
in the Fiction Film (London: Methuen, 1985); Robert Stam, Subversive
Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism and Film (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1989).
2. Christian Metz, Film Language: A Semiotics of Cinema, trans. Michael
Taylor (New York: Oxford UP, 1974); Peter Wollen, “North by North-
West: A Morphological Analysis,” Film Form 1.1 (1976): 19–34; Colin
MacCabe, “Realism and the Cinema: Notes on Some Brechtian Theses,”
in Contemporary Film Theory, ed. Antony Aesthope (London: Longman,
2014), 53–67.
3. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16.3

(1975): 6–18; Christian Metz, Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Imaginary
Signifier (London: Macmillan, 1982); Ann E. Kaplan, ed., Psychoanalysis
and the Cinema (New York: Routledge, 1990).
4. Sylvia Harvey, May ’68 and Film Culture (London: BFI, 1978); Jump
Cut: Hollywood, Politics, and Counter-Cinema, ed. Peter Steven (New
York: Praeger, 1985); Jean-Louis Baudry, “Ideological Effects of the
Basic Cinematographic Apparatus,” Film Quarterly 28.2 (Winter 1974–
1975): 39–47.
5. Women in Film Noir, ed. Ann E. Kaplan (London: BFI, 1978); Issues
in Feminist Film Criticism, ed. Patricia Erens (Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 1990); Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chain Saws (Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1992); bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze,” in Black
Looks (Boston: South End Press, 1992).
6. Gays and Film, ed. Richard Dyer (London: BFI, 1984); Vito Russo, The
Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Closet (New York: Harper & Row,
1987).
7. Richard Dyer, Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film (London:
BFI, 1990); Martha Gever, John Greyson, and Pratibha Parmar, Queer
Looks: Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Film and Video (New York:
Routledge, 1993).
8. Tony Pippolo, Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film (New York: Oxford,
2010); Amédée Ayfre, “The Universe of Robert Bresson,” in Robert
Bresson (Revised), ed. James Quandt (Toronto: TIFF Cinematheque,
2011), 39–54.
9. Jean-Michel Frodon, “The ‘Being There’ of the Physical World and the
Ejaculatory Power of the Eye,” in Robert Bresson (Revised), 187–202;
Brian Price, Neither God Nor Master: Robert Bresson & Radical Politics
(Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2011); Lindley Hanlon, “Sound as
Symbol in Mouchette,” in Robert Bresson (Revised), 395–412; Gary
Indiana, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” in DVD edition of Pickpocket (New
York: Criterion, 2005).
10. David Bordwell, Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (Berkeley: U. of California
Press, 1981); P. Adams Sitney, “Moments of Revelation: Dreyer’s
Anachronistic Modernity,” in Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision
in Cinema and Literature (New York: Columbia UP, 1990), 53–80.
11. Raymond Carney, Speaking the Language of Desire: The Films of Carl
Dreyer (New York: Cambridge, 1989); Robin Wood, “Carl Dreyer,” Film
Comment 10.2 (March–April 1974): 10–17.
12. Dreyer, ed. Mark Nash (London: British Film Institute, 1977); Frieda
Grafe, “Spiritual Men and Natural Women,” in Dreyer, ed. Mark Nash
(London: British Film Institute, 1977): 76–81.
22 J. Ponder
13. Paisley Livingston, Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art (Ithaca:

Cornell UP, 1982); Birgitta Steene, “Archetypal Patterns in Four Ingmar
Bergman Screenplays,” Film Comment 3.2 (Spring 1965): 68–78;
Bruce F. Kawin, Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and First-Person Film
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978).
14. Maria Bergom-Larson, Ingmar Bergman and Society (New Jersey,
N.J.: Tantivy Press, 1978); Marilyn Johns Blackwell, Gender and
Representation in the Films of Ingmar Bergman (Columbia, SC: Camden
House, 1997); Daniel Humphrey, Queer Bergman: Sexuality, Gender, and
the European Art Cinema (Austin, TX: U. of Texas Press, 2013).
15. Paul Begin, “Buñuel, Eisenstein, and the ‘Montage of Attractions’: An
Approach to Film in Theory and Practice,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies
83.8 (December 2006): 1113–1132; Diane M Almeida, Esperpento
Tradition in the Works of Ramón del Valle-Inclán and Luis Buñuel
(Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 2000).
16. Gwynne Edwards, The Discreet Art of Luis Buñuel: A Reading of His
Films (Boston: Marion Boyars, 1982); Linda Williams, Figures of Desire:
A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film (Urbana, IL: U. of Illinois Press,
1981); Peter William Evans, The Films of Luis Buñuel: Subjectivity and
Desire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Raymond Durgnat, Luis Buñuel
(Los Angeles: U. of California Press, 1990); Ian Christie, “Buñuel against
‘Buñuel’: Reading the Landscape of Fanaticism in La Voie lactée,” in Luis
Buñuel: New Readings, eds. Peter William Evans and Isabel Santaolalla
(London: British Film Institute, 2008), 128–142.
17. Caryn Connelly and Juliet Lund, “Happy Sadist or Latent Feminist?:
Un Buzzzñuel Mexicain,” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture
21 (2002): 233–249; Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla, Queering Buñuel:
Sexual Dissidence and Psychoanalysis in his Mexican and Spanish Cinema
(London: I.B. Tauris, 2008).
18. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964).
19. Ronald Holloway, Beyond the Image: Approaches to the Religious
Dimension in the Cinema (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1977).
20. Ernest Ferlita and John R. May, Film Odyssey: The Art of Film as Search for
Meaning (New York: Paulist Press, 1976).
21. Neil P. Hurley, Theology Through Film (New York: Harper, 1970), 8.
22. S. Brent Plate, Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the
World (New York: Wallflower, 2008), xi.
23. Robert Jewett, Saint Paul at the Movies: The Apostle’s Dialogue with
American Culture (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993); Robert
Jewett, Saint Paul Returns to the Movies: Triumph over Shame (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); Robert K. Johnston, Reel Spirituality: Theology

and Film in Dialogue (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006).
24. Gerard Loughlin, Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004).
25. Michael Paul Gallagher, “Theology, Discernment and Cinema,” in New
Image of Religious Film, ed. John R. May (Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward,
2000), 151; Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz, Theology and
Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide (Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2008); Explorations in Theology and Film: An Introduction, eds. Clive
Marsh and Gaye Ortiz (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997). New Image of
Religious Film, ed. John R. May (Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward, 2000).
26. Jonathon Brant, Paul Tillich and the Possibility of Revelation through
Film (New York: Oxford, 2012); Clive Marsh, Cinema and Sentiment:
Film’s Challenge to Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004); Sheila
J. Nayar, The Sacred and the Cinema: Reconfiguring the “Genuinely”
Religious Film (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).
27. John R. May, “Introduction,” in New Image of Religious Film, viii.
28. Antonio D. Sison, Screening Schillebeeckx: Theology and Third Cinema in
Dialogue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 6.
29. Peter Hasenberg, “The ‘Religious’ in Film: From King of Kings to The
Fisher King,” in New Image of Religious Film, 44–45.
30. Ambros Eichenberger, “Approaches to Film Criticism,” in New Image of
Religious Film, 9.
31. Ibid.
32. Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Boston:
Da Capo, 1972).
33. Ronald Holloway, Beyond the Image: Approaches to the Religious
Dimension in the Cinema (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1977).
34. Paul Cotes, Cinema, Religion, and the Romantic Legacy: Through a Glass
Darkly (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003).
35. Joseph Cunneen, Robert Bresson: A Spiritual Style in Film (New York:
Continuum, 2003).
36. Tom Milne, The Cinema of Carl Dreyer (St. Mary: A.S. Barnes, 1971).
37. Arthur Gibson, The Silence of God: Creative Response to the Films of
Ingmar Bergman (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1969).
38. This kind of citation doesn’t imply intention. A monologue from a twen-
tieth-century character might echo writing from an ancient theologian,
but this resemblance doesn’t mean an auteur deliberately smuggled in
doctrine through dialogue. At the same time, because decades separate
arguments published in the 1990s from scripts released in the 1950s
doesn’t mean the two can’t relate. The assertions of theologians who
24 J. Ponder
died millennia before these directors shot these movies as well as those
born long after these films met the screen can still provide helpful lenses
through which to view these films. Rather than prove an auteur tried to
voice a theologian’s argument through a character’s dialogue, it is suf-
ficient to show a historical concept resonates with a fictional text. Instead
of falling prey to the intentional fallacy and attempting to prove directors
purposefully connected a line of dialogue with a passage of theology, it is
enough to show how the two intersubjective discourses overlap regardless
of the intentions of any individual subject.
CHAPTER 2
“All Is Grace”: Sound and Grace in Robert

Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest
The young priest of Ambricourt (Claude Laydu) served cruel parishioners

and aided hostile foes.1 Faithful in his duties, he grew purified by
these torments, but as his humility increased, so did the cancer that
brought him to his deathbed. Despite this demise, he musters the last
of his strength to survey his wondrous life. Regardless of his failures, he
reserves his final words to declare, “What does it matter? All is grace.” So
ends Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest, a 1951 masterpiece that
focuses on the spiritual life of this abused clergymen.
The film’s long production history began 15 years earlier with
a novel by Georges Bernanos, a French author who explored how
Roman Catholicism, monarchism, and bourgeois ideology intersected
after World War I. In 1926, he published his first novel, Under the Sun
of Satan, before going on to publish The Crime in 1935. The follow-
ing year, he published Journal d’un curé de campagne, a text written as
a series of diary entries from an unnamed priest as he tries to serve a
new congregation that he finds inexplicably antagonistic. This epistolary
collection of disjointed chapter-like sequences provides little context,
background, or foreshadowing, offering the stark and surprising twists
of fate that resemble life as it is lived. Depicting the interior experiences
of a priest through the narrative techniques of realism struck a unique
chord with readers and earned the novel the Grand Prix du roman de
l’Académie française and a place on La Revue des deux Mondes’ list of
twelve best novels.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58556-7_2
26 J. Ponder
Bresson set out to adapt the novel in ambitious ways, trimming the
written text down significantly and honing in on certain events and
characters.2 What remains in his film is a story that concentrates on the
young priest’s attempts to serve a parish that dislikes him and to preserve
his faith against an onslaught of misfortunes. Diary of a Country Priest
opens as he introduces his village and archives the chores that comprise
his daily life. Through narration, he admits that he struggles with head-
aches and stomach pains and can digest nothing more than bread and
wine. He suggests this ascetic diet fortifies his soul, but the villagers gos-
sip that his drinking plunges him into alcoholism. Parishioners ignore,
rebuff, and openly criticize him until the curé seeks advice from his men-
tor, the priest of Torcy (Adrien Borel). This elder doesn’t encourage the
novice as much as he scolds him, chastising his protégé for being too
sensitive and egalitarian while insisting he should be more stringent and
authoritarian.
The young priest agrees to take greater control of his parish but finds
himself powerless against raucous cabarets, indifferent students, and apa-
thetic congregants who skip mass. To make matters worse, the only peo-
ple who pay attention to him at all seem to wish him harm. Séraphita
excels in his catechism class, but she also pulls cruel pranks at his
expense. Miss Louise (Nicole Maurey) is the only person who attends his
services, but she writes threatening letters warning him to leave the vil-
lage. Finally, Chantal (Nicole Ladmiral), the count’s daughter and Miss
Louise’s charge, visits him more than any other character but seems to
do so for no other reason than to shake his confidence and plot against
him.
In the wake of this hostility, the priest’s health worsens. When he
finally visits Dr. Delbende, the physician sympathizes with him, claim-
ing the young man is a gentle soul who will suffer much among the
unfeeling villagers. Nevertheless, he encourages Ambricourt to face life’s
absurdity without any hope for justice, God, or redemption. Considering
Delbende’s atheistic courage, the priest suffers a crisis of doubt before
resolving to remain faithful in his duties even if he has faltered in his
faith. This resoluteness proves short-lived, however, when the curé learns
that Delbende has died by his own rifle. Villagers call the death an acci-
dent, but Ambricourt can’t help but wonder if the doctor killed himself.
Torcy confirms his suspicions, saying Delbende couldn’t get over the fact
that he had lost his faith, a revelation that makes the priest struggle with
his own all the more.
2 “ALL IS GRACE”: SOUND AND GRACE IN ROBERT BRESSON’S … 27
The moment the curé decides to fortify his beliefs, however, Chantal
tells him that her father is having an affair with Miss Louise and that
her mother, depressed for years over the death of her young son, seems
indifferent to the despair the scandal causes. Trying to help this desper-
ate daughter, the priest tells the countess (Rachel Bérendt) that she must
pull herself out of depression for the sake of her suicidal daughter. The
countess rejects this chastisement, insisting she will never obey a God
that has taken a child from her, but Ambricourt tells her if she doesn’t
repent, she may damn herself to a hell that is eternally separate from the
son she longs to see. Confronted with the priest’s humble persistence,
the countess resignedly says The Lord’s Prayer with him as she relin-
quishes her bitterness and accepts the call of grace.
Overjoyed, the priest leaves the countess, feeling as if he has finally
reached the population that he has always wanted to serve, but before
he can celebrate, he receives word that the countess has died. Rushing
to her deathbed, he fears the mourners will blame him for her death;
these fears are confirmed when the canon (Gaston Séverin), the count’s
uncle and the priest’s superior, asks the curé to recount his conversa-
tion with the countess. During this visit, Ambricourt learns that Chantal
overheard his exchange with her mother—claiming he caused the distress
that eventually killed her—and is pressuring her father to investigate the
case. The priest confronts Chantal about her lies, but she simply gloats
about getting her governess fired. He tries to reason with the count, but
the aristocrat threatens him for meddling in the affairs of others. After
experiencing one obstacle after another, the priest retreats to his rectory
and his diary where he falls into despair and considers suicide.
The next morning, Torcy visits Ambricourt and scolds him for being
so sensitive, but after sinking so low, the protégé now feels convinced
that nothing can tear him from his “chosen place in eternity.” The men-
tor recognizes that his pupil is in a state of grace, bows to his authority,
and asks for his blessing. Emboldened by this episode, the young curé
tries to take these benedictions out into the world, meeting with one
parishioner after another, but his sickness returns, causing him to faint in
the woods in the middle of the night. Awakened by lamplight, he finds
Séraphita kneeling over him, cleaning his face so the villagers won’t think
that he passed out from drinking too much. She lights his path and sends
him on his way, one of the first acts of kindness he has received during his
stay. The next morning, as he packs for a trip to the city to visit another
doctor, Chantal visits to provoke him about his plans, but she tires of
28 J. Ponder
her own antagonism and asks him how he was able to get a person
as stubborn as her mother to repent. When she asks if he has some
secret, he replies that it is a lost secret that she will receive and pass on to
others no matter how hard she tries to damn her soul.
After dooming Chantal to receive grace, the priest receives a bit of
his own, bouncing from one stranger to another and accepting one
kindness after the next. When he walks the many miles to the city, the
priest receives a motorcycle ride from Olivier, a soldier and nephew of
the count, who encourages him to ignore his family’s pettiness. When
the curé falters from his long journey, he receives a simple cup of coffee
from a restaurateur that reinvigorates and consoles him. When he learns
that he has terminal cancer, he receives a warm bed from Louis Dufrety
(Bernard Hubrenne), an old friend who dropped out of the seminary to
start his own pharmacy. When he struggles to face his imminent death,
the priest receives comforting words from Dufrety’s partner, a woman
(Yvette Etiévant) who cares for the apothecary but refuses to marry him
so that he will one day be free to reenter the priesthood.
After receiving these gifts, the priest feels inspired to give one final gift
of his own, and he clutches Dufrety, saying they must talk. During the
discussion, Ambricourt convinces the pharmacist to give him absolution
and to meet with Torcy. After writing his final journal entry celebrating
the fact that he has reconciled the apostate and the dogmatist, the young
curé lets his pages fall to the floor and stares into the distance before
the camera fades to black. The screen rises on a typewritten letter from
Dufrety to Torcy before transitioning to an image of a cross’s shadow. In
voice-over, Torcy reads what Dufrety has written regarding Ambricourt’s
final moments. Taking inventory of a life full of failures and a vocation
riddled with shortcomings, the priest concludes that none of his works
matter because “All is grace.”
The film opened in 1951 to critical acclaim, going on to eventually
win the Venice International Film Festival’s Grand Prize and the Prix
Louis Delluc, solidifying Bresson’s reputation as one of the world’s most
innovative auteurs. In addition to the creativity he showed in adapting
Diary of a Country Priest from novel to film, Bresson earned prestige as
a director because the film explored such complicated issues. Instead of
depicting the physical struggle between antagonists and protagonists, he
sought to represent the spiritual struggles within an individual. Because
Bresson focused on this kind of religious content, critics began con-
centrating on how he portrayed the life of grace. For example, Mirella
Jona Affron claims the auteur crafts plots that disempower protagonists
and forces them to walk “the unfathomable way of grace.”3 Roger
Greenspun notes that Bresson focuses on minutiae to suggest triviali-
ties bear “the outward signs of some inward grace.”4 According to Susan
Sontag, he deploys “zero-acting,” elliptical editing, and ensemble casts
to replace individual liveliness with “spiritual lightness.”5 Despite its abil-
ity to stifle, intimidate, and deter, this austere style also makes it possible
to represent what André Bazin calls cinema’s first “phenomenology of
salvation and grace.”6
In inspecting what Bresson’s style suggests about these issues, many
claim the auteur’s technique resonates with Jansenism. The director’s
jump cuts accentuate the universe’s mystery, close-ups that glorify trivial
things foreground God’s immanence, and surprising plot twists empha-
size destiny’s inscrutability. Therefore, Bressonian cinema resembles
Jansenist theology in that both focus on “the radical hiddenness of God,
at once present within yet absent from the world we perceive and thus
able to be recognised only by those destined from all eternity to do so.”7
The similarities between this style and this worldview have led to what
Brian Price calls “the Jansenist chorus about the nature of grace itself in
virtually every discussion of Bresson’s work.”8 During this refrain, some
claim the director’s ascetic style asserts predestination. For example, Paul
Schrader argues that no act in Diary of a Country Priest succeeds “with-
out the aid of Grace.”9 Others claim Bresson’s style rejects Jansenism as
Michel Estève does when he argues that calling the director a Jansenist
is “a gross misinterpretation” because his heroes resign to celestial
benevolence less than they “save themselves by accepting their existential
responsibilities.”10
Despite the longevity, frequency, and fervency of this debate, it is
plagued by generalities. Raymond Durgnat claims scholars too often
brand Bresson a Jansenist “only by a very vague association.”11 Similarly,
Cunneen argues that film scholars have discussed theological terms such
as “grace” with “misleading over-simplification.”12 Writers have made
sweeping remarks regarding Bresson’s possible faith in passing, tag-
ging Diary of a Country Priest as Jansenist with a footnote or reject-
ing its fatalistic qualities with a parenthetical statement. Both sides of
this debate have connected theology and film implicitly, but neither has
yet to link them explicitly. Even when more direct examinations have
appeared, scholars have addressed the Bresson-Jansen connection as an
aside, but they have yet to devote an entire analysis to it. The following
30 J. Ponder
seeks to rectify this shortcoming by applying the conceptual history of

grace to a close reading of Diary of a Country Priest. Doing so, this
chapter aims to answer Durgnat and Cunneen’s call for detailed examina-
tions of formalistic elements of the film and nuanced treatments of theo-
logical complexities.
To analyze how Diary of a Country Priest portrays the word of grace,
one can examine how the film uses the flesh of sound. The crowning
feature of Bresson’s style is its leanness, and Tony Pipolo claims that the
chief element of that leanness is sonic palate.13 The director utilizes aural
elements to replace visuals, avoids pictorial redundancy, and condenses
cinema, but the auditory landscapes that Bresson creates also carry spir-
itual import. As he adapted Bernanos’s novel, the auteur put his unique
mark on the text by adding an element the book did not have at its dis-
posal: a world of chirping birds, roaring engines, and clanging bells that
could coexist with dialogue in ways they could not on the written page.
Also, he collaborated with Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, the film composer
he had worked with on Les Anges du Péché (1943) and Les Dames du Bois
de Boulogne (1945), to provide a soundtrack that would demonstrate
the protagonist’s spiritual evolution through musical accompaniment.
Finally, Bresson takes advantage of filmic sound by using voice-over,
giving the protagonist opportunities to describe events as they happen
to him in ways that create an interesting tension between what is por-
trayed on the screen and what Ambricourt narrates. Given this extensive
lexicon of noise, score, and voice-over, James Quandt claims, “Bresson’s
use of sound is unique, and one of the most admired and analyzed in all
cinema” because it constitutes “a kind of theology.”14 While this theol-
ogy of sound is significant to Bressonian cinema in general, it becomes
especially important to Diary of a Country Priest because this movie
addresses religious issues more directly than any of the director’s other
films. Keith Reader claims this fact is especially true in regards to the way
the film represents grace, using sonic elements as “an outward sign of an
inner grace.”15 To consider how Bresson’s style ties to auditory features
and employs them to externalize grace, the following will analyze how
Diary of a Country Priest uses noise, voice-over, and music to represent
divine mercy.
All in all, this chapter examines grace, one of Diary of a Country
Priest’s central themes, by analyzing sound, one of the movie’s primary
techniques. It also interprets what characters say about absolution by
considering what sonic landscapes suggest about divine mercy. Because
scholars have called Bresson’s style Jansenist, Catholic, and atheistic, this
chapter will examine what audible features in Journal d’un curé de cam-
pagne suggest about providence, mercy, and fate. In doing so, it finds
that when Diary of a Country Priest makes the word into flesh, sound
complicates the concept of grace in many interesting ways.
“Keep Order All Day Long”: Pelagius and Torcy

Many ancients feared Christians would exploit grace so they could
commit evil. For example, Pelagius, the second-century Greek theolo-
gian, worried that believers often indulged sins because they assumed
God would forgive them, and he suspected that people emphasized
grace so they could follow disgraceful impulses. Contrary to those who
claim God absolves any Christian who repents, Pelagius argued that the
Almighty extended grace once by giving the law, and the faithful must
exercise enough self-control to keep the commandments on their own.
According to the theologian, many depended on God’s clemency to
pardon the sins they committed, but he believed people should exert
enough self-discipline to avoid sinning altogether. Contradicting those
who emphasized God’s mercy, Pelagius claimed, “Whether we will, or
whether we will not, we have the capacity of not sinning.”16 With such
statements, he claimed others focused on the grace of God so much they
rendered effort irrelevant, but he suggested one could overcome iniquity
through sheer will.
Pelagian views appear in Diary of a Country Priest when Torcy gives
advice that exalts human will. The film begins with Ambricourt survey-
ing his menial tasks and pastoral duties in a small village that seems indif-
ferent to him. He boasts that he fasts on nothing but bread and wine,
believing that this asceticism will strengthen him, but his rigorous diet
doesn’t shield him from criticism. Mr. Fabregars (Léon Arvel) argues
over the cost of his wife’s funeral and accuses the priest of taking advan-
tage of the poor, reproaching the young curé for living comfortably.
These accusations wound Ambricourt so deeply that he visits Torcy, his
mentor, for encouragement, but instead of reassuring him, Torcy criti-
cizes the young man even more, labeling him one of the “young raga-
muffins” too afraid to be “men of the church, leaders of parishes, real
masters.” The protégé considers Fabregars’s criticisms, but Torcy says he
should have expelled the widower. Ambricourt suggests leaders should
listen to their peers, but his advisor claims authorities should command
32 J. Ponder
subordinates. The young priest tries to extend grace to Fabregars, but

Torcy says he should exercise power because one must summon the will
to exterminate the devil and demand obedience to keep what he calls
“order all day long.”
With this conversation about maintaining order, scholars note this
mentor suggests Ambricourt should exert his will. For example, John
Gerlach explores how the film uses sound to depart from the novel,
noting that characters work like foils to accentuate the priest’s spiritual
development. One such character, Torcy, embodies a kind of religious
dominance that the protagonist rejects. While the curé encounters dis-
order, the elder promotes structure as a synonym for mercy. The for-
mer experiences frustration because he accommodates the viewpoints of
others, but the latter insists that priests must dispel dissenters. Because
the mentor rejects the compassion of the other, Gerlach concludes that
Torcy is an ironic character that encourages myopic goals.17 The teacher
pushes his pupil to command a force he doesn’t have, and he drives the
young priest to impose his will on others.
While Torcy advocates self-exertion, sound exposes Ambricourt’s
powerlessness in many ways. For starters, diegetic music exposes his
helplessness. Just seconds after the protagonist resolves to obey his men-
tor and keep order, he doubts his ability to do so. Just moments after
leaving Torcy, the young priest begins narrating his thoughts about the
village cabaret called “The Families’ Ball,” and admits he wants to end
the event but fears speaking out. With this confession, Ambricourt fails
to act on his resolutions, execute the simplest tasks, or press through
difficulties. Although the protagonist has promised Torcy that he will
impose order, the narrator admits to viewers that he is too afraid to do
so. After this concession, the screen fades to black before the sound of
an accordion waltzes through the darkness, and the camera gives way to
a long shot of the priest lying in bed as he listens to the music from the
party below. In his bedroom, under his covers, and beneath his crucifix,
the clergyman hides from the party. Although he longs to stop the vulgar
gathering, he endures the sound of the crowd. While Ambricourt prom-
ises Torcy he will maintain order, this music reminds him he is helpless
against disorder, and in this way, diegetic music both mocks what he has
professed in dialogue and exposes what he has confessed in voice-over.
As sound shows Ambricourt’s powerlessness against the cabaret, it
also exposes his weakness in his catechism class. After a sleepless night
avoiding The Families’ Ball, the priest leads a catechism class where
children fail to explain communion. One after another, each prospective

communicant fails to demonstrate the slightest learning and propels the
curé deeper into despair. When Séraphita (Martine Lemaire), a young
student, declares the purpose of the Eucharist, the priest begins to hope
that his spiritual lessons have taken hold, but when he asks her why she
listens so well in class, she says it is only because he has such beautiful
eyes. In response to this flirtation, a pack of offscreen students spews a
barrage of cackles, and as the tittering continues, Ambricourt’s prize stu-
dent glares at him until he lowers his eyes in defeat. Frustrated by the
class’s apathy, embarrassed by the fact that he thought Séraphita actually
cared, and humiliated by the realization that his teaching has fallen on
deaf ears, the priest watches his students run off. They ignore his lessons,
plot against him, and treat him hostilely, and thus the sound of their
cackling mocks his will to teach.
While noise suggests Ambricourt fails to instruct his class, it also
shows that he cannot commune with his congregation. After the cate-
chism class, he narrates that Miss Louise attends mass every day and is
the only one keeping the church from being empty. Close-ups between
the crying governess and the compassionate priest establish a silent bond
between the two souls, but the solemnity of this connection shatters
when the altar boy darts off the instant that service concludes, the sound
of his scampering breaking the sacred quietude of the chapel, the noise
evoking the rushed world that lies outside. The empty church is quiet
because no one enters, the only sound in the cathedral is the noise of the
altar boy retreating for the outdoors, and the racket of those footsteps
echoing in the empty church reveals that others reject whatever order the
priest might want to provide.
With this sequence, sound undermines Torcy’s forcefulness. Pelagius
claimed humans could avoid sinning through will, and Torcy told
Ambricourt to maintain order through force. Despite this instruc-
tion, the protagonist sees the futility of self-exertion. The clamor of the
cabaret proves he cannot stop The Families’ Ball; the cackling of chil-
dren shows he cannot control his classroom. Even during service, the
sound of footsteps darting for the door tells the priest his services are
unwanted. Torcy espouses willpower, but Ambricourt’s experiences chip
away at his resolve. No matter how much he musters the determination
to break up parties, teach catechism, or hold mass, he remains powerless
against the sounds that show how feeble his will is.
34 J. Ponder
“Face up to It”: Camus and Dr. Delbende

In “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus argues one must face the
meaninglessness of existence, the futility of action, and the absurd-
ity of being before deciding whether life is worth living. To explore
these issues, Camus looks to Sisyphus, the mythical character cursed to
spend eternity pushing a boulder uphill—just to have it roll down again.
According to Camus, fate dooms this figure to a life of hopeless labor
that renders each task pointless. Sisyphus cannot make his boulder stay
atop the hill, nor can he stop his travails. While his will means next to
nothing, he can willfully push the boulder up the hill each time it falls,
and he can decide to own his difficulties. From this story, Camus con-
cludes that one must find fulfillment and happiness in the “struggle
itself” without any hope of success, and the only will Camus admits is the
resolve to grapple against impossible odds in a meaningless, futile, and
absurd existence.18
Camus’s arguments about will become relevant to analyses of grace
in Diary of a Country Priest with the character of Delbende. After
Ambricourt realizes his ineffectiveness, he goes to his doctor and, through
narration, says that he is dying. During the examination, Dr. Delbende
(Antoine Balpêtré) senses the priest’s fears and tries to assuage them by
explaining that he doesn’t expect justice in this life. He rejects a belief in
God and insists that, when faced with the absurdity of life, one must “face
up to it” alone. To live this motto, he strives to accept life’s insignificance
and endures with integrity, bravery, and determination. Like Camus,
Delbende rejects the comforts of religion but still decides to haul the
boulder up the hill. In this regard, he differs from Torcy, who exhorted
Ambricourt to exert enough will to defeat the devil because he presses
him to use his will to overcome despair. The former seeks to maintain reli-
gious order while his counterpart tries to rid himself of elusions, and after
Ambricourt learns the limits of his spiritual will, Delbende doesn’t invite
him to exert his will as much as he challenges Ambricourt to acknowledge
the absurdity of all human endeavors.
While Delbende’s philosophy appears genuine, the film’s representa-
tion of it seems ironic. Cunneen examines Bresson’s filmography to con-
sider the ways in which the auteur creates a spiritual style out of filmic
technique, and he recognizes that Bresson uses sound to communicate
more than most filmmakers. According to Cunneen, the wagons that
screech through the village, the doors that creak open before slamming
shut, and the footsteps that crunch gravel provide a background that
grant Bresson’s films authenticity.19 In addition to creating atmosphere,
noise also functions as a counterpoint in Diary of a Country Priest.
Cunneen notes this is the case with Delbende, where key sounds juxta-
pose, contrast, and even contradict what appears on the screen, leading
him to conclude that while the camera records the doctor’s philosophy,
the soundtrack contradicts it.20
Noise undermines Delbende most in scenes that chronicle how
Ambricourt responds to his atheism. For example, the howling wind
expresses the turmoil the curé feels when he considers a world without
God. After the priest leaves his doctor, the black screen fades into images
of the curé exiting his rectory with a lantern as he trudges through the
dark on his way to church. Inside that place of worship, the protago-
nist finds refuge from the cold, rain, and wind, but his doubts remain.
After Delbende says one must “face up to it” by abandoning religious
hope, the patient struggles to appeal to a deity that might not be there.
“I never endeavored to pray so much,” Ambricourt narrates as he holes up
in a church only to find the walls of that edifice still transmit the howl of
the wind. As he questions the existence of God, a storm also brews inside
the priest, and this internal struggle unfolds alongside the roar of the
tempest stirring outside the house of God. Despite his “desire to pray,”
this narrator declares, “God has left me.” Because the wind howls into his
home at the precise moment of this confession, this noise suggests the
ways in which Delbende’s motto has seeped into the priest’s soul.
Once Ambricourt decides God has left him, the sound of a gunshot
undercuts the doctor’s philosophy. After his stormy night of the soul, the
narrator states he has remained faithful to his obligations even after los-
ing his faith. He declares his health has improved in ways that make his
work easier, and he pedals from one duty to the next with renewed vigor
until he hears the crack of a gunshot in the distance that fills the priest
with terror. A few moments later, while cleaning the church, he learns
that Delbende was killed by his own gun, and the curé plunges into tur-
moil. Villagers claim the doctor died when his rifle caught on a branch,
but Ambricourt suspects that Delbende died by suicide and he ques-
tions the doctor’s worldview: the physician told him to endure life but
falls to the grave; this mentor claimed he belonged to the race that holds
on, although he let go. Whatever thoughts fill the protagonist’s head,
the sound of that single shot marks another turning point in how the
curé understands will. Delbende taught him he must remain determined
36 J. Ponder
without any hope for justice, God, and meaning, but the noise of the
gunshot pushes the priest to doubt the will of this teacher.
After the gunshot, ringing bells symbolize how Ambricourt
rejects Delbende’s ideas. As he marches with Torcy behind the
hearse, knells fill the air. When the protégé asks, “You don’t think
Dr. Delbende might have—” the mentor explains, “The truth is
he’d lost his faith and couldn’t get over not believing.” The toll-
ing clangs louder as the young priest considers how his doctor failed
the motto he professed. Delbende said he faced the world without
faith, but now Torcy says the physician always wanted to believe.
The curé asks, “If he really killed himself … do you think—” before
Torcy interrupts, “If anyone else were to ask me that! God is the
only judge. Dr. Delbende was a just man, and God is judge of the
just.” With this reprimand, Ambricourt stands alone as the bells jan-
gle, pondering how Delbende could reject God while still longing
for him.
In conclusion, this sequence undermines Delbende’s opinions
about will. After Ambricourt scrapped Torcy’s advice, he tested his
doctor’s recommendations, but seeking to accept life’s absurdity, the
protagonist did not last long. The wind howled outside while doubt
stormed within, and the gunshot shattered Ambricourt’s courage
to live without faith. The clanking knells pronounced the burial of
the doctor but also the death of his views. To weigh the virtues of
“facing up to it,” the priest measured the man who claimed to do
so, and, upon further examination, the curé found a character who
ended in tragedy as well as a philosophy mired in hypocrisy. Delbende
had provoked Ambricourt to confront life’s absurdity just before he
succumbed to it; this mentor pushed the priest to think he could
endure without faith when the physician wanted to believe all along.
Throughout these scenes, from the sounds of howling to shoot-
ing to tolling, the soundtrack follows the protagonist as he responds
to Delbende’s take on will, and as Ambricourt moves away from
this character’s views, these sounds complement the ways he rejects
atheism.
“Then Let That Kingdom Come!” Jansen

and the Countess
More than any other theology covered so far, Jansenism asserts the
supremacy of grace. For centuries, heretics like Pelagius had argued
that one could will righteousness without divine aid, and the orthodox
claimed that God gave humans the free will to choose salvation or dam-
nation. According to Catholic doctrine, the Lord offers redemption but
grants people the chance to deny it, and most theologians claim grace
absolves believers while giving them the power to reject absolution. In
Augustinus, Cornelius Jansen agrees that mercy frees sinners, though he
disagrees that accepting deliverance is a choice. Throughout his work,
he insists grace is always effective, and people must receive this gift
if God offers it to them. He claims that if anyone declines grace, it is
not because she has the freedom to do so; it is because God never truly
offered her redemption in the first place. According to Jansen, if peo-
ple “will the right and the good with our wills,” it is because God has
changed their desire so they might want to be righteous at all.21 Heretics
argue one can choose to lead a sinless life while the orthodox claim one
can only choose whether to accept the grace that forgives the sins a
believer will commit, but Jansen disagrees with both parties by negat-
ing all choice, insisting one cannot choose the good. According to him,
grace nullifies all will because God decides who will be saved or damned
and only extends grace to those he predestines to accept it.
Diary of a Country Priest presents moments that resonate with these
fatalistic views. After Ambricourt buries Delbende, Chantal, the mis-
chievous daughter of the count who funds the priest’s parish, comes to
visit the new curé. During this visit, she declares that her father is hav-
ing an affair with her governess and her mother is so consumed by the
death of her son that she doesn’t care about the adultery. Fed up with
her dysfunctional home, Chantal announces she will get revenge by dis-
gracing herself, and at this moment, the priest feels the inexplicable com-
pulsion to demand that she give him the suicide letter from her pocket.
Unsure what the note contains, the curé says he speaks whatever words
come to him. Not even knowing if she has a letter at all, Ambricourt lets
those words speak through him. He commands Chantal to hand over
the letter, and she does so, gasping in horror and calling him the devil
as he grows sure that this moment has just saved her life. Although he
keeps Chantal from death, the priest regrets surrendering to the words
38 J. Ponder
he claims spoke through him. That night Ambricourt sits in his room,
burns the young woman’s letter, and says he shouldn’t have received
her at all. The protagonist reflects on his future, feeling that he said
things to Chantal that he didn’t want to say and now must suffer pen-
alties that he doesn’t want to face. While grace spoke through him to
snatch Chantal from disgrace, the priest says those words have subse-
quently doomed him to a fate he has no choice but to see “to the end.”
With these thoughts, he asserts that choice was never his, that his will
was powerless against this destiny. “Something” birthed words beyond
his control, and now he is doomed to follow their consequences by con-
fronting Chantal’s parents.
The next day, the priest decides to meet this fate by confront-
ing Chantal’s mother. What unfolds is a heated conversation between
Ambricourt and the countess that marks the film’s dramatic peak. In
the aristocrat’s parlor, the curé presses the comtesse until she surrenders
her grief and embraces Christ. While this chapter depicts the struggle
between two souls, sound punctuates that battle. According to Reader,
this scene is extraordinary because it uses an offscreen grating noise as a
kind of third conversationalist whose clatter accentuates what these two
human characters say.22 He claims this noise provides a type of musical
score for the countess’s soul as it moves from hatred to resignation. This
scraping noise narrativizes “a ‘raking’ of the long-dead embers of her
spirit,” and Reader claims this scene makes spiritual metaphors through
material sound.23
Because this noise occurs during moments that compel the priest
and countess beyond their will, this scene also shows how Diary of a
Country Priest uses sound in ways that inspire scholars to call Bresson a
Jansenist.24 For example, this grating occurs while the countess confronts
reality. During the start of their conversation, the priest tells the noble-
woman he fears Chantal may kill herself because of her mother’s indif-
ference. The countess dismisses this accusation, and when Ambricourt
implies that she is arrogant, she grimaces in response. While she registers
his harsh words, the sound of some indecipherable scratching rises in the
distance. Disturbed by the racket, she closes the window to shut out the
sound, but as she shutters the pane, the raking continues. She begins to
stammer, rattling off a list of excuses to deflect the priest’s accusations,
but these explanations cannot stave off the fear that she might shoul-
der some of the blame for her daughter’s despair. Because the sound of
scratching continues even after she shuts the window, sound suggests this
noise exists outside of the house less than it survives in her head. This
psychological grating only stops once the countess starts admitting that
she clings to her suffering and can’t see the purpose of confronting her
plight. The noise ceases when she confesses truths she wants to deny, and
it becomes part of some force that pushes her to see things as they are.
After the countess admits harsh facts about her life, grating drives
her to perform a series of unplanned actions. Fed up with the priest’s
accusations, the noblewoman insists she has too much sense for his wor-
ries. Defeated by her confidence, the curé gives up and rises to leave, but
as he moves to exit, the scraping sound resumes. The countess guides
her guest to the door, and the grating noise builds until she holds onto
the knob. He has ended the conversation, but she prolongs it, keeping
him in the room, asking what she’s done wrong. The countess provides
this avenue for Ambricourt to provoke her anew, and the fact that she
delays him longer than she intended amidst the sound of raking relates
the clamor to her compulsion. She cannot escort it away by opening
the door; the noise of the grating occurs when she impedes the priest,
no matter how much she wants him to leave. Because the scraping rises
while the countess acts against her desires, it provides a soundtrack for
something that overrides her will.
Grating also shifts the conversation after the countess insists the priest
take his seat once more. As Ambricourt reenters, the sound of scrap-
ing restarts, signaling a change in the discussion and highlighting a
moment when the curé begins to go on the offensive. He begins dis-
cussing the son the countess lost, and while the countess is shocked by
this intrusion, the priest doesn’t relent. He says she must forgive God
for the death of her son and face the despair of her daughter, even going
so far as to suggest that if she doesn’t do so she might be damned to
hell and be eternally separated from her child. She declares that a loving
God wouldn’t divide her family in the afterlife, but the priest maintains
that love follows an unknowable order. The countess insists she deserves
heaven because she has suffered, but Ambricourt replies that the way of
grace remains incomprehensible. These exchanges show a turn in the
dialogue. Before the priest had tried to leave, he had postulated theo-
ries the countess debunked, but once she invites him to have a seat, the
countess asserts arguments that her guest undoes. Now it is she who
defends her worldview while the priest erodes it, and this change hap-
pens with the sound of some unknown object scratching. As the grating
40 J. Ponder
noise compelled the countess to detain Ambricourt longer than she

intended, it now nudges him to challenge her beliefs.
After the priest launches this volley of attacks, sound signals the
moment he takes a more sympathetic approach. He says no one can
know the consequences of an evil thought, and the countess replies that
thinking about the harm one inflicts would make it hard to get through
the day. He nods, saying if people knew how life connected one being to
another, they would find it hard to live. In response, the countess asks,
“Pray tell, what is this hidden sin?” But the priest has no answer. He
stares at the floor, and the only reply comes from the sound of a sin-
gle scrape. Throughout the scene, many series of scratching leap to the
fore while characters act against their desires, but now this solitary grate
happens while the protagonist considers desires that he never shares. He
contemplates a hidden sin that links humanity in a worldview that pres-
sures the countess to question her place in the world, but dialogue keeps
answers from her, the audience, and, even, Ambricourt. The secret that
unites creation comes only in the form of an isolated scratch and what-
ever that sound might mean.
When the noise of the scrape provides its answer, the priest resumes
his reply, saying the countess must resign herself, and she yelps that she
has been too resigned and should have killed herself. She calls the priest
a fool and asks why he wants her to confess that she hates God for tak-
ing her son, but Ambricourt replies, “You don’t hate Him. Now at last
you are face-to-face.” At the moment the curé asserts that she is wrong
about her relationship with the Almighty, the grating sound occurs
again, and the scratching continues as the camera holds on her shocked
face before following as she wanders, takes a seat, and surrenders to the
possibility that she might be closer to the divine than she realizes. The
frame accompanies a character who walks across the room to sit, but the
soundtrack accompanies a soul that concedes it cannot distance itself
from the holy. Even when this human strives to reject God, she cannot,
and even when she endeavors to hate the Lord, she must admit he has
other plans. As this scratching resounds, it makes audible the sound of a
soul confronting the grace that overrides the will to reject it.
The priest tells the countess she must yield, but she confesses that she
cannot. She explains that she grieves the death of her son and still longs
for a place free from God, where she could carry her son into destruc-
tion. The curé replies that even desires for self-ruin are powerless because
“It is already done.” Faced with the assertion that will is futile, the
countess asks the priest what she must say to God. As the priest leads
her in The Lord’s Prayer, she complies until she stumbles at “Thy will
be done,” trembling, clutching her son’s medallion, and saying that such
submission feels like losing him all over again. The priest responds that
the best she can do is wish for the kingdom that might reunite her with
the deceased; accepting this powerlessness, she declares, “Then let that
kingdom come!” just moments before the scraping returns louder than
ever. Up to this point, the protagonist wanted the countess to resign
to grace, and the antagonist wanted to retain her will. This conflict
reaches its climax when the hero convinces her to submit, and the sound
achieves its crescendo when she finally surrenders. At this apex, the ran-
dom scraping that occurred throughout the scene gains significance, and
at this conclusion, the dismissible grinding proves to be essential. This
scene depicts how the countess yields to grace, and the noise that erupts
when she finally does so suggests that the soundtrack had been pressing
her toward this glorious end all along.
While the soundtrack reveals the purpose of this scratching in hind-
sight, editing unveils the source of this noise after the fact. Throughout
this scene, grating becomes audible seven times without its cause becom-
ing visible even once. For seven and a half minutes, this “Test of Faith”
chapter leaves viewers wondering what the clatter is, and it is only after
the sequence’s climax that the camera reveals the source of the sound.
After the countess submits her will to grace, the camera shot leaps to
the window where a gardener rakes the ground, this image finally con-
necting the aural grate with the visual rake, marrying sight and sound
in ways that make new meanings possible. After the camera pairs this
sound with this groundskeeper, horticultural metaphors alter the scene’s
meaning, each instance when the grating occurs becomes one where
God clears dead leaves so life can begin, and every time the scratching
arises becomes a moment when the Divine Harvester reaps rubbish so
seedlings can root. Reader claims the noise symbolizes “a ‘raking’ of the
long-dead embers of [the countess’s] spirit,” but such interpretations
make sense only when the camera shows the rake.25 Editing depicts this
important piece of information long after the many moments when the
sound of such stirrings rekindles her soul.
Waiting to reveal the source of the grating until this instant, the
soundtrack creates a sense of predestination. Audiences hear the sound
without seeing its source—until they are eventually shown the object
that has always made that sound—and the soundtrack peppers the scene
42 J. Ponder
with mysterious noises that lead to a climax where the purpose becomes
apparent only near the chapter’s conclusion. When the camera cuts to
the gardener, these random sounds finally gain meaning. With a shot of
the groundskeeper, the sounds that originally seemed insignificant now
become necessary. This ending reveals that all was part of some grand
design, and the revelation that the gardener caused this scraping vali-
dates each instance. The fact that viewers understand the origin of the
raking at the exact moment the countess receives grace links the way the
scene reveals sound with the way it represents salvation. Because it was
always the rake that caused the scratching, this episode creates a world
where sound confesses its scheme through concluding events that illumi-
nate early ones. Because it was always the Holy Gardener bringing in the
sheaves, noise suggests grace pervades the present in ways that appear
predestined in a future that vindicates the past.
In conclusion, the soundtrack that underscores the countess’s conver-
sion resonates with Jansenism. This theology argues that grace negates
free will and dooms humans to destiny. Throughout the “Test of Faith”
scene, the grating noise accentuates moments when characters grasp
the vanity of their efforts and yield to the sovereignty of grace. As the
comtesse faces realities she’d rather ignore, ushers the priest to the door,
blocks his exit to keep him near, and invites him to sit again, the sound
accompanies each moment that she acts against her will. Every step of
the way, this scratching provides the soundtrack for a soul accepting that
it cannot receive or reject salvation. These sounds appear tangential as
long as their source remains invisible, but these noises become essential
once editing reveals their source. Unveiling the visible cause of these
sounds after they audibly occur creates a sense of predestination, and this
scene uses the scratching noise of the rake to represent the mysterious
yet inevitable pull toward grace.
“I Was Tempted to…”: Lacan and Chantal

While Jansenist theology negates the will, Lacanian theory affirms it.
This psychoanalytic approach analyzes how enjoying the desires society
denies might be revolutionary. When he considers how one might pur-
sue these pleasures in ethical ways, Jacques Lacan examines the concept
of grace. Trying to reconcile personal desire with interpersonal respon-
sibility, he explores the gifts that bind people and concludes that grace
is the ultimate gift because it is “the desire of the Other.”26 According
to Lacan, the state of grace inspires people to want what others want,
but human psychology provokes many other longings. One of the desires
that can transpire is the drive to find what Lacan calls “happiness in
evil.”27 He notes that logical views invite people to act according to their
self-interests, while psychological compulsions propel subjects to seek
self-destruction; this analysis of desire relates to theological discussions
of grace because it accounts for the will to reject grace, destroy others,
and obliterate the self.28 Theologians disagree about how one achieves or
fails to receive God’s grace, but Lacan notes many do not want the desire
of this other at all. Jansenism is unique because it argues no one seeks
blessing as much as it pursues her, but Lacanian theory addresses forces
other than grace that push people to act against themselves.
These kinds of drives appear in Diary of a Country Priest after the
countess resigns to divine will and Ambricourt feels tempted to consider
self-destruction. During their debate, these characters contrast the coun-
tess’s desire for her dead son with God’s desire for her soul, but after
she submits her will and receives grace, the priest walks his bike through
his gate and hears a child in the night. While this voice leaps from the
darkness, the priest receives a letter that contains the countess’s burned
necklace. The casing that once held a picture of her son lies empty, but
the sound of a child sprints across the dusk. Just moments after the priest
hears a baby crying in the night, he reads the countess’s letter, in which
she tells him that she has surrendered her grief. She claims to have sur-
rendered her desire for her dead son, but the darkness emits the sound of
a child, evoking the one she lost. The countess insists she is resigned to
God’s will, but the air fills with the noise of the child she wishes was still
alive. Juxtaposing what the countess claims about resignation and the
sound of the son she desires more than anything, this scene uses noise to
suggest how submission and yearning intertwine.
As the sounds of the child hint at the countess’s inarticulate desires,
murmuring suggests the malicious will of her peers. Just seconds after
the countess claims she has lost all longing, she dies. Moments later,
the priest rushes to her deathbed. When he arrives at the mansion,
Ambricourt hears “the murmur of voices” plotting against him, and
when the priest descends the stairs to leave, he narrates, “They seemed
to be talking about me.” To this point, he concentrates on how he
desires to love God, but now he experiences how others aspire to harm
him. He worries he might have caused the countess’s death, and the
sound of this mumbling suggests that others suspect the same. This noise
44 J. Ponder
shocks the priest as he realizes the human will he has struggled to com-
prehend has incomprehensibly turned against him, and while he uses
narration to pontificate about the merciful grace of God, the sound of
murmuring teaches him about the malicious desire of humans.
After Ambricourt flees his foes, the canon pursues him, and the sound
of the murmuring crowd dissolves into the screech of an opening gate.
This noise marks the point the canon breaks through the priest’s bor-
ders, and the dialogue that follows brings outside dangers into his home.
In addition to being the church official in authority over the priest, the
canon is also the count’s uncle, a symbol of both ecclesiastical power and
the aristocratic family, and he invades the rectory. He warns that Chantal
had been eavesdropping on the priest’s conversation with the countess,
telling him that she is lying to her father about what happened and press-
ing the bishop to investigate. These people accuse the curé of threaten-
ing the countess with damnation and eternal separation from her son
unless she converted and terrifying the woman so badly that she died,
but the canon distrusts his relatives, so he asks the priest to summarize
his discussion in a letter for his superior. Ambricourt seeks freedom by
submitting to God’s grace, but the canon offers him safety if he writes
a letter to the bishop whom he calls “his grace.” Here, the priest pur-
sues salvation by surrendering to divine gifts, but his superior presses him
to save himself by appeasing a political power. The squeaking gate that
starts this scene initiates this new world where Chantal’s will coerces “his
grace” to punish the priest for seeking a state of grace. Her destructive
desires are new to Ambricourt, and the screech that rings as the canon
enters signals the moment when reality invades the protagonist’s world.
After the canon uses the word “grace” to describe corrupt earthly
authority rather than pure heavenly mercy, music reflects the priest’s con-
fusion. A few days later, the protagonist visits Chantal, and she gloats
about how she got the governess fired. While she brags, higher-pitched
instruments begin to pulse triads, and their counterparts start the
theme at irregular beats. The score ambles between chords and wanders
through scales, refusing to settle into a single key, and when the music
reveals this distorted version of the film’s main melody, Chantal unveils
her unnerving views, boasting, “You see, I get what I want.” As the
strings flit from one mode to the next, the priest retorts that she flut-
ters from one desire to another. When the priest implies that Chantal
will remain dissatisfied as long as she fights God’s will, the child replies
that she conquers all prohibitions by yielding to an “extraordinary force”
that builds up inside of her. With this statement, Chantal acknowledges

a drive other than grace and confesses her desire for destruction. While
she discusses this inarticulate rage, the music undulates with rolling key
changes, and when Chantal admits her incoherent passion, the score
reflects her longing with irregular structure.
The score expresses how Chantal craves chaos, but the noise of stamp-
ing represents the count’s desire for tidiness. After Ambricourt breaks
away from the young woman and is approaching the door to leave, he
finds the count, who has come barging in from the fields, wiping his feet
on the mat and stomping his shoes on the floor. The sounds of scrub-
bing and tamping fill the room as the count cleans the mess from his
clothes and tries to purge the dirtiness from his life. After he scrubs his
shoes, he expunges his responsibilities by accommodating the priest’s
plans, signing the governess’s check, and facing rumors about his mis-
tress. After washing his hands of these chores, the count lashes out at the
priest, saying, “You have been unwillingly, or at least unknowingly, the
cause of great misfortune.” Stating these things, he cleanses himself of
any responsibility and places the guilt squarely on Ambricourt’s shoul-
ders, although the count’s lust for the governess drove his daughter to
long for destruction. Despite the blame he deserves, the count scape-
goats the priest for these complicated desires, and as he wipes feet on
the mat, he wipes away the muddy world around him with the sound of
scrubbing and stamping.
Following the count’s attempts to stomp out messy desire,
Ambricourt experiences self-destructive longing. One night while alone
in his room, the protagonist narrates that he felt joy and fear when he
blessed the countess because she showed him the peace of the dead.
After he calls her burial the end of torments and suggests peace comes
from the grave, he scribbles out diary entries, then rips out the pages.
The narrator admits he destroys these entries because they expose
some delirium, weakness, and deception he dares not admit even to his
diary. Of this ordeal, he admits it was a moment that “found me lack-
ing in both resignation and courage, and that I was tempted to—” but
before he articulates the object of his enticement, he drops his pen and
gapes ahead as the camera pulls in and fades to black. In this scene, the
priest admits peace belongs to the dead and weighs the price one must
pay for longing to die, but given how the priest links resignation, peace,
and death, his yearning for such tranquility suggests he is tempted to kill
himself. He feels the desire for self-destruction but also experiences an
46 J. Ponder
astonishing power for preservation. He claims the countess could enter

grace because she surrendered to death, but he submits to a desire that
keeps him clinging to life.
In the end, after the countess resigns to grace, this sequence depicts
how the priest struggles with desire. To this point, he contrasts calcu-
lated will with God’s design and assumes predestination is the force that
overrides an individual’s plans, but he soon learns how powerful unin-
tentional desire can be. The countess said she was submitting to God’s
will, but the cry of a child implies the yearning for her son endures.
The priest says he gave the countess peace, but the murmuring makes
him wonder if he killed her. After Ambricourt retreats to his home, the
gate screeches in ways that announce the canon brings threats from “his
grace.” When Chantal explains her chaotic desires, the score descends
into tumult, and scuffing and stomping arise as the count tries to expel
destructive longings. After the countess dies, the priest admits that the
pursuit of grace involves the drive for self-destruction, and the sounds
of crying, murmuring, screeching, score, and stamping accompany him
as he realizes that irresistible grace operates alongside overwhelming
desires.
“I Filled It at the Pond”: Irenaeus and Séraphita

While many argue that sin pervades nature and grace invades it, Irenaeus
maintains that the latter works through the former. For him, grace is
the Word, the Logos, and the generative action of God that made crea-
tion possible in the first place. Others suggest God creates salvation in
response to the fall of humanity, but Irenaeus argues that the Almighty
generates redemption through the act of creation itself. According to this
thinking, grace is what inspired, maintained, and delivered the universe
before time began. Some suggest creation was good before sin corrupted
it and that humans retrieve goodness by receiving God’s forgiveness, but
Irenaeus implies the earth is good simply because God created it to make
mercy possible. The fallen world seems to tempt people into damnation,
but he claims glorious nature provides the difficulties that make people
realize their need for deliverance. Rather than argue that God uses grace
to help defy sinful nature, Irenaeus asserts that God uses nature to help
all creatures realize divine will.29
This kind of worldview appears during the priest’s deterioration.
Torcy and Ambricourt meet in a shack in the woods to discuss the
countess’s death, the canon’s investigation, and Chantal’s deceptiveness.

Surrounded by trees and cows, the mentor reprimands his student for
not eating or praying, insisting that clergy can overcome depression if
they simply try hard enough. Like he has before, the elder espouses the
virtues of willpower, but as the mentor prattles on, the young priest lets
his attention wander, narrating that his soul moves to “the olive grove”
where Christ said, “Not my will but yours be done.” Ambricourt meditates
on this story, and he concludes it shows how Jesus surrendered in the
wilderness. Considering this fact, he says the Lord shows his “grace” by
revealing that nothing on earth could tear him from his “chosen place in
eternity.” Torcy teases him for crying, acting like a child, and having shot
nerves, but the protagonist settles into silence. The pair sits in quiet for
27 seconds as the sounds of barking dogs and clanging cowbells envelop
them. While the priest finds it “natural” to think of “the olive grove,” he
finds it comfortable to be among nature, but the mentor who insists on
combating nature squirms at the noise of animals. Torcy blurts, “That’s
enough, now. We can’t stay here all day,” but Ambricourt says nothing
while he hears grace in nature.
These different responses reveal various beliefs, and the noise of ani-
mals further contrasts Torcy’s determination with Ambricourt’s resigna-
tion. The former warns that Chantal is telling everyone the latter forced
the countess to burn the medallion of her dead son if she wished to be
saved. The protégé accepts his fate, but his combative mentor is stunned
silent by his peacefulness. During this quiet, the dogs bark and the cow-
bells clang; the soundtrack times these noises so that nature responds on
the priest’s behalf, advocating for him when he refuses to defend himself.
The dogs belt out their threats and the bells ring gently on the necks
of calm cattle in ways that pair the sounds of these animals with these
humans. Torcy barks fearfully while Ambricourt rings peacefully; one
demands willful survival while the other resigns himself to his destiny.
The tranquility of these animal sounds agitates Torcy again, riling him
until he calls Chantal a devil that Ambricourt must never see again, but
the noise of nature begins to drown out the elder’s advice as the young
priest declares that he will open his door to the entire world, no matter
how badly people may harm him. Torcy warns that Chantal claims that
Ambricourt tormented the countess until she died, but the protagonist
replies that she died in peace. When the mentor asks how he knows this,
the protégé says nothing, letting the cows and dogs answer on his behalf.
Ambricourt cannot understand the supernatural events that unfold after
48 J. Ponder
death, but the natural world conveys its knowledge through the sounds
of cattle and hounds. Without saying another word, the priest leaves
Torcy and joins the cows, abandoning his peer to walk with animals,
leaving the elder as he embraces the beasts of nature. Once he does so,
he narrates that he feels “like a great weight had been lifted” because he
has “discovered with something bordering on joy, that [he] had nothing to
say.” In this moment, Ambricourt feels relieved once he lets the sounds
of nature reply for him, and he finds peace only once he lets the response
of nature suffice.
Unable to accept such answers, the mentor follows his student to the
rectory and finds him drinking cheap wine. As the bottle spills to the
floor, Torcy assumes he has found the physical source of Ambricourt’s
existential despair, assuming all of the protégé’s problems are rooted in
alcoholism. He begins to scold the student, saying it is regrettable that
he fell into drinking when he should have been choosing food to gain
“strength and courage,” but Torcy suddenly and inexplicably changes
his tone, ceasing to extol willpower and beginning to invite him to sub-
mit to the Holy Virgin. The mentor stops commanding his protégé to
dominate the flesh and starts advising him to yield to grace as he remem-
bers the Mother of God and begins describing nature in new ways.
Previously, this advisor suggested that the young priest should shut out
the sinful world, but now Torcy exalts even “the world before grace” for
being good enough to have “rocked her in its cradle.” Earlier, he deni-
grated creation for spawning evil, but now he calls the universe righteous
for hosting grace. The camera holds on Ambricourt as his mentor exits
the rectory and sound registers footsteps leading out the door, but as
Torcy enters the world he has reassessed, the noise of his stride leads into
the universe beyond the priest’s rectory. In this moment, even as the bit-
ter teacher—who insisted a priest’s sole job was to fight the darkness all
day long—realizes how creation aids redemption, sound leads the pro-
tagonist toward the fallen world that was created to lift him up.
After the noise of Torcy’s footsteps guide him into the world, the
protagonist wanders through the night, the mist, the sloping hills, and
gnarled trees, stumbling along his fevered way. The score adopts a men-
acing tone that reflects his growing dizziness. As Ambricourt totters,
the strings swell, violins climb, and tension stretches until he tumbles to
the ground; the moment he hits the earth, an orchestral punch accen-
tuates his fall, lashing out with force as his face strikes the land. After
this impact, the score shimmers with soft, low, and long notes that ripple
from the impact, and these disoriented strings continue to drone until
the score collects itself into the film’s theme. While the music regains
shape, the priest reclaims consciousness, and as ethereal tones take
melodic form, Ambricourt begins to see spiritual entities take physi-
cal shape. He envisions the Holy Virgin with hands “roughened by hard
work and washing,” and he sees the glorious face of the Lord “without
the slightest radiance.” While the priest regains his faculties, he recognizes
grace in nature, seeing Mary as a coarsened girl and the Almighty as a
normal child. Each of these moments profanes sacred images, but they
also sanctify the vulgar. The priest stumbles through an epiphany that
reveals the glory of heaven in the everyday world, and music modulates
between crescendo, hit, tone, and melody as the priest discovers grace
through nature.
After the score leads to the priest’s vision, the sounds of animals help
him realize human graciousness. The darkness dissipates to reveal the
priest lying on the ground beside a beaming lantern before Séraphita
approaches with a bowl and rag, saying, “I filled it at the pond. It
seemed safer.” In the distance, the cows start to low, and at the sound of
their mooing, the girl explains that the only reason she stumbled upon
him was that she came out to feed the cows. After detailing how the ani-
mals helped save him, this child squats in earth beside fire to cleanse him
with water. She washes the vomit from his face so no one will suspect
him of drinking himself unconscious, and then she lights his path so he
can return home safely. In this situation, mud causes Ambricourt to soil
himself with shame, but the pond gives the child a chance to clean him.
With this episode, nature becomes the place that hurls the priest into the
mire, but it is the same location where cows beckon Séraphita to help
him back to his feet.
In each of these instances, the soundtrack demonstrates how the priest
reevaluates nature. When Torcy berates him, the sound of dogs and cows
defend him, and when the mentor recognizes his pupil’s righteousness,
the sound of his footsteps lead the priest to reenter the world. Once
Ambricourt follows the sound of that marching beyond his rectory,
musical score modifies his mind until he sees a vision that roots the holy
in the profane, turning Mary’s rough hands turn into Séraphita’s vomit-
stained fingers and turning the Lord’s dull face into her candlelit visage.
In this mud, by this fire, under this wind, washing with water from the
pond, the religious teacher enters Séraphita’s classroom. There, he learns
of a world that is not as fallen as he had presumed, a world that rocked
50 J. Ponder
grace in its cradle, and an earth that divine will cannot invade because it
is a realm pervaded by providence. Ambricourt sees the world anew: One
that has fallen, but one that also helps him back up; one where cows call
children to save him in the night; one rooted in the command to pursue
grace by defying nature less than the Irenaean invitation to look at the
profane to realize divine mercy.
“Do You Have Some Secret?”: Milbank and Chantal

Irenaeus claims grace appears through nature, but others argue it flows
through people. John Milbank notes how some romanticize nature when
they presuppose that humans are virtuous and how they fail to recognize
wickedness. Faced with the fact that people would just as well pursue evil
as morality, Milbank claims humanity needs “a Church which seeks really
to overcome, and not merely to inhibit, the inner desires of egotism.”30
This institution conquers selfishness by replacing individual will with “a
general moral will” and subjective needs alongside an intersubjective
community.31 According to him, “the ecclesia aspires to, and partially
realizes, a real harmony of differentiated persons by blending together
a diversity of characters and roles according to a beautiful and analogi-
cal affinity that is rooted in the Church’s manifestation of the incarnate
Logos.”32 This institution seeks to transcend the will of any one human
with the will of many humans to pursue the will of God, and by creat-
ing the interpersonal network that transcends personal desire, the church
hopes to reach beyond will to find grace.
The morning after his night in the woods, in his last conversa-
tion with Chantal, the priest suggests the ways that people find grace
through these religious relationships. During this encounter, she attacks
him personally, but he confounds her when he talks about the interper-
sonal community. The antagonist concentrates on her individual will
for destruction, but the protagonist contemplates the collective will for
redemption. She claims she will damn herself, but he argues others will
save her. In the past, he had suggested that providence is a force that
derails one’s plans, but now he suggests mercy is a gift that people pass
to each other. In the conversation that follows, humans extend grace
throughout creation, and in the final clash with Chantal, the priest sug-
gests the godly exchange God’s love within community.
Amédée Ayfre examines Diary of a Country Priest’s theological
import alongside the priest’s psychological journey, and he claims the
film charts his relationship with God through his relationship to others.
Over the span of the narrative, the protagonist’s will closes Chantal
off, but this final conversation opens her up.33 While he does nothing
to cause her change, Ambricourt seems to be the vehicle for it. He calls
grace the miracle of empty hands that give what they do not possess,
and Ayfre claims this exchange occurs in the priest’s final conversation
with Chantal. Characters like her think they “can escape from its grasp,”
“are literally ‘grace-less,’” and appear to be “Christians without grace.”34
Nevertheless, they remain trapped among people conspiring to pass
grace on to them. Chantal wants to damn herself, but the priest insists
others will save her. She seeks to wield her subjective power, but he says
the intersubjective community will overpower her; and Ayfre concludes
that Chantal realizes her personal desires when she faces the longing for
redemption that is interpersonal enough to appear divine.
During the encounter with Séraphita, angelic lighting, sentimental
music, and the sound of cattle veer the scene into melodrama, but Diary
of a Country Priest dismantles this romanticism. As Chantal watches the
curé pack his bags, she boasts that she had him removed, and while she
provokes him, the sound of barking rises in the background. He says
she harms others because she doesn’t understand how good she is, but
Chantal insists she hurts people because she knows her wicked nature
at the precise moment that the hounds begin to growl and the beasts
begin to snarl. This dialogue reveals how malicious humans can be; these
sounds suggest how vicious nature remains. Chantal hurts the priest,
brags about it, and baits him as the dogs roar, with this scene answer-
ing the episode with Séraphita by foregrounding the world’s perils. One
wicked child saves the priest in the woods, but another attacks him in his
rectory; for every lowing cow that suggests grace pervades nature, there
is a barking dog that proclaims danger fills the earth.
But after barking foregrounds the threats of individuality, music rises
as the priest discusses the comforts of community. Chantal declares she
wants to do everything, try everything, and “sin just for sin’s sake,” pro-
claiming, “I’ll damn myself if I please.” Despite how fervently she chron-
icles her vices, she begins to question the priest’s virtues. Recalling how
he overcame her stubborn mother with kindness and patience, Chantal
asks, “Do you have some secret?” As the priest considers his reply, the
soundtrack transitions from diegetic barking to nondiegetic music, and
a score that is unnatural to Diary of a Country Priest’s story world swells
as the priest answers that he has learned “a lost secret.” Regarding this
52 J. Ponder
mysterious knowledge, he says, “You too will find it and lose it in turn,
and others will pass it on after you.” With this proclamation, he claims
grace is something that passes like a forgotten mystery. While God
might send grace from heaven, the priest suggests that humans exchange
it on earth, finding it, losing it, and passing it on to others. While the
priest claims people share this secret within one social institution, the
soundtrack emphasizes music that is also made in another. The score
forged in a community of instrument makers, composers, and musicians
begins to rise as he details the grace exchanged in a network of priests,
saints, and congregants. Previously, when the priest, away from others
and alone with God, praised Christ’s encounter with nature in the olive
grove, the soundtrack featured the natural sounds of cows and dogs, but,
now, when the priest praises Christian exchanges in the faith community,
a human-made, “unnatural” institution of the godly, the soundtrack fea-
tures the unnatural sound of human-made music.
At this moment, the score occurs when the priest praises commu-
nity in general, but specific musical elements arise when he extols the
church in particular. Once Chantal says she will damn herself, the priest
replies, “Absolution will come in due time, I hope, and from someone
else’s hand.” This statement refers to the Sacrament of Penance as well
as to the confession, contrition, and absolution that priests perform.
Discussing this ceremony, the clergyman turns the conversation away
from personal desires to interpersonal religion where people create doc-
trines, form traditions, and conduct sacraments. When he zeroes in on
rites that are particular to the church, the score takes on characteristics
of liturgical music. After the priest says Chantal’s wants are powerless
against the community that will give her grace, the camera holds on her
stunned face as the music forms a plagal progression. These chords shape
the “Amen cadence” used in Christian music since the beginnings of
Gregorian chant, and when the priest says absolution is inevitable, this
particular pattern of notes used for this specific reason seems to answer,
“So be it.” Chantal articulates her isolated will but falls silent when the
protagonist discusses a faith community that unites many wills, and
once the priest suggests the church is the vehicle for grace, the orchestra
replies, “It is so.”
With these events, sound refines the priest’s understanding of grace.
If Séraphita shows the priest how mercy survives apart from society,
Chantal reminds him that it might require a social institution. When the
aristocrat discusses the evil at her core, dogs bark their threats and pair
her malicious nature with their base instincts. The priest presses her to
transcend her selfish desires and consider the common good, and the
moment he does so, music rises in ways that link the unnatural score that
defies the story world with the social connections that defy nature. When
the priest discusses the community that the church provides, the plagal
cadence that marks liturgical music replies. These assertions about the
communal aspects of grace paired with the rhetorical character of these
sounds suggest the priest regards grace as a gift from God that is passed
from one human to the next within the church.
“I Wouldn’t Be in the Way”: Milbank and the

Housekeeper
According to Milbank, grace is a gift that moves between humans, but
that interaction also causes changes within the individual. When one
extends grace, she surrenders her personal wants for interpersonal ben-
efits, but this gift also creates the opportunity for something more. Gifts
retain the identity of the giver, positing her as a kind person who gives
an item to a recipient, but grace inspires so much giving between so
many people that it erases any individual giver. Instead, in the most self-
less state that grace causes, the act of giving exists in ways that fuse the
personality of individual givers and recipients into a personless whole.
In effect, gifts inspire one to surrender personal desire for interpersonal
good, but grace is a gift that inspires one to transcend even interpersonal
good to enter a state of impersonal giving. Milbank claims the exchange
of mercy inspires one to “be moved beyond oneself towards a sharing,”
and the general act of giving continues until it obscures the individual
giver.35 In this transfer of grace, a giver gives until the act of giving
eclipses all givers. Grace transforms desire into true free will when one
person wants the interpersonal good, but grace remains divine because it
causes all individuals to disappear into the impersonal act of giving.
Lisabeth During notes how the protagonist learns grace through
this kind of sharing.36 The priest offers kindness through his life, but he
extends the divine gift when he is on the brink of death. If grace causes
one to transcend the self, During argues that it requires the priest to
embrace the grave. Where theologians concentrate on how providence
adds to the world, she considers how it subtracts from the earth. In the-
ology, grace moves through creation, but in Diary of a Country Priest, it
54 J. Ponder
also acts through “decreation.”37 If grace can only fill what is open, she
explores how the priest makes room for the Almighty by depleting him-
self. The film portrays the divine gift as the miracle of empty hands in the
act of infinite giving, and the final sequence ensures that this exchange
will continue beyond Ambricourt by removing him.
Diary of a Country Priest foregrounds the importance of extending
grace through humanity with sounds that foreshadow the withdrawal of
this human. For example, the rumble of the motorcycle accompanies the
moment the priest learns to accept risk. As he walks to see about the
illness he knows will kill him, he trudges down a long and lonely road.
While he traverses this trail of death, a sound suddenly fills the landscape.
In the moment of his despair, he hears the sound of a growling motor-
cycle driven by a young soldier named Olivier (Jean Danet) who offers
him a ride. The priest cowers at the danger involved with receiving this
gift before he accepts the offer. Olivier asks him if he is scared, but the
motor howls too loud for him to express alarm. Instead of saying that
he fears the devil sent this danger to kill him, the priest narrates, “God
didn’t want me to die without knowing something of this risk.” He declares
that the Lord gives the gamble of death and the chance of destruction as
a gift. The priest wanted to defend himself from crashes, but he learns
to chance an accident. The roaring motorcycle accompanies this change,
propelling Ambricourt to claim he must learn to imperil his life so he can
die. If this is the case, the noise of the vehicle accompanies the grace that
teaches the priest to move beyond himself by hazarding removal.
The motorcycle growls as the priest accepts risk, but a train whistles
as he faces death. After Olivier drops him off, the priest takes a train to
his doctor’s office and receives a terminal diagnosis. He goes to church
but finds his will helpless against “a violent, physical revulsion to prayer.”
He retreats into a café, and as he opens the door, a train whistle sput-
ters pathetically enough to invite his disapproving sneer. Inside the res-
taurant, his voice-over vents through pitiful whimpers as he admits he
has cancer, but once he fears all is lost, the restaurateur gives him cof-
fee. With this act, a stranger offers him kindness, and, in his moment
of despair, the protagonist smiles as he accepts the gift. Once the priest
thanks God for this exchange, the train whistle blasts a departure call.
Hearing the sound that accompanies the gift, the curé says he feels
peaceful enough to fall asleep. After the whistle invites him to depart, he
takes stock of how fresh and pure his life has been before preparing to
meet his death. Having made peace with his end, he steps into the street
as the horn fades and cylinders chuff, and the whistle narrates how the
locomotive leaves its station in ways that parallel how the priest learns to
leave his own.
After the priest faces death, the sound of shuffling accompanies him
as he learns dependence. Instead of returning home, he visits Louis
Dufrety, a former abbot who studied with him in seminary, took a posi-
tion at a parish, and left the ministry because of illness. After renouncing
his belief in God, Dufrety became a pharmacist and shuffles along the
floor with a sound that shows he is too weak to lift his feet. Throughout
the priest’s scene with him, these footsteps make their anemic noise
at key moments. For example, when the priest clutches his head, they
shamble toward him, and when the protagonist winces in horror, they
lumber to his side. Although Dufrety boasts that he left the seminary
to test his strength, the soundtrack shows he remains feeble, and while
he brags that he got a job to prove his “willpower,” this self-made man
must admit how much he needs his partner. He confesses that when
determination wasn’t enough, he felt “a feeling of responsibility towards
someone who sacrificed her life for [him].” After all that she surren-
dered for him, Dufrety gives of himself for her. The pharmacist claims
she means nothing to his “intellectual life,” although his limp suggests
that he relies on her more than he will admit, and the words of his
mouth praise independence while the sound of his scuffing exposes his
dependence.
When the priest faints, Dufrety goes off to find help. As he descends
the stairs, his steps echo into the distance, and their sound draws
attention to the shadows where the pharmacist’s partner waits. She
approaches the priest and assures him the pain will pass before explain-
ing that the room is so dirty because working to clean the homes of oth-
ers weakens her too much to order her own. She reveals that she gives
her money to pay Dufrety’s debts, running between jobs to support him
because “he can’t get around much.” While she surrenders strength and
funds to sustain the apothecary, she also sacrifices her happiness. Dufrety
has proposed and she wants to marry him, but she rejects the prospect
because she wants to keep the path clear for him to reenter the priest-
hood. She pledges, “I wouldn’t be in the way” whenever he felt called
to return to the seminary. The conversation ends as it began with the
sound of footsteps on the stairs. Between the two instances of this noise
the housekeeper details both how she gives of herself, while Dufrety lives
in the world, as well as how she removes herself, so he can return to
56 J. Ponder
the priesthood, and witnessing this sacrifice through removal, the priest
observes how leaving room for grace sometimes requires taking oneself
away.
With these scenes, Olivier, the restaurateur, and Dufrety demonstrate
grace by giving rides, coffee, or medicine, but the housekeeper shows it
by removing herself. Each of these characters gives gifts amidst impor-
tant sounds, and each of these noises come from transportation. The
motorcycle roars as the priest accepts risk; the train whistles as he pre-
pares to depart from this world. Shoes shuffle as the protagonist sees
how willpower depends on grace; footsteps drag as the housekeeper
explains self-removal. By accepting danger, facing death, embracing
dependence, and removing self, the priest learns to move beyond him-
self in ways that show how he feels inspired to transcend individuality.
Sound accompanies him as he witnesses characters who overcome per-
sonal desire for interpersonal good, but the housekeeper goes further
to demonstrate impersonal giving. As she allows Dufrety’s footsteps to
move in and out of her life while refusing to stand in the way of God’s
will, she shows the priest that kindness requires that one replace personal
desire with interpersonal good, but grace requires one make room for
impersonal giving by removing the giver.
“All Is Grace”: Milbank and the Cross

While considering grace, Milbank explores the ways it changes human-
ity. He states that the Creator lived on earth as one man who made the
infinite become the “finite,” “unrepeatable,” and “incommunicable sup-
positum.”38 With Jesus, the spiritual became physical and God became a
human, but that “gift of God to humanity” remakes “human nature also
to be the means of absolute uninterrupted giving” that extends beyond
Christ.39 “God is alone able to inaugurate forgiveness on earth” by mak-
ing one divine human, and that gift conjoins “humanity to divinity” in
the world after he returns to heaven.40 The Incarnation makes grace pos-
sible, the Crucifixion makes it actual, and the Ascension makes it perpet-
ual. In the manger, the divine offers a gift; on Calvary, humanity meets
divinity; and in the shadow of the cross, humans can continue to give
what God gave. According to this thinking, “Christ” becomes the name
of the giving that makes one human God, and “Christian” becomes the
name of people who extend grace to others.
As Milbank explores how the Son of Man’s divinity changes human

nature, Diary of a Country Priest considers how grace transforms certain
characters. The extent to which God gives Christ to humanity so people
can continue giving after his ascension appears in the film as the priest
gives good will to some so they can give it to others after his death.
When Jesus removes himself to heaven, he gives his followers the chance
to give, and when the priest leaves this earth, his friends can be recon-
ciled. Through his death, Dufrety and Torcy come together. This process
begins after the housekeeper shows Ambricourt how to give by getting
out of the way. At this moment, the dying priest grabs Dufrety’s hand
and says they must talk. The next shot suggests the topic of this discus-
sion as the priest writes, “He’s agreed to meet with the priest in Torcy.”
Satisfied that his death will bring together the dogmatist and the apos-
tate, the protagonist surrenders his journal to the floor and peers into the
great beyond before the screen fades to black. The camera rises on a let-
ter from Dufrety to Torcy. As Torcy’s hands open the typewritten note,
he reads of how Ambricourt died. The screen dissolves into an image of
the cross, and under that symbol of mercy, Dufrety and Torcy give to
each other what the priest has given to them. As the gift passes to Torcy
from Dufrety from Ambricourt from the many givers extending all the
way back to the cross that fills the screen, the film concludes by showing
the absolute uninterrupted giving that constitutes grace.
Nick Browne analyzes how sound characterizes this relationship
between the priest and his world. He notes the audio track uses sonic
qualities to disconnect the protagonist from his world, while noise
achieves this distance by concentrating on particular sounds. If the film
represented the priest’s environment realistically, many noises would
resonate simultaneously, but because Diary of a Country Priest isolates
sounds, it portrays the protagonist’s aural experience in discriminating
ways. Rather than represent the world where the racket of engines, rakes,
and whistles overlap, it conveys a realm where bells clang when nothing
else does. Honing in on one noise at a time, the film does not present
all the sounds the world makes as much as those few the priest hears in
what Browne calls a kind of “point-of-view system” that creates “a center
of consciousness” and constructs “a form of subjectivity.”41 In the end,
the soundtrack reflects the particular sounds upon which the priest medi-
tates, and this selective hearing of his world reflects “the interior quality
of the voice-over.”42
58 J. Ponder
Throughout the film, sound communicates this subjectivity, but in

the last scene, voice-over foregrounds intersubjectivity. Reverberations
that register on the soundtrack might express the priest’s perception,
though some sounds remain that he does not perceive. Voice-over con-
structs the narrator, but something strange happens when the narrator
dies. The ways the soundtrack selectively hears certain noises over others
implies a listener behind these selections, but the fact that these noises
are still singled out after the priest dies suggests there is a listener who
exists beyond him. In epistolary texts, the protagonist becomes the cen-
tral intelligence through which the narrative unfolds, but when Diary of
a Country Priest continues after Ambricourt loses consciousness, the text
indicates another main character. Bazin claims the film chronicles “the
life of the spirit,” but its ending chronicles a spirit bigger than that of
the priest. He claimed Diary of a Country Priest represents a phenom-
enology of grace, but the final scene where Dufrety writes the journal
that Torcy narrates suggests the film’s main character is providence itself.
This shift transforms Ambricourt into a supporting character who carries
grace as far as he can until he gives it to Dufrety to give to Torcy to give
to viewers as it has been given since the cross that comprises the closing
frame.
Sound suggests these final moments move beyond the priest’s subjec-
tivity to the intersubjective act of giving that grace requires. Most the-
ologians concentrate on how God grants redemption to the individual,
but Milbank addresses how God gives grace to people so they might give
to each other. The chapter called “Letter to the Vicar” foregrounds the
relationship between humans in similar ways when it conveys an account
of the final words that “All is grace.” This declaration passes between
multiple methods of communication and numerous characters as the
priest speaks it to Dufrety—who writes it for Torcy—who narrates it for
audiences. This layering of characters and cinematic conventions manip-
ulates sound in sophisticated ways to suggest profound things about
absolution, and to unravel what this voice-over implies about the divine
gift, one must disentangle the three subjectivities that weave together
to make this utterance possible. They all conspire to proclaim, “Tout
est grâce,” but each proclaimer symbolizes something different. These
characters relate to divine will uniquely, and those relationships help
characterize the polyphonic voice that converges to make the film’s last
assertion regarding this theological concept.
The first character involved in this sonic layering is Dufrety, and

because the film’s final journal entry comes from him, this moment of
voice-over seems to privilege his values. In cinema, narration constitutes
“the voice of God,” but in this particular film, writing dictates what that
deity says. As long as the priest controls his diary, he is the narrator-god
of his story, and as long as this narrative structure privileges his journal-
ing, it portrays his values. Once Dufrety assumes control of that writing,
however, the film extols his words above others, and the movie switches
divinities from the writer-priest to the atheist apothecary in ways that
appear to esteem his belief in self-determination over the priest’s faith
in predestination. With such a change, Price claims the film’s ending is
ironic, and because a “nonbeliever” pens these final words, audiences
should read the priest’s death not as “the moment of grace” but the real-
ization of “tragedy.”43 The curé might declare, “All is grace,” but the
backslider would insist, “Nothing is grace,” and because the former dies
while the latter survives, the film seems to agree with him. Therefore,
Diary of a Country Priest transfers the diary to Dufrety, making him the
“country priest” to compose its future, surrendering its gospel to a scribe
that worships “guts” more than grace. According to Durgnat, Bresson
often expressed an affinity with atheism, and the fact that the film
ends with writing from this character appears to prove this assertion.44
Ultimately, because a character that advocates self-determination writes
the final entry of Journal d’un curé de campagne, the film suggests grace
is less important than the willpower that Dufrety values.
While this writing belongs to the druggist, the closing narration
comes from Torcy in ways that undermine these assumptions. As long as
the young priest controlled the voice-over, he spoke Diary of a Country
Priest’s universe into being through his perspective and in his words, but
once the mentor becomes the narrator, the world conforms to his world-
view. That creation wrenches dominion from the dead curé and hands
voice-over to his living mentor. This character claims self-discipline is the
key to salvation, so he disagrees with his protégé’s views about absolu-
tion. According to Ayfre, this difference suggests that when Torcy reads,
“All is grace” he means “All is freedom.”45 The elder believes one should
lead parishes, exterminate devils, and eradicate disorder by exercising the
freedom to pray, abstain, and fight. With this combination of will and
grace, Ayfre concludes that Diary of a Country Priest’s universe could
not be more orthodox.46 When Torcy speaks his pupil’s final words,
his voice tempers their meaning. The idea that everyone is under grace
60 J. Ponder
becomes ironic on the lips of one who would assert that grace is only for
Christians who choose to receive it.
Dufrety may write the words that dictate what the narrator-god can
say, and Torcy may speak the words that constitute the voice of this deity,
but Ambricourt speaks the dialogue that determines what Dufrety and
Torcy do. In this sense, while the film’s ending seems to privilege the
pharmacist’s writing or the mentor’s speaking, all of these utterances are
orchestrated by the protagonist who—despite his death, surrendered
journal, and relinquished narration—inaugurates the giving that contin-
ues through the end of the film. If this is the case, it seems “Letter to the
Vicar” would centralize Ambricourt’s values, ones that insist grace super-
sedes will and say, regardless of willpower and guts or diet and prayers,
one’s fate is predetermined. Confronting failures, virtues, efforts, and
accomplishments, he asks, “What does it matter?” Providence invali-
dates his desires, and as he declares that predestination overrides effort,
Ambricourt concludes the film with fatalistic ideas that seem to resonate
with Jansenism.
This conclusion appears plausible when examining these characters
separately, but considering the voice-over structure that merges each of
them implies a theological position that transcends the views of any indi-
vidual character. The narratological principle that blends these addressors
wrestles the words from each, and because the declaration that “All is
grace” belongs to all of them, it belongs to none. Believing “All is grace”
would suggest a god that Dufrety would reject and a submission that
Torcy would criticize, but it also implies a pervasiveness that Jansen
would oppose. While the Bishop of Ypres argued that grace saved peo-
ple regardless of will, he also claimed it was exclusive. According to him,
God extends grace to those predestined to receive it and denies mercy
to those predetermined to decline it. Because Jansen suggests all is grace
for the elect, when Ambricourt claims, “All is grace” without modifiers,
qualifiers, or antecedents, this young priest suggests that grace will be
extended to and accepted by everyone, and, because it implies salvific
universalism, this statement defies atheism, Catholicism, and Jansenism.
The soundtrack replicates this kind of inclusiveness. In this scene, the
narrative states, “All is grace,” and the narratological structure ensures
all say so. The statement affirms the vast reach of mercy, and voice-over
incorporates a broad range of characters to state it. An utterance that
proclaims all shall be redeemed regardless of their will forces Dufrety
and Torcy to speak grace despite their desires. Contrary to his atheism,
Dufrety writes of grace’s power, and contradicting his Catholicism,

Torcy declares grace’s total reach. Whether they believe these words or
not, articulating them changes these characters. Narration states that the
apostate administers final rites to grant the protagonist absolution, and
the film shows that the dogmatist reads the letter aloud to recapitulate
heresy. Most interestingly, the last letter that the priest of Ambricourt
writes, reads, and narrates on his own, the final entry of Journal d’un
curé de campagne, celebrates the fact that he has urged these opposed
characters to reconcile. In effect, he compels them beyond their will to
declare that “All is grace” in ways that change their actions concerning
redemption. As Ambricourt consumes a Eucharist that feeds the tumor
devouring him, the mercy he speaks thrusts Torcy beyond orthodoxy
and Dufrety into the fold. In line with Jansenism, providence overpowers
will, but in opposition to that theology, it denies no one. The declaration
that “Tout est grâce” marries form and content to bring everyone into
some divine plan. Therefore, voice-over in “Letter to the Vicar” suggests
Dufrety’s atheism, Torcy’s orthodoxy, and Ambricourt’s Jansenism, but
the merging of these theologies appears to negate each separate belief
system to imply something more than any of these particular creeds.
And it is with this intersubjectivity that transcends each subject that
Diary of a Country Priest’s use of sound seems to imply something
beyond Jansenism. In this cinematic moment, the beliefs of any indi-
vidual blur into those of the collective. Dialogue would privilege the
priest’s views, the letter would foreground Dufrety’s beliefs, and narra-
tion would centralize Torcy’s theology, but this final instance of voice-
over merges all of these into a whole that is larger than its parts. The
priest extends grace to Dufrety by talking to him about his soul, and the
pharmacist returns that gift by giving him absolution. Dufrety contin-
ues the exchange by giving Torcy the letter, and the mentor returns the
gift by agreeing to meet with him. Torcy extends the gift to the viewers
who hear him declare, “All is grace,” so the act of giving that the priest
begins continues after he dies. Across characters, time, media, and death,
this gift is given in ways that transcend any individual giver. The shadow
of the cross that fills the screen symbolizes the gift of God to humanity,
but the voice-over represents all the giving that has extended from Christ
to the priest’s dialogue to Dufrety’s writing to Torcy’s narration to the
viewer’s listening. And all these require the absolute uninterrupted giv-
ing that goes beyond Christ. Theology claims grace is a gift inaugurated
by God, but the film suggests it is given between humans, and Diary
62 J. Ponder
of a Country Priest’s use of voice-over in this final scene suggests grace

becomes all-encompassing in the shadow of the cross that blends all giv-
ers into one divine and infinite act of giving.
Grace and Diary of a Country Priest

Because Diary of a Country Priest concentrates on a curé, focuses on reli-
gious life, and ends by declaring, “All is grace,” the film justifies theolog-
ical interpretations. Besides noting the importance of religion in Journal
d’un curé de campagne, scholars point out the significance of sound in
the movie and examine the ways in which the soundtrack comments on
character dialogue. At moments, noise complements what characters say,
and at others, it undercuts their conversation. Therefore, Journal d’un
curé de campagne invites religious interpretations of grace as well as for-
mal examinations of sound. Analyzing the film’s word about providence
alongside the flesh of its sonic landscape shows how the narrative teaches
the priest many things. The racket of village life undermines Torcy’s
order, while wind, gunshots, and bells challenge Delbende’s atheism.
The scratching rake pulls the countess along, animals show grace per-
meates nature, and musical score foregrounds the gifts of the church.
Vehicle noises prepare the priest to leave this world, and the final voice-
over suggests grace is all-encompassing.
These sounds resonate with different theological interpretations of
the film. Some claim Diary of a Country Priest endorses Catholicism,
Jansenism, or atheism, and auditory elements reflect each of these inter-
pretations in various ways. With Ambricourt, Torcy praises the freedom
of piety. With Chantal, Ambricourt exalts the sacraments of confes-
sion and absolution. While the sounds that emerge in these moments
appear to advocate Catholicism, the countess’s conversion seems to
espouse Jansenism. Minor characters extend gifts to the priest during
his darkest hour, and these nonreligious figures imply human kindness
is as profound as divine favor. While these moments complement these
worldviews, the film’s conclusion endorses another. The film examines
the relationship between God and the believer less than the relation-
ship between subjects that exchange this gift. While Catholicism and
Jansenism focus on how a person receives grace, Diary of a Country
Priest foregrounds how divinity resides in the interpersonal act of giving.
When film scholars claim Diary of a Country Priest espouses
Catholicism, Jansenism, or atheism, they do so by examining the priest’s
final words. When they interpret “All is grace,” they argue over whom
the “all” entails. Catholics claim it references those who choose grace,
Jansenists claim it indicates the chosen, and humanists claim it applies
to those who treat others graciously. However, one can examine the
“all” in “All is grace” not as those who receive mercy but as those who
are required if it is to be given. The curé who discusses the “lost secret”
and the “miracle of empty hands” stands out in the discourse on grace
because he accentuates the role humanity plays in divinity. According to
him, God gives grace to save people from sin but also gives it to save
them from selfishness and to give them the opportunity to redeem them-
selves, as well as giving them the chance to assist others. In effect, God
gives grace to give humans the chance to give. When the priest declares,
“All is grace,” he gives Dufrety, Torcy, and viewers the opportunity to
become part of the “all” that continues the giving after he dies. Here,
grace is not the state of salvation as much as the act of giving; the final
scene of Diary of a Country Priest suggests that the statement “All is
grace” is less a declaration that all will be saved than an invitation for all
to enter absolute uninterrupted giving.
This theology emphasizes the role of humanity in the plan of divin-
ity and foregrounds how God requires humans to exchange the gift he
extends, but in Diary of a Country Priest, the “all” that comprises the
giving of grace reaches beyond humanity. If the film depicts the phe-
nomenology of providence and sound is essential to that experience, the
soundtrack—brimming with chirping birds, crowing roosters, mooing
cows, and barking dogs—has animals take part in the giving. The sonic
landscape teeming with howling wind, crunching gravel, gurgling water,
and crackling fire elicits the elements to partake in the exchange. Even the
sounds of scratching rakes, shrieking gates, cracking guns, and tolling bells
elect crude, human-made objects to participate in giving the grace inaugu-
rated by God. All these sounds give the priest the lessons that lead him to
determine “All is grace” in ways that apply the exchange of grace beyond
humanity. The film concludes with an audio layering that requires “all” to
give grace after a movie that uses sounds from humans, animals, nature,
and objects to give the priest the chance to come to this realization. In the
shadow of the cross that stretches across the final frame, the film depicts
how one character enters the act of giving in order to give to others, but
Diary of a Country Priest also couples discussions of grace with moments
of sound to show the extent to which all of creation disappears into the
infinite act of giving that constitutes the existence of grace on earth.
64 J. Ponder
Notes
1. The film leaves the priest of Ambricourt unnamed. For the sake of clar-
ity, this chapter will call him Ambricourt. The same is true regarding the
priest of Torcy, so this chapter will name him after his commune.
2. Diary of a Country Priest, directed by Robert Bresson (1951; New York,
NY: Criterion Collection, 2004), DVD.
3. Mirella Jona Affron, “Bresson and Pascal: Rhetorical Affinities,” in Robert
Bresson, ed. James Quandt (Toronto, Cinémathèque Ontario, 1998), 170.
4. Robert Greenspun, New York Times (New York, NY), Nov 26, 1972.
5. Susan Sontag, “Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson,” in Robert
Bresson (Revised), ed. James Quandt (Toronto: Toronto International
Film Festival Cinémathèque, 2011), 64.
6. André Bazin. What is Cinema? vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004), 136.
7. Keith Reader, Robert Bresson (New York: Manchester University Press,
2000), 6.
8. Brian Price, Neither God Nor Master: Robert Bresson & Radical Politics
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota P, 2011), 7.
Da Capo, 1972), 91.
10. Michel Estève, Robert Bresson (Paris: Editions Albatros, 1983), 132.
11. Raymond Durgnat, “The Negative Vision of Robert Bresson,” in Robert
Bresson (Revised), ed. James Quandt (Toronto: Toronto International
Film Festival Cinémathèque, 2011), 555.
12. Joseph Cunneen, Robert Bresson: A Spiritual Style in Film (New York:
Continuum, 2003), 15.
13. Tony Pipolo, Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010), 16.
14. James Quandt, introduction to Robert Bresson (Revised), 5.
15. Keith Reader, “The Sacrament of Writing: Robert Bresson’s Le Journal
d’un curé de champagne,” in French Film: Texts and Contexts, eds. Susan
Hayward and Ginette Vincendeau (London: Routledge, 1990), 139.
16. Pelagius, “On the Proceedings of Pelagius: Chapter 54,” in Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers, eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1885).
17. John Gerlach, “The Diary of a Country Priest: A Total Conversion.”
Literature Film Quarterly, 4 (Winter 1976): 42.
18. Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus.” The Myth of Sisyphus and Other
Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 123.
19. Cunneen, 53.
20. Cunneen, 53.
21. Cornelius Jansen qtd. in Nigel Abercrombie, The Origins of Jansenism

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 150–151.
22. Keith Reader, Robert Bresson (New York: Manchester University Press,
2000), 36.
23. Reader, 36.
24. Reader, 6.
25. Reader, 36.
26. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Seminar XVI: From an
Other of the other, 1968–1969, trans. C. Gallagher. Unpublished,
29.1.69 lecture ix, 10.
27. Jacques Lacan, “Kant with Sade,” trans. James. B. Swenson, Jr. October,
51 (Winter 1989): 55.
28. Lacan, “Kant,” 58.
29. James A. Carpenter, Grace and Nature: Toward an Integral Perspective
(New York: Crossroad, 1988), 31.
30. John Milbank, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (New York:
Routledge, 2003), 20.
31. Milbank, 20.
32. Milbank, 20.
33. Amédée Ayfre, “The Universe of Robert Bresson,” in Robert Bresson
(Revised), ed. James Quandt (Toronto: TIFF Cinematheque, 2011),
39–54, 49.
34. Ayfre, 52.
35. Milbank, 12.
36. Lisabeth During, “What does it Matter? All is Grace” Robert Bresson
and Simone Weil.” Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities 17, no. 4
(2012): 157–177.
37. To make this point, During references the work of Simone Weil.
38. Milbank, 67.
39. Milbank, 67.
40. Milbank, 67.
41. Nick Browne, “Film Form/Voice-Over: Bresson’s The Diary of a Country
Priest.” Yale French Studies 60 (1980): 237.
42. Browne, 237.
43. Price, 59.
44. Durgnat, 553.
45. Amédée Ayfre, “The Universe of Robert Bresson,” in The Films of Robert
Bresson, ed. Ian Cameron (New York: Praeger, 1970), 23.
46. Ayfre, 23.
CHAPTER 3
“Life. Yes. Life.”: Editing and Miracles

in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet
Inger (Birgitte Federspiel) lies in the casket surrounded by mourners,

but one visitor interrupts their grief. Johannes (Preben Lerdorff Rye)
disregards the weeping of others, peers at the corpse, and says, “Inger, in
the name of Jesus Christ, I bid thee arise!” Suddenly, the hands stir, the
chest fills, and the body starts to move. Gasping for air, she turns to the
sun and declares the film’s last profession: “Life. Yes. Life.” This scene
concludes Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet (The Word), a representation of
the miraculous that has stood the test of time. In the scientific modern
world, the film depicts resurrection in unflinching ways that have earned
it a Golden Globe, a Golden Lion, and critical acclaim as one of cinema’s
most nuanced portrayals of the wondrous.
The film tells the story of the Borgen family. Morten (Henrik
Malberg), the patriarch, is a kind but stubborn man rooted in a reli-
gion he finds his children attacking. Mikkel discards his father’s faith,
Johannes insists he is Christ, and Anders wants to marry a woman who
belongs to a sect Morten loathes. The patriarch dismisses Mikkel for
entertaining doubt and Johannes for struggling with mental illness, but
he fights to keep Anders in the faith. That battle dominates the film’s
narrative as Morten, a life-affirming Grundtvigian, and Peter Petersen
(Ejner Federspiel), an ascetic member of The Inner Mission, forbid the
marriage of their children and debate the merits of their convictions.
The story of these warring fathers and star-crossed lovers threatens
to steer The Word into melodrama, but this contrived plotline proves an
inspired distraction from the film’s real drama. At the height of the battle

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58556-7_3
68 J. Ponder
between the two men, a phone call announces that Inger, Mikkel’s preg-
nant wife, is sick. Morten rushes to her side where the doctor (Henry
Skjær) saves his daughter-in-law but cannot save his grandson. Mourning
the loss, he still celebrates the operation’s success until, suddenly, Inger
slips away too. While the family grieves, Johannes approaches her death-
bed, but before he can resurrect her, he suddenly faints. When he recovers,
he disappears into the night, leaving his family terrified. Morten bellows
for his son but must surrender his search to mourn his daughter-in-law.
In the final scene, the doctor, the pastor, and the Borgen fam-
ily gather around Inger’s body before Peter Petersen enters, asks for
Morten’s forgiveness, and seeks to alleviate the Borgens’ grief by pro-
posing that his daughter marry Anders (Cay Kristiansen). This act seems
to resolve the plot, using Inger’s death to settle the feud between the
fathers and engage the lovers. At this moment, however, Johannes
returns and shows that during his absence he has somehow been
changed. He replies to his name and accepts that he is not Christ, but
the restored son still reprimands the mourners for failing to pray for res-
urrection. Johannes tells them to cover the coffin, but Inger’s daugh-
ter, Maren (Ann Elisabeth Groth), asks him to raise her mother from
the dead. Her faith compels him to command the corpse to return to
life. When Inger rises, her husband, Mikkel (Emil Hass Christensen),
embraces his wife, states that he “has found [her] faith,” and asserts,
“Now life can begin for us” before she replies, “Life, yes. Life.”
While scholars agree that Ordet’s representation of religion is extraor-
dinary, they disagree regarding the film’s religious stance. One group
argues that it portrays marvels in ways that endorse Christianity. For
example, Ib Monty notes how the film’s pace reflects a particular world-
view. The Word decelerates editing to a sluggish pace that suggests the-
ology drains the joy from life, but the resurrection scene accelerates,
cutting to imply Christianity can be lively. According to Monty, the film
uses peacefulness to hypnotize viewers into a meditative state that allows
them to embrace “the faith of a Christian as the basis for life.”1 Often,
shots that last longer than the average 8–11 seconds create a sense of
boring hopelessness, but Ordet simplifies, strips away, and slows down to
generate a sense of peace. Monty claims this film expresses a quiet faith
that lays miracles bare because it trusts them, presents marvels factually
because it supposes they are factual, and faithfully chronicles Christian
wonders because it advocates Christianity.
3 “LIFE. YES. LIFE.”: EDITING AND MIRACLES … 69
Monty claims that The Word pushes religion, but others insist the film
rejects it. For example, Tom Milne argues that Ordet uses a slow pace
to make Christians seem insipid. The camera crawls and editing halts to
portray the pastor, Morten, and Petersen as old, sick, and dying. These
anemic representations of the faithful lead Milne to claim the film is
an “act of self-exorcism” that culls religion, criticizes Christianity, and
mocks wonders.2 Because its miracle worker is mentally ill, the film por-
trays marvels ironically. According to Milne, The Word uses weary pacing
to depict death genuinely, but it uses quick editing to depict resurrection
sarcastically. The film dedicates more than two hours to sickness, despair,
and the grave, which makes the two minutes rationed for resuscitation
seem insincere. Therefore, this argument concludes that Ordet portrays
miracles in sardonic ways that dismiss religion.
This interpretation argues that the film rejects faith, but a third claims
it favors spirituality. Raymond Carney concedes that The Word depicts
orthodox figures in unflattering ways. He notes that the pastor, Morten,
and Petersen represent a mainstream religion that privileges the spirit
too much, and by favoring the immaterial afterlife, they cannot raise
Inger’s flesh. Johannes, however, articulates a kind of fringe shamanism
that exalts life enough to bring Inger back from the dead. Because Ordet
privileges Johannes over the traditional, the physical over the spiritual,
and returned life over the afterlife, Carney claims the movie “reverses
Christian doctrine.”3 Instead of rejecting faith altogether, it replaces the
pastor’s dogma with Johannes’s divination, and it supplants Petersen’s
speeches with Johannes’s prayers. Morten may cite, “The Lord gave and
the Lord hath taken away,” but Johannes can proclaim the words that
bid the Lord give back. The fact that this spiritualist raises the dead vali-
dates his theology, and thus, by making Johannes righteous, The Word
endorses spirituality.
While these arguments have their differences, they share three simi-
larities. First, they all interpret Ordet through a theological lens. Monty
claims the film endorses Christianity, Milne claims it rejects religion, and
Carney claims it reverses orthodoxy. While their conclusions vary, these
readings concentrate on resurrection. The miracle comprises a fraction
of The Word, but arguments about it dominate discussion of the film.
Beyond the disagreements between Monty, Milne, and Carney, inter-
pretations of Ordet inevitably address marvels. For example, Guido
Aristarco criticizes the film from a Marxist perspective, David Bordwell
70 J. Ponder
analyzes it through a formal lens, and Mark Nash explores it using a

feminist approach.4 Nevertheless, all three reserve a few pages for argu-
ments about wonders. In addition, many other scholars make numerous
footnotes, scant asides, broad generalizations, or supported assertions
that turn a film that is primarily about forbidden love, generational con-
flict, mental illness, and death into a religious movie. Because The Word’s
short conclusion overwhelms critical attention, it seems examinations of
the film invite theological implications.
Second, scholars interpret Ordet in ways that concentrate on narra-
tive analysis. Monty’s conclusions about the film’s proselytizing depend
on what Johannes says, Milne’s postulations about the picture’s athe-
ism hinge on what Petersen symbolizes, and Carney’s assertions about
the movie’s heresy pivot on how the plot treats Inger. All of these argu-
ments presuppose The Word chronicles a debate over miracles, charac-
ters articulate different assertions, and the film represents some positions
more favorably than others. Characters proclaim beliefs through specific
moments of dialogue, but the film portrays those characters in particular
ways that skew their speech. Characterization casts some as likable, and
plot deems others unfavorable. Literary elements make some characters
attractive, and this depiction makes their views more appealing. By inter-
preting how dialogue, characterization, and plot treat the film’s theologi-
ans, scholars scrutinize the film. In doing so, they show how important it
is to examine the film’s narrative elements.
Finally, these writers press scholars to analyze The Word’s editing.
Dreyer’s long takes, unconventional cuts, and disruptive rhythms garner
much response as critics assume these devices are central to his movie.
Ordet illustrates dialogue in certain tones, shows characters through par-
ticular features, and makes representatives of different views endure vari-
ous plots. At the same time, the film goes beyond these literary elements
to editorialize through editing. Narrative chronicles what figures say, do,
and become, but film also represents them through shot duration, dis-
solves, and montage. Dialogue might make a character look wise, but
long takes could make him seem longwinded. Characterization might
make another appear likable, but frantic splices might portray him as
erratic. Happy endings might make a group’s religious views seem bene-
ficial, but disjointed cuts might make them seem disconnected. Whatever
the case, editing techniques decided behind the camera alter the story
that appears in front of it, and exploring the gap between what charac-
ters say and what editing says about them suggests what the film implies
about miracles.
The following will interpret Ordet by fleshing out these implicit pre-
suppositions. Many critics suggest The Word may require theological
analysis, but this chapter explicitly states it does. Others hint that one
can interpret the film’s religious stance through narrative, but this pro-
ject declares it so. To consider what Ordet says about miracles, I will
survey what theologians have said about them. Examining how the film
gives voice to different beliefs through various characters will then be
discussed. Finally, this chapter will explore how the film characterizes
these representatives in ways that make their ideas attractive or repul-
sive, before showing how editing privileges some theologies over others.
Reading the film’s narrative depictions of ideas alongside its visual repre-
sentations shows Ordet’s structure. The moments of subtle commentary
that exist between dialogue and editing disclose a controlling purpose
behind the film, and editing treats some opinions about wonders ironi-
cally and others sincerely. Ultimately, to interpret marvels in this movie,
the following relates theological context, narrative elements, and visual
techniques to contradict interpretations that the film embraces, rejects,
or reverses orthodoxy. Instead, this chapter argues that Ordet’s editing
constructs a miraculous subjectivity that emerges in response to and in
the presence of others.
“God Does Not Break His Own Laws”: Augustine

and the Pastor
Augustine argues that God’s oneness precludes wonders. During the fifth
century, Manichaeism spread throughout the Middle East, and think-
ers, such as Faustus of Mileve, divided God into two parts: one that was
spiritual, light, and righteous; the other that was physical, dark, and evil.
Countering this dualistic cosmology, Augustine insisted that God was
self-unified, and, stressing the omnipotence of the Lord, this bishop of
Hippo emphasized the Almighty’s cohesion. According to this ortho-
dox view, nature’s justice is so great that the supernatural would never
unjustly violate it. The divine created an order that everything must obey,
so miracles that disobey it cannot exist.5 In response to the church’s rise
and dualism’s growth, Augustine downplays Old Testament wonders,
deadens Christ’s marvels, and denies contemporary miracles. As he com-
bats heresy, this early church father insists the only miracle that remains
is the church itself. Therefore, Augustine deemphasizes the possibility of
divine intervention and stresses the importance of a human institution.
72 J. Ponder
In Ordet, these views find their clearest expression through the

pastor (Ove Rud), who mostly articulates this view in a conversation with
the village doctor. The clergyman is new to the area and has had limited
interactions with the Borgens. Despite the little time he has spent with
this family, when he hears about Inger’s troubles, he stops in to inquire
about her health. After doing so, the pastor learns that the obstetrician
has saved Mrs. Borgen’s life. The doctor asks the pastor if he believes
in miracles, and the pastor answers that God can perform marvels but
chooses not to do so. When the doctor challenges him to explain, he
continues that the Lord does not perform miracles because they “would
break the laws of nature, and naturally God does not break His own
laws.” When asked about the miracles of Christ, he smirks, “Those were
under special circumstances.” Like Augustine, the pastor subjects God
to a natural order. Insisting on the consistency of creation, both men
claim the creator binds himself to rules that limit creatures. They insist
an omnipotent God can do anything, but they also suggests the Lord
submits to the natural laws he has ordained and chooses not to perform
supernatural miracles.
While the pastor articulates this theology, the film denigrates him.
According to Nash, the pastor represents “believers” who “disbelieve,”
and this unbeliever disregards the feelings of others in unbelievable ways.6
When he claims God cannot contradict the laws he made, the reverend
idolizes reason, proclaiming the laws of nature are stronger than the God
who spoke them into being. When the doctor asks about the miracles of
Christ, the pastor can only grin, and when the physician inquires about
the miracle of Christ, the clergyman offers no reply. Thinking of marvels
as an intellectual exercise, he fails to recognize their importance in the
Borgens’ emotional life. Nash points out that the pastor defends ortho-
doxy at an inopportune time. Morten has just lost a grandson, but the
minister denies miracles just moments after this death. The family notes
that their pastor has delayed meeting them, but he leaps at the chance to
express theological views that defy people’s psychological needs. Because
he denies resurrection minutes after the newborn dies, the pastor articu-
lates a theology that seems callous.
Editing accentuates this unfavorable characterization in a few ways.
First, shot duration makes the pastor’s theology seem dull. Before 1960,
shots averaged 8–11 seconds; Ordet’s shots average more than a min-
ute. Running 126 minutes, the film contains only 114 shots, and most
occur during its dramatic close.7 In this film of slow takes, the reverend
delivers his theology in one of the slowest. Occupying five minutes of

film, his beliefs stretch audience expectations 30 times their conventional
capacity. Many have criticized the film for its oppressive shot duration,
but this particular one makes the pastor seem downright tyrannical. The
long take makes him seem longwinded, and the unattractive editing
of this scene makes the theology he articulates in it seem unappealing.
The pastor drones on about the cold logic of the natural order, and he
denies the fiery miracles that would defy the laws of creation. Fittingly,
this slow film becomes even more lifeless when he denies resurrection,
and he insists on the permanence of death in a shot that makes him seem
detached from liveliness.
Editing also makes the pastor appear lifeless through contrast. This
filmic device decides what appears onscreen, but it also dictates what
remains offscreen. The opposition between the visible and the invis-
ible creates dramatic tension between what audiences could otherwise
see and what the film chooses to show. In this particular scene, editing
compares a shot of Inger’s physical battle with the shot of the pastor’s
intellectual prattle. During her screen time, she wrestles breath, loses
consciousness, and faces death. During his, he receives coffee, puffs
cigars, and denies resurrection. Inger’s blood, sweat, and tears are cen-
tral to the plot, but editing fixates on the pastor’s tangential thoughts,
words, and jokes. Pairing these shots in this way, it exaggerates the cler-
gyman’s insignificance and makes him seem like an obstruction. The
pastor arrives unannounced in ways that take Morten from Inger, and
he overstays his visit by means that prevent the father from returning to
his daughter-in-law. As the reverend imposes on Morten, he takes the
frame from the patient and prevents the cut back to the plot, denying the
viewer the drama that is occurring in Inger’s bedroom. Because the edit-
ing stops the camera from filming the fight for life, the pastor’s theology
seems all the more indifferent to it.
Finally, sound editing makes this pastor seem insensitive. From
Maren’s room, Johannes bellows a prayer that finally ends the rever-
end’s discussion. Ceasing his chatter, the pastor seems ready to acquiesce
the camera to others, but instead, he doubles down on his importance.
Johannes prays, “The Lord be with you,” but the parson keeps the frame
with him. He suggests Morten should institutionalize his son, which
pits the pastor against Johannes in a new way. On a filmic level, the self-
described Christian who appears onscreen opposes the self-described
Christ who wails offscreen, but on a narrative level, the self-proclaimed
74 J. Ponder
man of God gives unsolicited advice regarding the self-proclaimed son of

God. Without the rapport that would authorize such candor, the pastor
appears presumptuous in his suggestion, and his insensitivity regarding
Johannes’s illness makes his ideas less appealing. Depicting the pas-
tor as unfeeling just moments after expounding his beliefs, the contrast
between his rigid logic and the Borgens’ raw grief makes his theology
seem aloof.
Ultimately, editing portrays the pastor in ways that negate his ideas.
Shot duration makes him seem to drone on, juxtaposition makes him
appear to steal attention from the sick, and sound helps show that he
ignores the ill. Unaware of how his lectures extend beyond their time,
unmindful of how irrelevant his theories are in comparison to life-threat-
ening complications, and unfeeling regarding how psychological delu-
sions plague others, the pastor appears inhumane. The Borgens endure
through, struggle in, and fight for life, but editing juxtaposes the rev-
erend with them in ways that make him look all the more lifeless. The
minister proclaims views that reflect Augustine’s. Both figures claim that
miracles happened so God might create the church and that marvels
can no longer happen because they defy God’s laws. This belief admits
that wonders were supernatural insofar as they benefited the ecclesiasti-
cal. Arriving unannounced, overstaying one’s welcome, and separating
families, this view seems insensitive. By making the pastor’s theology
seem protracted, unfeeling, and obstructive, editing makes Augustine’s
theories seem uncaring, esoteric, and irrelevant. Because the pastor does
not know his flock, inspire the doubtful, or raise the dead, Ordet makes
Augustinian arguments about miracles seem unable to meet the needs of
Christians.
“Is It Not Wonderful?”: Origen and Petersen

Origen viewed wonders less as a magical vehicle for God than a rhetori-
cal device for evangelists. As citizens in an ancient society that was sub-
sumed by religious debate, Christians required miracles to gain authority,
and as members of a fringe religion whose leader was crucified, believers
needed marvels to convince others. For Origen, the church could not
have begun without wonders, and miracles became fundamental to form-
ing that institution. Converts faced unemployment, ostracism, and exe-
cution, so if people were to adopt a religion that brought them death,
they needed wonders that produced life.8 For them, marvels proved that
Christ was divine, Christians were righteous, and witnesses should adopt
Christianity, while earthly wonders helped Christendom thrive because
they built the kingdom of heaven. According to this apologist, the point
of a miracle is not to resurrect the dead, but to preach the gospel that
will save one during the resurrection of the dead. Ultimately, Origen
concludes the purpose of marvels is not physical restoration but spiritual
salvation.
One figure from Ordet that resonates with this theology is Petersen.
He is a tailor who gives sermons as a lay minister and leads a group
of worshippers that belong to The Church Association for the Inner
Mission in Denmark. He is also the father of Anne, the woman that
Morten’s son, Anders, seeks to marry. After denying Anders’s marriage
proposal, the stern leader invites his sallow flock into his workshop.
There, he preaches, “We know God performs his wonders among us
still today,” and the marvels he lists are “the knowledge of your salva-
tion,” “that God has seen fit to convert you and make you give your-
self to Him,” and “that a sinner such as I stand here and bear witness
amongst you.” Surveying this list of redemptions, he concludes by ask-
ing, “Is it not wonderful?” in ways that equate Petersen with Origen. As
the theologian limited miracles to those events that produced redemp-
tion, this tailor restricts wonders to those experiences that allow salva-
tion. Concentrating on the spiritual benefits of physical marvels, both
Christians venerate the soul’s conversion to eternal life more than the
body’s rise from the grave. Both the church father and the patriarch of
this church emphasize the wonder of witness so much that they reduce
divine power to the power of persuasion, a convincing piece of evidence
in an evangelist’s argument rather than a supernatural reverse of nature.
Ultimately, Origen and Petersen proclaim the possibility of earthly mira-
cles but fixate on those that produce heavenly rewards.
While dialogue implies that Petersen voices Origenian theology, char-
acterization suggests he embodies predestination. According to Robin
Wood, lethargic editing restricts human action in Ordet, and actors stifle
impulses to remain in the sluggish frame as slow camera movements hin-
der what characters do. Wood claims that the film’s style suggests actors
must yield to the languid camera as humans would submit to “strict pre-
destination.”9 He finds this suffocating fatalism strongest in the figure of
Petersen. The tailor rejects the physical pleasure of life for the spiritual
promises of death. Like a corpse awaiting burial, he wears a somber suit,
a firm frown, and a desire for heaven. Such a dour figure finds a perfect
76 J. Ponder
home in pallid editing that nullifies “all spontaneous, individual life.”10

Both Petersen the character and Ejner Federspiel, the actor playing him,
conform to shot placements choreographed for months in a film that
implies humans comply with divine appointments predetermined for
eternity.
This narrative characterization of Petersen also appears in visual rep-
resentations of him. For example, editing makes his beliefs seem life-
less through shot adjacency. Before the church service, Morten storms
off to fight for Anders’s right to marry Anne, a quest that spans three
shots. The first shows Morten’s carriage and its horses galloping toward
Petersen’s shop, the second shows the tailor’s sermon, and the third
shows Morten interrupting the lecture to confront Petersen. The car-
riage shot promises conflict and the interruption shot fulfills that prom-
ise, but the sermon shot only fills time between the moments that the
Borgens leave the farm and the instant they meet the tailor. Petersen’s
pontifications are irrelevant to the narrative, and his sermon only has
value insofar as it sutures these two other shots. The splicing that con-
nects the first and final elements of this trio reduces the sermon to a
dramatic device that does little more than create tension until Morten
arrives. As adjacency makes Petersen’s address extraneous, it makes his
stance on miracles seem superfluous.
Editing also undermines Petersen through match cut. In the car-
riage shot, Anders rides into town because of his love for Anne, and
Morten goes with him because he loves his son. The camera tracks
them as they traverse hills and fields and barns and posts, but as they
exit the frame, the camera leaves them and holds on a single cross atop
a hill. Starting with the Borgens but ending with the cross, camera
movement associates them with this symbol of Christianity. Transition
moves from the carriage shot to the sermon with a graphic match that
goes from the cross in the former to a mannequin in the latter (see
Figs. 3.1 and 3.2). The dummy stands in the middle of Petersen’s
shop, and the camera pans from this object to the tailor, associat-
ing Peterson with this wooden figure as an unfeeling thing. This rac-
cord between the carriage and the sermon contrasts the Borgens and
Petersen. The one links compassionate Christians with the cross, and
the other shackles pious churchgoers with mannequins. The Borgens
talk about love for each other, while the tailor discusses love for the
Lord, and the match cut that introduces his sermon makes him seem as
hollow as his dummy.
Fig. 3.1 (47:34, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). The camera (panning left) follows the
Borgens’ carriage ride
Finally, editing discounts Petersen through cutting on action. In the

carriage shot, the camera tracks the Borgens as their horses gallop screen
left—as contrasted with the sermon shot, where the camera pans across
blind, crippled, and dying worshippers on their way to Petersen. The for-
mer features a tracking camera clipping along at a brisk pace as it tries to
keep up with trotting stallions, but the latter features a panning camera
that wades through a sea of illness as it tries to find the offscreen voice.
Matching on movement from the frame that tracks the carriage to one
that crosses over the sick draws parallels between the two shots, exag-
gerating the slowness of the second. Love propels the Borgens, and their
camera speeds to keep up with them; but law compels Petersen’s words,
and his camera sluggishly obeys him. The cutting on action that con-
trasts these moments makes the camera in the sermon shot seem tired,
and editing makes the speech articulated in it seem all the more insipid.
In the end, the film’s style discredits Petersen. Shot adjacency makes
him seem boring, match cut compares him to a mannequin, and cutting
on action makes his world crawl at a glacial pace. Because it makes him
78 J. Ponder
Fig. 3.2 (47:37, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). The camera match cuts to the manne-
quin at Petersen’s sermon before panning left
look dull, inanimate, and tedious, cutting makes Petersen appear lifeless.
He asserts views that resemble Origen’s, arguing that miracles such as
healing, restoration, and resurrection exist but for the purpose of conver-
sion, witness, and salvation. This Origenist theology accepts the existence
of wonders but claims they cure, enliven, or resuscitate the physical only
so they can convert, evangelize, and save the spiritual. Denying marriage
proposals, ignoring the sickness of parishioners, and even praying for
Inger’s death, Petersen becomes hard-hearted, and his position on mira-
cles seems unfeeling. Casting it as the tiresome blather of mannequins,
this scene mocks the tailor’s theology.
“Then Miracles Do Not Happen”: Hume and Morten

David Hume claimed that miracles were too unreliable to inform faith.
The eighteenth-century philosopher used empirical skepticism to analyze
wonders. In doing so, he defined a marvel as “a violation of the laws
of nature” that “firm and unalterable experience has established.”11
He argued that each instant the world obeys these laws it disproves miracles,
and because one can’t predictably replicate wonders, they are empirically
impossible. People may claim to have witnessed them personally, but
such events fail to provide the chance for others to observe them inter-
personally. Some say they have experienced supernatural phenomena but
remain unable to reproduce them with natural consistency. Because no
one can prove the historical existence of miracles in this way, Hume con-
cludes that they cannot serve as the basis for belief.
In Ordet, this stance on miracles appears through Morten, and he
articulates this view in a discussion with Inger. During this conversation,
he laments Johannes’s mental illness and his inability to muster the faith
that might heal his son. Morten believes his doubt is to blame, saying,
“When a father cannot pray for his child with faith, then miracles do not
happen.” The head of Borgensgaard might lack the belief that Christ
could heal his son, but he still insists he believes in Christ. When the pas-
tor suggests he should institutionalize Johannes, Morten admits that a
miracle will not heal his child, but he also insists it is his Christian duty
to care for his son as long as he lives. Opposed by Petersen’s religiosity
and mocked by Johannes’s insanity, Morten boasts that he will endure,
refusing to look for divine wonders and devoting himself to social duty.
Without a miracle that would reconcile him to the world, this charac-
ter takes pride in the fact that he continues his Christian walk without
the need for marvels, and by rejecting wonders, Morten personifies the
Christian who stands on faith without miracles.
Despite his insistence that he lives life without reservation, Morten
represents lifeless resignation. Paul Schrader claims that a key element of
the film’s style is its “perpetual disparity” between “the body and soul
always alive and in tension.”12 He argues the thing that keeps Ordet’s
ponderous style from grinding to a halt is a cosmology rooted in dual-
ism. Dragging plots, crawling cameras, and plodding edits generate
formal stasis, but raging conflicts between the physical and the spiritual
preserve conceptual dynamism. Morten personifies this thematic tension
between flesh and soul. He complains of the pain that rheumatism causes
him, but this physical sickness suggests a spiritual illness. Arthritic condi-
tions of the body cause discomfort in the joints, impairing the ability of
bones, muscles, and nerves to relate in healthy ways. Similarly, Morten
suffers arthritis of the soul that causes pain in his world, undermining his
ability to connect with family, peers, and God. The body that once lifted
his farm from poverty awaits relief in heaven, and the soul that preached
80 J. Ponder
the living God seeks the comfort of death. Having him do little more
than limp toward the grave, the film represents Morten in ways that dis-
parage the vitality of his views.
While characterization undermines Morten on a narrative level, Ordet
does the same on a visual one. For example, continuity editing deni-
grates him during the scene in which he articulates his opinions. The
shot that chronicles his beliefs follows one where Morten and Inger sit in
the kitchen and discuss Anders’s proposal to Anne. He accuses his chil-
dren of conspiring to marry Anders off, and Morten storms away from
the camera screen left before the next shot shows him approaching the
camera screen right. This continuity edit follows the spatiotemporal logic
of conventional film, but it breaks from the aesthetic logic of this par-
ticular movie. Ordet shoots each conversation with a single shot, but this
discussion between Inger and Morten breaks this pattern. Discussing
The Word, Noel Burch claims, “Although the ‘one shot per sequence’
principle is predominant, it is not always respected.”13 Cutting from
the kitchen disrespects this norm by splitting the single conversation
between two shots. In the context of this film, this tactic is unusual, but
it plays a vital role in how the movie represents Morten’s theology. This
otherwise unnecessary midscene cut becomes necessary because it trans-
ports Morten out of the kitchen and into the pigsty. This edit places him
in the muck as he claims miracles do not happen, and this cut ensures he
stands in the mire when he insists Johannes will never get better. With
this uncharacteristic edit, his rejections of the marvelous mingle with
the refuse; his denials of the miraculous weave with swine awaiting the
butcher. The kitchen contains the comforts of life—coffee, tobacco, and
cookies—but this cut throws him out into the pigpen with condemned
beasts, forcing him to deny resurrection among pigs facing death.
Editing also satirizes Morten through sound. In the barn, Morten
claims a miracle could have healed Johannes if he had believed. The
father admits, “If I had had faith when I prayed, the miracle would have
happened.” This declaration hinges the immortal on mortals, suggesting
the Almighty can move heaven and earth if Morten believes. He contin-
ues, “I only prayed because I thought it was worth trying” in ways that
imply supplications are pointless. At this instant, sound editing couples
the farmer’s prayers with the oinks of pigs, and the hogs object when he
suggests that petitioning miracles is useless. Perhaps one swine stepped
on another, a piglet was hungry, or the sow suffered a contraction.
Whatever causes this eruption, the source of the squeals remains unseen.
Similarly, perhaps Johannes’s disease worsens, prayers continue to go

unanswered, or Morten denies his need for miracles, whatever causes
his stance on marvels, the reason for his groaning also remains hidden.
What remains clear is that this scene yokes the farmer’s speech with the
squeals of his livestock. The latter’s yelp of pain, fear, or surprise suggests
that they do not live well, and the former’s admission of doubt, anger,
and suffering implies he does not either. Linking both of these sounds of
life-threatening distress as he details his stance on wonders, editing joins
Borgen’s beliefs with miserable lives.
Finally, a dissolve transition associates Morten with conflict. He claims
that miracles do not happen, believing Christians must endure without
them, and he makes this declaration just moments before he trudges
into the cold to retrieve his granddaughters from school. When Inger
reminds him about his health, he replies, “I don’t give a darn about the
rheumatism! I’m not quite a cripple yet.” With this statement, Morten
defies the arthritis of his body and his soul. Although this dialogue
implies he decides not to live in defeat, editing shows he doesn’t know
how to exist in peace. After he finishes this line, his image fades into one
of the tailor’s sign, and this transition intertwines Morten and Petersen.
Ordet depicts how these rivals try to untangle themselves, but this dis-
solve is the first moment that interlocks them. In the pigsty, Morten
denies miracles and embraces endurance. The fact that he does this in
a shot that dissolves into a shot of his antagonist suggests the farm-
er’s beliefs create bitterness from which struggle provides sweetness.
Concluding Morten’s theology with signs of strife, this dissolve implies
his stance on miracles produces an existence consumed by discord, and
showing this believer lives for a fight, editing links his beliefs with an
empty life.
Overall, editing challenges Morten’s position. It introduces his ideas
with a cut that makes him seem wretched amidst a soundtrack that sug-
gests he is condemned before a transition that represents him as com-
bative. Because continuity links his beliefs with filth, squeals associate
his words with slaughter and dissolve bonds his theology with discord,
editing suggests this character lives an empty life. Morten takes pride
in his stoic beliefs, boasts of his ability to extricate miracles from faith,
and brags about his stamina to fulfill duties without miracles. But that
mere endurance yields a life crippled by bitterness, anger, and a desire
for death. Hume criticizes those who base belief on miracles in ways that
deny the realities of life, but Morten rejects the possibility of miracles
82 J. Ponder
in a manner that compromises his ability to live. Fighting against his

body, family, and God, he seems to exist lifelessly, and editing accen-
tuates this lifelessness by placing his theology in the pigsty among the
swine. In these ways, this scene denigrates Morten as well as the views he
articulates.
“A Lot of Little Miracles Happen Secretly”:

Spinoza and Inger
Baruch Spinoza argues that miracles simply refer to what humans do not
know. He chides the masses for seeking marvels that disrupt nature when
natural harmony is marvelous enough. He claims that “if anyone asserted
that God acts in contravention to the laws of nature, he, ipso facto, would
be compelled to assert that God acted against His own nature—an evi-
dent absurdity.”14 Conversely, Spinoza argues that “every event which
is truly described in Scripture necessarily happened, like everything else,
according to natural laws.”15 He continues that God did not create natu-
ral order to crack it, construct physical laws to break them, or cohere a
universe to contradict it. Spinoza argues that the greatest wonder, the
most significant proof of providence appears in the ordinary functioning
of physical reality, that creation operates in perfect harmony and requires
no contravention. Ultimately, Spinoza claims God performs marvels
all the time, not by violating natural law, but by making an order that
doesn’t need infringement to operate.
One character that articulates this theology is Inger, Morten’s daughter-
in-law, Mikkel’s wife, and the force that works behind the scenes to help
the farm run smoothly. She does not look for wonders to disrupt the
laws of nature, but she marvels in the normal operations of mundane
things. In the pigsty, she claims, “I believe a lot of little miracles happen
secretly. God hears people’s prayers, but he does it kind of secretly, so as
not to have too much fuss made about it.” Like Spinoza, she finds the
supernatural not in what happens as much as the force behind everything
that does. She suggests Mikkel’s harvest, Ander’s love, and the sow’s lit-
ter are as wondrous as exorcism, healing, and resurrection. Instead of
searching for spectacular miracles that announce God’s presence, she rec-
ognizes subtle ones that suggest the divine’s omnipresence. She denies
extraordinary marvels by marveling at the commonplace, and she claims
natural wonders happen all the time in ways that deny supernatural ones.
While most scholars focus on the lifelessness of Ordet’s characters,

others explore the liveliness of Inger. The film’s long takes create a
weighted environment, but this dense atmosphere just makes light ele-
ments airier. Ken Kelman argues this contrast between the dense and the
graceful becomes most evident in the case of Inger. He acknowledges
that the film’s burdensome pace gives the film a brooding tenor, but he
notes that the scenes with Inger generate “a feeling of the buoyance of
air.”16 In this argument, the daughter of Borgensgaard becomes a ray of
light in an otherwise dreary film. The serious, sick, and sullen men muf-
fle The Word, but this kind, gentle, and encouraging woman enlivens it.
Others require incredible miracles that would disrupt their sad lives, but
her life is so joyful that she recognizes the subtle marvels that already
pervade it. As Kelman notes, the film characterizes Inger like no other
character, and she embodies ideas that no other figure does. Others
endure life unto death, but she enjoys it while living.
Editing heightens this characterization in a few ways. For start-
ers, continuity affirms the vitality of Inger’s views by keeping the cam-
era with her when it leaves others. Like Morten, Inger articulates her
beliefs in the pigsty, and, like his faith, hers transpires in a shot begun
by a cut that establishes continuity with the kitchen shot that precedes
it. In that shot, Inger and Morten discuss the possible marriage between
Anders and Anne. She declares, “I think the most important thing is
to love one another.” But he insists, “Birds of a feather is best.” Her
stance celebrates love, but his extols conflict; hers embraces differences,
but his denounces them. When Morten storms off, the camera stays with
Inger. Letting the former exit the frame while staying with the latter, this
moment seems to privilege her kindness over his anger. Favoring the one
over the other, editing appears to value her life over his. By loving, help-
ing, and caring for people, she lives a life full of miracles. By fighting,
hindering, and taking from others, he lifelessly awaits marvels. By staying
with her while letting him go, shifting focus from the combative to the
compassionate, and deeming her life the one worth filming, this transi-
tion suggests her life is also the one worth living.
Editing also makes Inger seem lively by having her enter the frame
in vibrant ways. In the kitchen shot, Morten exits backstage and moves
screen left toward a door, and in the pigpen shot, he enters from back-
stage and moves screen right. Because Inger followed him out dur-
ing the kitchen shot, spatiotemporal logic would dictate that she would
84 J. Ponder
Fig. 3.3 (27:11, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Inger exits to backstage screen left
follow him in during the pigsty shot and enter the frame from the same
direction (see Fig. 3.3). Instead, she breaks the screen right frame and
emerges out of thin air (see Fig. 3.4). Because the pursuer appears from
a different direction than the pursued, the cut that begins this shot defies
convention. Breaking the norm in this way introduces Inger in fresh ways,
and prefacing her speech in this animated style enlivens the theology that
follows. Montage frames her monologue about the subtle marvels of mun-
dane life by making something as routine as character entrance marvelous.
She enters the frame through a little miracle of cinema for a shot where she
claims that life is full of little wonders. Because editing replicates her beliefs
in this way, it represents her in a robust way that makes her seem lively.
Although the transition that introduces this scene depicts Inger as
a source of life, the L cut that ends it forecasts her death. The pigpen
shot concludes with an image of Inger smiling before dissolving to Mr.
Petersen’s sign. The shot of that advertisement segues with a split edit
Fig. 3.4 (27:31, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Inger enters from backstage screen
right
that makes the tailor’s placard visible but makes his song audible. In this
moment, sound outpaces visuals, and Petersen remains unseen but can
be heard singing, “The time is coming for me to go. I hear the voice
of winter. For I also am only a bird of passage. My real home is else-
where.” These lyrics suggest that the singer passes the time until death
takes him to his heavenly home, and these words overlap the previous
shot where Inger extols life with this shot where Petersen invites death.
In the former, she satisfies herself with ordinary miracles, but the latter
invokes the chill that requires extraordinary ones. The pigsty shot shows
that Inger knows how to live marvelously, but the placard shot indicates
that she doesn’t know she will die suddenly. She may live with enough
life to command when the camera cuts and she may enter the frame in
wondrous ways, but this L cut’s use of sound still fates Inger to be one
who will soon “hear the voice of winter.”
86 J. Ponder
With these techniques, Ordet portrays Inger as both lively and

doomed. She professes her beliefs just after leaving a cut like a vital
force, and she expresses her views after entering the frame in revitalizing
ways. Nevertheless, this scene ends with a shift that foreshadows Inger’s
demise. On the one hand, continuity casts hers as the life worth film-
ing, and discontinuity makes her entrance dynamic. On the other, the
split edit that ends this sequence implies that she is condemned. Turning
Inger into a symbol of both vivaciousness and hopelessness, editing sug-
gests she is lively in life but helpless against death. Like Spinoza, she
takes solace in the wondrous harmony of nature, but she succumbs to
the grave without a marvelous disruption from the supernatural. Inger’s
beliefs prepare her to enjoy where others endure; she thrives where oth-
ers just survive. She can find the miraculous in everyday events, but
she overlooks the wonders of eternity. She commands the cut from the
kitchen, but a split edit also foreshadows her death; and because this
scene portrays Inger as vivacious yet powerless, Ordet questions the vital-
ity of her beliefs.
“I Believe in Those Miracles Which My Science

Has Taught Me”: Newton and the Doctor
Isaac Newton tried to provide ordinary explanations for extraordinary
events. In doing so, he claimed that miracles do not defy the natural
order as much as they upset what humans know about nature. According
to him, “Miracles are so called not because they are works of God, but
because they happen seldom, and for that reason create wonder.”17 In
this line of thinking, marvels happen not in physical reality but in indi-
vidual psychology. It is possible that a blizzard could blanket the Sahara
even if it would seem impossible to inhabitants of that region. Therefore,
snowfall would be mundane in the Arctic, but it would become won-
drous in the minds of desert dwellers. For Newton, marvels do not inau-
gurate incidents that could not happen; they simply initiate occasions
that rarely do. According to Newton, what people call a miracle is not
the product of divine intervention but of human perception. Nature is so
limitless, and mortal understanding is so limited that people will inevita-
bly encounter natural experiences that seem to violate nature. Therefore,
Newton’s scientific interpretation claims the marvelous is merely the
unusual.
This theory finds articulation through the doctor. After he saves Inger
but loses her child, the physician sits down for coffee with Morten. The
latter notifies the former that his patient is resting in the other room
and that her recovery “is like a miracle.” With a smirk, the doctor ques-
tions the possibility of marvels. Suddenly, Johannes mutters a benedic-
tion from the other room that leaves Morten downtrodden. In response,
the physician insists that Johannes will improve once he encounters a
psychological shock that will rectify his consciousness. Smiling, Morten
accuses him of believing in the same wonders he just denied, but the
doctor replies, “I believe in those miracles which my science has taught
me.” Analyzing marvels through a scientific lens, he insists the super-
natural has never happened, but he also presumes the natural progres-
sion of mental health will produce results so unusual that Morten would
call them supernatural. For Newton, “the wondrous” was the name peo-
ple gave to any event that happens infrequently. For the doctor, “the
miraculous” is the restoration of the mental health Johannes experiences
uncommonly. In this regard, he believes in scientific marvels, and, with
such an empirical stance, the doctor articulates Newton’s position on
wonders.
To some degree, Ordet makes the doctor seem cold. Claude Perrin
claims the film contains an “unbending and cold climate.”18 Perhaps
the frostiest character within this environment is the physician, who
observes his world with an icy squint. Accustomed to examining others,
he does not empathize with them. The doctor articulates his theology
just moments after Inger’s child dies. Morten mourns his grandson, but
it is at this time the obstetrician teases him. Just minutes after the farmer
learns that the baby’s body has been cut into four pieces and placed into
a pail, the doctor asks, “Which do you think helped most this evening,
your prayers or my treatment?” Asking this, the doctor forces Morten, a
man of faith, to confront his doubt while attempting to cling to shreds
of hope. As the doctor puffs a self-celebratory cigar, spreads a self-con-
gratulatory smirk, and launches into self-aggrandizing discussion, he
reveals his insensitivity to others. Such moments make this man of sci-
ence appear unfeeling, suggesting his miracles of science don’t help him
empathize.
Montage complements the doctor’s characterization by making him
seem detached. The first time the physician appears, he circles Inger as
she writhes in pain, ignoring her cries and surveying her as the camera
uncharacteristically leaps from the doctor examining Inger to Anders
88 J. Ponder
galloping home on horseback and back to a crying Inger. Then the frame
jumps to the physician dismembering the baby to Morten praying to
the shot where the physician is discussing his worldview. This series of
images crosscuts Inger, Morten, and Anders. By slicing from one charac-
ter to another, this sequence does not focus on one and, thus, surveys so
many people it depersonalizes them all. The one person who sutures this
impersonal audit is the surgeon because, while editing crosscuts many
characters, it keeps returning to the sawbones at the center of this cut-
ting. A particular shot may leave him, but this series of shots inspects the
world in ways that reflect how this physician examines his patient. As his
mind leaps between one medical action and another, the camera springs
from one person to another. As the crosscutting camera never sees peo-
ple, this scientist never sees the person he begins cutting. Because this
character emerges through such a dehumanizing editing technique, the
doctor seems detached from people.
The crosscutting that introduces the doctor makes him seem dis-
connected from others, but the unconventional transitions that occur
during his scene help portray him as detached from the world. In the
parlor, dialogue characterizes him as unfeeling on a verbal level by mak-
ing the doctor insensitive to the feelings of those around him; editing
does the same on a visual level by representing the scientist as oblivi-
ous to the spatiotemporal rules of his world. Just before the doctor
insists only scientific miracles exist, Morten exits screen left and reenters
screen right (see Figs. 3.5 and 3.6). For him to make this entrance, he
must walk behind the camera, break the proscenium arch, and violate
the shooting axis. By circumventing the frame, he jumps the line, diso-
beys the 180-degree rule, and shatters one of the oldest laws in cinema.
When he transgresses the filmic order, Morten commits a movie miracle.
This supernatural breach occurs at a moment when the doctor insists on
the laws of nature. He professes that he believes in the miracles that his
science has taught him, but at that precise moment, editing shows view-
ers a cinematic marvel. With this instance of dramatic irony, audiences
witness a violation of filmic laws that this character cannot behold, and
as filmgoers observe a wonder he cannot, the doctor seems detached
from the world he inhabits.
While the editing throughout this scene separates the doctor from his
world, the cutting that concludes it disjoints him from the world of oth-
ers. After he discloses his beliefs, the physician exits through the door
before Morten and Anders walk to the window; this significant shot
Fig. 3.5 (1:27:00, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Morten exits screen left
ends with an insignificant one of the Borgens looking outside. Ending

the important parlor shot with this unimportant one of the window
concludes the doctor’s discourse on a low note, but it also does some-
thing more. As the father and son peer outdoors, they watch the phy-
sician enter his car to drive away, but no reverse shot confirms this.
The doctor’s sequence begins with crosscutting that looks at people
but never sees them, and it ends with the shot of individuals looking
in his direction but never seeing him. Editing emphasizes Morten and
Anders as they look, but it deemphasizes the doctor as they observe.
This shot without a reverse shot humanizes observers and dehumanizes
the observed in ways that make the doctor fall victim to his own clinical
worldview. After the scientist extols cold analysis, cutting analyzes him
coldly. He holds an empiricism that ignores people, and editing con-
cludes with empirical methods that ignore him.
In these moments, editing criticizes the doctor. Most characters reject
miracles altogether, but he accepts scientific ones. His acceptance makes
90 J. Ponder
Fig. 3.6 (1:27:25, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Morten enters screen right
him more accommodating than others, but his theology presents other
problems. Surveying intellectual data, he forgets the emotions of people.
Insisting on what he has learned, he ignores what he encounters; idol-
izing perception, he becomes imperceptible. By introducing him with
a dehumanizing sequence of crosscuts across many people, editing cuts
off the doctor from his peers. He insists on conventional explanations
in an unconventional shot that severs him from his world, and he con-
cludes his lecture with a counterless shot through which others ampu-
tate him from their worldview. The surgeon resembles Newton insofar
as he stands on the miracles his science has taught him, but the fact that
he fails to recognize the humanity of others, the reality of his world, or
that his worldview affects how others view him suggests that his science
hasn’t taught him enough. Therefore, editing makes him lifelessly cold,
draws his perspective into question, and criticizes the stance he conveys
on miracles.
“The Word that Can Bring the Dead Back to Life”:

Lewis and Johannes
Unlike most of his peers, C.S. Lewis insists miracles are central to
Christianity. He argues that while modern believers claim marvels
must comply with nature, ancient theologians believed wonders could
defy it.19 The present church reduces Jesus to a moral philosopher,
but its predecessor venerated him as a marvel worker. Lewis accuses
Christians of removing miracles from the here and now, but he proclaims
Christianity is “the story of a great Miracle” that endures for all time.20
Establishing this dichotomy between the ancient and the modern, Lewis
notes how the former accepted wonders but the latter denies them and
how the one was closer to Jesus while the other drifts away. Urging
reform, he compels believers to draw nearer to the Lord of old, accept
miracles, and adopt a more ancient faith. Central to his thesis is the pre-
supposition that the marvel-working Messiah remains the same yesterday,
today, and forever, so modern theologians must recognize the status that
marvels retain until the end of days.
Johannes expresses these views during a conversation with the pas-
tor. Alone with the minister, he introduces himself as Jesus of Nazareth.
When the pastor asks him to prove this assertion, Johannes accuses him
of being a man of faith who lacks faith. He scolds the church for believ-
ing in the dead Christ but not the living, and he reprimands believers for
that fact that they “believe in my miracles from 2000 years ago, but they
don’t believe in me now.” Here, like Lewis, Johannes stresses an eternal
theology. Both figures contend that the marvelous continues today, and
both criticize the marvel-less church for its doubt. Wonders become cen-
tral to what Lewis thinks Christianity is, and they become fundamental
to the Christ that Johannes thinks he is. In both theologies, the Jesus of
two millennia ago is the same now, and modern believers should hold
the same beliefs as those from the ancient world. Arguing that miracles
define Christianity, Lewis implies doubters are frauds and Johannes sug-
gests skeptics are crucifiers.
While the former pushes an eternal Christ and the latter thinks he is
that timeless figure, the plot punishes Johannes for ignoring the present.
He insists he is the ancient God transplanted into modern times, and he
condemns people for lacking the faith that would allow him to perform
miracles. When Johannes first prays over Inger’s body, he loses control
of the incantation, moaning, “I, the Christ, have come from God, and
92 J. Ponder
with God I shall remain among the clouds of heaven.” After admitting
this declaration, Johannes falls unconscious. He had insisted that he was
the Christ who would raise Inger, but when Johannes proves he cannot
perform miracles, he proves he is not Jesus. Julian Murphet claims this
character functions like a puppet declaring words that are not his own
through “a scratchy prosopopoeia of scriptural quotations.”21 He rips
verses out of context to force them into conversations the same way he
tears Christ from his ancient time to be him in modern times. Beside
this deathbed, however, the decontextualized Jesus possesses Johannes’s
voice and insists he left eternity to incarnate one particular histori-
cal moment before returning to timeless heaven. Johannes is the quasi-
Christ who refuses to admit that Jesus remains “among the clouds,”
and some force confesses through him then casts him down. The one
who dared to try and resurrect the dead had his head dashed against the
deathbed, and in this painful episode, Johannes admits that Jesus was his-
torical once but is gone now.
Before plot undermines Johannes in this way, dissolve contradicts his
views. In the film’s opening scene, he preaches to reeds, crying, “Woe
unto you who do not believe in me, the risen Christ, who was sent to
you by Him who made the heavens and the earth.” During this sermon,
he fails to recognize that this church lacks true Christians because he is
not the Christ. The historical Jesus lived during a particular time, and
that physical entity does not live during Johannes’s. Nevertheless, this
son of Borgensgaard fails to recognize how Christ changes over time. He
tries to remain the same while his world evolves, and a dissolve transi-
tion complements the ways he fails to adapt. Before the scene where he
explains his views on miracles is another where Mikkel leads horses that
are hauling reeds. The long, silent, and tangential shot centralizes the cut
plants before dissolving to the next shot of Johannes entering the parlor.
This transition between the reeds and the man draws parallels between
these plants and this person. In the first reed shot, the plants thrive,
sway, and bend with life, but in the second, they are cut, bound, and
dead. In the former, Johannes condemns his church of living grasses for
not believing in him, but when he responds to the new congregation of
killed reeds with the same old message, he is the one who appears dead.
As editing superimposes this dead church on its Christ, and as Johannes
fails to recognize how time has changed them, this dissolve from these
lifeless reeds makes the quasi-Christ who preaches to them appear life-
lessly blind to change.
As Johannes fails to see reality, the camera that records it stops try-
ing to see him. Having already condemned the faithless reeds before
they were cut down, he now cuts down the parson by condemning his
faithlessness. When Johannes scolds the church for believing in ancient
miracles but not in modern ones, the clergyman retorts that marvels no
longer happen. Johannes replies, “Thus speaks my church on earth, that
church which has failed me, that has murdered me in my own name.”
After reviling the pastor for denying miracles, he exits, leaving the min-
ister alone. By refusing to cut when Johannes leaves, the shot deem-
phasizes him, and by remaining with the guest despite the host’s exit,
it shifts importance. The camera dismisses Johannes and admits the pas-
tor, letting this visitor wander Borgensgaard unsure of what to do after
his host abandons him. The social, theological, and existential awkward-
ness of this desertion deepens as the seconds pass, and it resolves when
the pastor thinks about the fact that Johannes claims to be Christ and
states, “That’s absolutely appalling.” Giving the reverend the last word,
this close suggests that it shares his conclusion, letting the pastor summa-
rize the sequence, this finale allowing him to declare Johannes’s theology
dreadful, cutting the scene in a way that editing turns its eyes from the
man who refuses to see that he is not Christ.
Finally, this shot concludes with an edit that associates Johannes’s
questionable beliefs with a dismissible character. After the parlor shot
chronicles his stance on miracles, it cuts to Anders entering Petersen’s
shop. There, the young man asks the tailor for Anne’s hand in mar-
riage, and Peter denies this request, saying, “You are not a Christian.”
Petersen narrowly defines the faithful, and this occurs right after
Johannes condemns the church’s faithlessness. In one scene, the tailor
tells Anders he is not a believer, and Johannes chides the pastor’s disbe-
lief in the other. Initially, characterization paints Johannes sympatheti-
cally as a person who might be unaware of his actions, but it also labels
Petersen unsympathetically as a self-righteous fanatic who hurts others.
When editing pairs the parlor shot with the tailor shot, it links Johannes
and Petersen, and when this cut connects these characters, it draws sim-
ilarities between them. When editing links these events, the man with
mental illness who accuses the pastor of faithlessness seems like the
bigot who says the Borgens are going to hell. By placing these shots
side by side, editing compares the characters in them, and by ending
Johannes’s discussion of miracles in this way, this cut makes his beliefs
as detestable as Petersen’s.
94 J. Ponder
All in all, editing undermines Johannes. Dissolve techniques represents

him as the dead Christ of a dead church, cutting prompts the pastor to
label Johannes appalling, and adjacency chains the mentally ill man to the
antagonist in ways that make him repugnant by association. Therefore,
editing makes Johannes’s insistence on timeless wonders appear out of
touch with his times. He voices Lewis’s ideas by claiming that the mira-
cles of the past are the same today, saying that the faith of the modern
church should mirror that of its ancient counterpart and that the ahistor-
ical Christ can become any historical Jesus. Concentrating on the eternal,
this theology overlooks the temporal. Failing to see how his reeds have
changed, how his camera has left him, or how he resembles Petersen,
Johannes blinds himself to the life that occurs in specific moments. His
fixation on the eternal casts him down when he realizes that he cannot
work miracles because he is not the Christ. Showing that Johannes is
unable to perform wonders as long as he doesn’t recognize the particular
time in which they occur, Ordet questions his theology.
“Don’t You Bother About the Others”:

Jesus and Maren
While the theologians mentioned above articulate different beliefs, they
all denigrate desire. These writers theorize nature’s inviolability but
ignore autobiography, speculate about cosmology but overlook psychol-
ogy, and seem to address motivations only when refuting opponents.
Hume claims miracle believers are driven by “knavery” to deceive skep-
tics into converting, Origen claims early Christians were compelled by
“conscientious desire” to prove Christ’s divinity, and Lewis claims mira-
cle deniers are motivated by the “human desire” to construct a logical
world.22 They argue that people ignorantly misunderstand the laws of
nature, weakly need wonder to inspire faith, or arrogantly refuse to rec-
ognize marvels. Each of these writers thinks he describes how the world
is and thinks opponents detail how they wish things were. The fact that
even these fierce opponents can agree on these premises suggests that
one gains authority in the discourse on miracles insofar as he has no self
to speak of, no desires to feel, and no subjectivity to follow.
These men of religion, science, and philosophy value objectiv-
ity, but Maren does something else. In Ordet, adults make compli-
cated and objective claims about miracles, but this child declares simple
and subjective desires about wanting a marvel. According to Herbert

G. Luft, the honesty of Maren’s heart “revitalizes the spirit of those
who live in the grownup world and talk about faith—but believe no
longer.”23 This contrast between theory and belief appears most in the
conversation between Johannes and Maren. He says Inger will go to
heaven, but she replies, “I don’t like that at all.” He says the dead should
rest in peace, but she answers, “I’d rather have you awaken her.” He says
the others won’t allow him to raise Inger, but Maren snaps, “Don’t you
bother about the others. How happy I am.” Adults intellectually argue
that heaven is good, the righteous find peace, and doubt prevents mira-
cles, but this child emotionally confesses what she likes, what she would
rather do, and what makes her happy. Grownups shroud their wishes
in theology about miracles, but this child bares her desires in pleas that
never use the word “miracle” once; while the others speculate about
whether marvels exist, Maren states that she wants a wonder to happen.
Responding to her desire for miracles, Johannes concludes, “And
he took the little children to his bosom.” By quoting Mark 10:16, he
alludes to a biblical story where people wanted Jesus to bless their chil-
dren but the disciples rebuked them. Christ commands his followers to
let the children come, declares that heaven belongs to such as these, and
proclaims that “anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a
little child will never enter it.”24 After this, “he took the little children
to His bosom,” placed hands on them, and blessed them. The disciples
have religious assumptions regarding who should be blessed and who
should be rebuked, but the children have humble desires. Jesus privileges
those who accept like a child, and people will receive if they are child-
ish enough to ask. The adults of Ordet state what miracles are, but the
film’s only child simply requests one. Because this scene ends with this
quotation, the film suggests that Maren’s stance on miracles allows her
to enter Jesus’s arms, feel his hands, and receive his miracles in ways that
more sophisticated believers cannot.
While Biblical allusions seem to favor Maren, editing appears to do
the same. As Inger fight for life, Morten and Mikkel exit the parlor and
enter her room. The camera cuts to the opposite side of the dining area
to a long shot of Johannes sitting in the foreground and Maren peeking
through the door. Before she articulates her desire for a miracle, editing
delivers a cut-in from this long shot to a medium close-up where Maren
talks over Johannes’s shoulder. It is during this shot that Maren requests
96 J. Ponder
a marvel, and editing foreshadows the importance of this moment by

transitioning in unique ways. The shot of her peering through the door
is one of the film’s longest, but the cut-in goes to a shot that is one of
its closest. Other characters relay their broad generalizations about mira-
cles in long shots that distance them from the camera, but Maren states
her personal requests from a personal distance. She formulates her feel-
ings about wonders in an intimate shot, and the cut-in makes her visually
closer to the camera while she verbally reveals her closeness to God.
While this cut-in amplifies Maren, shooting in the round belittles her.
The camera draws nearer to start her conversation with Johannes, but
it films that discussion in ways that defy convention. Orthodox editing
portrays dialogue between two characters by obeying the 180-degree
rule. This structure connects both figures by an axis and keeps the cam-
era on one side of it. Bordwell notes that this scene has “two charac-
ters stay in the same spot, but the camera arcs slowly around them in a
half-circle counterclockwise, while Dreyer pans against the grain.”25 This
shot eliminates spatial axes between Maren and Johannes, and doing so,
it obscures their relationship to the physical world around them. As the
camera swirls in ways that undermine how film makes meaning, it fore-
grounds the meaninglessness of the conversation it portrays. Maren says
she wants her mother to die so Johannes can raise the dead, and this
departure from logic occurs in a shot that circles the girl and her uncle
in unconventional ways. In effect, these irrational characters appear in a
shot that creates a hallucinatory effect. This camerawork hurls the scene
into fantasy, and Maren’s innocent opinions regarding wonders begin to
sound more like naïveté.
Whether the film praises or mocks Maren in this moment depends
on other narrative instances. She desires a marvel and believes one can
happen, but the following sequence denies those wants and disproves
that faith. When Johannes faints on Inger’s bed and his head smashes
into her footboard, Maren’s beliefs crash into reality. The cut-in that
put her closer to God has removed her from the scene altogether, and
the camera that spun around the dining room has anchored in her bed-
room where wonders don’t appear. Because Johannes fails to raise
Inger just moments after Maren insisted he could, this scene demysti-
fies her innocence. The kingdom of God might belong to children, but
they remain unfit for the affairs of earth. Jesus may take them into his
bosom, lay hands on them, and bless them, but that consecration could
be something other than a miracle. The blessings to which children are

subject might be mere benedictions as loving yet as mundane as the one
Johannes gives Maren every night.
Ultimately, editing questions Maren’s assertions. Unlike others, she
doesn’t confuse her subjective desires with objective reality, but these
scenes in which she articulates those longings unmoor her from the
world. She receives a cut-in that places her closer to the camera, but
this close-up also removes her from reality. This edit exists so the film
crew can trade the chair upon which the actors sit in the first shot for
the swivel on which they stand to complete the second. With this transi-
tion, the cameraman can draw close enough to dolly around the child in
perceptible ways, because the close-up that initially makes her more real
for the camera eventually makes her more surreal for the viewer. In this
scene, editing exists to send her in circles, and it spirals her farther from
the world until it removes her altogether. Once dizzy, she is carried off
to bed; once woozy, she falls asleep; and once spun into dreaming, she
cannot see that Inger does not rise, Johannes does not perform a mira-
cle, and her desire for a marvel does not cause the marvelous.
“When I Say the Name of Jesus”:

Badiou and the Evental
Despite their differences, these figures assert faiths that form before a
fact. The fictional figures that believe in miracles have never encountered
one, and the theological figures they resemble formulated theories about
marvels that were divorced from experience. Conversely, those charac-
ters who deny wonders pinpoint no event that disproves the possibility
of miracles, and the theologians they reflect don’t reference a precise
moment that negates marvels for all time. Ordet ironically constructs all
of these assumptions about the wondrous to undermine them with an
actual wonder. As shown above, dialogue contains many conversations
where characters speculate what miracles are in general, but the film’s
conclusion shows one miracle happening in particular. Contrasting what
characters say with what the camera shows, The Word suggests that words
are not as important as events.
To analyze how Ordet represents the miraculous event, the follow-
ing investigates the evental site. Prophetic and philosophical traditions
dominated debates about miracles, and both restrict the realm of being
98 J. Ponder
in ways that limit what can become. The philosopher constrains think-
ing to what has been philosophized, and the prophet restrains vision
to what has been prophesied. Alain Badiou claims that St. Paul defies
both of these traditions when he allowed an event to change his sub-
jectivity in open and unforeseeable ways. The disciples argued that Paul
could not know Jesus because he never walked with the man, but the
apostle claimed to know Christ because he encountered the son of God
on the road to Damascus. For Badiou, this conversion shows that “the
evental site” is what makes miraculous change possible.26 Trained as a
rabbi and a philosopher, Saul limited what he would be, but the evental
site allowed him to follow Christ and free up what he could become.
He tried to decide who he was, but the undecidable evental site changed
who he became. For Badiou, this story shows that true being, becoming,
and belief arise in the evental site for which one would not, could not,
and should not prepare.
Like Paul, Johannes experiences this evental site in miraculous ways.
Saul falls on the Damascus Road and leaves a changed man, and the
apostle who enters the synagogue bears the signs of the wonder he
encountered. He sheds his Pharisaic robes, lets scales fall from his eyes,
and answers to the name of Paul. Similarly, Johannes Borgen falls on
Inger’s deathbed before waking as a different person, and he enters the
funeral bearing the marks of his marvelous episode. He has shed his
heavy coat, he looks at people, and he answers to his name. Kirk Bond
claims, “The point of this shining story is that it is not Johannes the mad
man who performs the miracle,” but the sane man who “is not Christ or
anything like it.”27 Similarly, the point of the Damascene tale is that it is
not the disciple who spreads the gospel; instead Paul the zealot, who was
not a Christian or anything like it, does. In both accounts, a questionable
event produced unquestionable change. Paul and Johannes endure some
encounter that changes who they are, and they prove that event miracu-
lous insofar as they demonstrate that they have changed.
As narrative shows Johannes has changed, editing begins to change
space. When he confuses who he is, Johannes also confuses where he is.
Throughout Ordet, the camera wanders one direction before panning
back to find that Johannes has appeared while the frame was away. Once
he regains his sanity, he enters the scene in conventional ways. At the
funeral, a shot shows Morten look up, a reverse shot shows Johannes
enter, a reaction shot shows Morten walk toward him, and a match-
on-action cut transitions to a frame where the patriarch continues to
approach his son. There, Johannes calls him father in a verbal exchange
that proves he recognizes his familial relationships, but this visual conver-
sation also restores the spatial relationship between Morten at the casket
and Johannes at the door. The father says the son has regained normal
sight in an editing sequence that allows him to be seen normally. In a
scene where The Word finds its spatiality, the one says the other has found
his wits, and with this reverse shot, reaction shot, and match-on-action
cut, conventional editing restores conventional space.
After these shots reestablish physical distances between charac-
ters, editing can reinstate standard time. Sluggish cutting dominates
Ordet, stretching the length of shots far beyond the average duration.
This nontraditional rhythm provokes audiences to criticize the film for
being cold, heavy, and lifeless, but this cutting pattern changes once the
movie adopts traditional speed. The reverse shots that reconstitute con-
ventional space return editing to a conventional pace, and the few shots
that announce Johannes’s arrival reduce shot length to a tenth of what it
averages across the rest of the film to comprise a fifth of the movie’s total
shots.28 Characters discuss the possibility of miracles in five-minute takes,
but the film shows the miraculously healed Johannes in a few five-second
shots. Slow cutting represented the debates about what could happen,
but faster cutting indicates that something new is actually happening.
In addition to restoring spatiotemporal unity, this scene restores
conventional focalization. In this episode, editing reduces the distance
between space and time, but narrative also lessens the gap between dia-
logue and plot. Throughout the film, nontraditional cutting spatially
disjoints and temporally slows the film, but unconventional storytelling
also focally divorces and literarily divides the story. In previous scenes,
characters discuss things that are happening outside of the shot, debate
events that occur before the film, or deliberate regarding hypotheticals
that never happen at all. Characters discuss places and times other than
the settings in which discussions unfold. The conversations in which peo-
ple talk about important events occurring offscreen undermine what is
seen with what is discussed. For a true scene, characters must not only
be in a place and time but also at least mention events unfolding in that
setting. In a film where characters spend most of their time talking, the
funeral becomes unusual because it depicts a rare moment when things
actually happen in the room. Petersen accepts Anders’s proposal, the
dueling patriarchs reconcile, and Johannes returns healed all within a few
minutes. At the funeral, more happens in one place at one time than in
any other scene in the film because this moment winds dialogue and plot
together more than any other conversation in Ordet.
100 J. Ponder
With the culmination of these visual and narrative changes, The Word
constructs its most conventional scene, and, by doing so, the film pro-
vides its first evental site. Throughout the movie, editing dilutes space,
shot duration diffuses time, and narrative disintegrates the present, but
spatial editing, temporal cutting, and verbal focalization form the scene
in which an event can occur. Murphet claims the film violates the integ-
rity of the dramatic site by gesturing at a “beyond,” but the funeral
builds the constraints required for a clear context once it focuses on real
time in a single “white room whose luminosity exposes every corner and
leaves nothing hidden.”29 Once Ordet restores the traditional boundaries
of place “the event of the miracle can take place” because “a truth-event
can only happen if it emerges from within the prevailing situation, the
laws governing ‘reality.’”30 The moment The Word obeys those laws, sit-
uations, and traditions, it creates a scene. Once it restores the necessary
cinematic conventions, the funeral constructs an evental time in which a
“truth-event” might happen and an evental space in which the marvelous
could take place.
“I Bid Thee Arise”: Badiou and the Audience

Badiou claims the wondrous requires the evental site before the event
can happen, but he also argues it needs an audience to sustain the mira-
cle after the event occurs. On the road to Damascus, Saul sees a light,
hears a voice, and suffers a blindness that his entourage does not. This
event is nothing more than a horse-riding accident, psychological inci-
dent, or epileptic episode until he “began to preach in the synagogues
that Jesus is the Son of God.”31 Badiou claims that Paul makes his self-
centered event selflessly centerless, and this “ex-centered dimension of
Paul’s actions” is what makes his isolated experience gain the prestige
of “true universality.”32 The apostle makes his event “universal” by sub-
jecting it to everyone—Jew and Gentile, slave and free person, male and
female—in ways that prove he has changed. Sharing his encounter with
others, subjecting himself to their suspicion, and imperiling himself to
their abuse, Paul transforms his personal perception into an interpersonal
one. He is a clumsy equestrian, wretched schizophrenic, or pitiful epi-
leptic in himself, but when he reenters the world of others who might
question, criticize, or kill him, he transforms into a witness to a mira-
cle. According to Badiou, what makes an event miraculous is not what
happens to one person in one moment but how that event changes him
among all people in all moments. One encounters the evental site alone,
but he transubstantiates it into a marvelous event by demonstrating the

miraculous faith it takes to convey that experience to others.
In Ordet, Johannes faced a personal event, but he submits it to com-
munal experience. Beside Inger’s bed, he sees a sight, hears a sound, and
endures something others do not, so they can only carry him off fallen,
blinded, and unconscious. Something strikes him down, keeps him coma-
tose, and drives him to disappear, but that something reveals itself to
Johannes alone. Beside Inger’s casket, however, Johannes exemplifies the
sight, issues the sounds, and embodies the something that others can wit-
ness, and they behold him as a risen, cured, and healed man. Whatever
supernatural event restored him was personal, but its effects become inter-
personal. Experiencing Johannes’s new dress, eyesight, and speech, oth-
ers witness his experience as if it were their own. Morten can proclaim
that Johannes’s “wits have returned,” Petersen can rise in awe at his res-
toration, and the doctor can confess his healing. They cannot share the
moment that altered Johannes, but they see that he has changed, and his
personal event only becomes miraculous after he subjects it to an audience.
Editing accentuates the communal aspects of Johannes’s event by
weaving together the community that witnesses it. First, a two-shot
relates the pastor and the doctor in ways that compare them to each
other. The pair has seen that Johannes has experienced a miracle, but
they doubt he can perform one. They see how some contravention has
changed the man, but when he tries to raise Inger, they act in various
ways. The parson calls Johannes crazy and tries to interfere, but the phy-
sician stops him and waits for “the psychic shock” he is convinced will
heal the mentally ill man. One calls him insane for attempting a wonder,
and the other presumes Johannes will become sane when his attempt fails.
Through two-shot, editing couples these figures as those who insist on
what they have previously experienced have difficulty experiencing the
present. The pastor believes in the wonders his religion has shown him,
and the doctor believes in the miracles his science has taught him. Both
characters use previous events to determine who they are, so they over-
look what current events might require they become. This shot marries
these figures, but a previous one also joins them to the towering casket
lid that will entomb the dead. Life unfolds in the evental site, but they
lifelessly insist on past events. Living members of the audience accept
that the unforeseeable might happen, but these characters have already
decided what can happen. In this regard, they seal themselves off from
life, and this two-shot conceptually associates the pastor and the doctor,
while editing visually connects their worldview with death.
102 J. Ponder
Second, a cut-out weaves Morten and Petersen together in ways

that relate them to each other. When Johannes enters the room, these
fathers bear witness to the spectacular event that he must have encoun-
tered during his disappearance. Petersen stands in honor of the son’s
restoration, and Morten declares that his boy is healed. These patri-
archs believe past wonders that they have seen, but they disbelieve
future phenomena that they have not. In a medium shot, Morten scolds
Johannes for blaspheming God, but the son admonishes him for his
lukewarm faith. With this statement, the camera stays with the mira-
cle-believing Johannes, and the doubtful Morten sulks from the frame.
When the father leaves this intimate shot, editing cuts out to a detached
long shot. The next time Morten appears on the screen, the faithless
father languishes in the corner beside the doubtful Petersen. This cut
foregrounds Johannes the believer and relegates skeptics to the back-
ground; as members of the audience who are too tired to be changed
by the event, the fathers push themselves to the farthest edge of the
evental site.
Third, cut-ins relate Maren to Johannes. Throughout the film, he
insists he could raise Inger if others’ doubts didn’t limit his supernatu-
ral power. At the funeral, Johannes commands the mourners to close
the lid on her coffin, and he dooms the dead to leave the living forever.
At this moment, however, Maren tells him to raise her mother, and
Johannes replies, “The child, the child, the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven.” The miracle worker can work once she takes his hand, and he
tries the unbelievable once a believer inspires him. Editing centralizes
Maren’s role in this marvel with cut-ins that shift from a medium long
shot of her and Johannes to a medium close-up of her that removes
him from the frame. In this scene, narrative magnifies the importance
of Johannes, but with these cut-ins, editing amplifies the significance
of Maren. He prays for Jesus to give him “that word that can make the
dead come to life” in dialogue that stresses Johannes’s centrality to the
story, but editing returns to Maren during this prayer with cut-ins that
emphasize her centrality to his dialogue. Johannes speaks the word that
resurrects, but this editing sequence relates him to Maren in ways that
suggest she helps him find what to say.
Fourth, reverse editing links Inger and Johannes. Cinema uses
shot/counter-shot to film discussions between people, and the funeral
scene uses this technique to portray conversations between Inger and
the mourners. Morten, Maren, and Mikkel all address Inger verbally,
but reverse editing allows Johannes to confront her visually. He says,
“Inger, in the name of Jesus Christ, I bid thee arise!” in a statement
that pairs the statement’s addresser and addressee, but a counter-shot
also couples the one praying for the miracle with the one who receives
it. In one shot, Johannes speaks down at Inger, and in the other, his
view shows Inger resurrect.33 The conventions of reverse editing that
establish a logical relationship between one frame and the next also
establish a causal relationship between one event and the next. Inger
can arise in one shot because Johannes bid her to do so in another, and
he can reverse death because reverse editing brings life. Johannes knows
he is not Christ, and editing cuts between shots at the precise moment
that he says the name of Jesus. The name of the Anointed One arises
at the suture that connects the miracle subject and the miracle object,
Johannes and Inger, the shot and the counter-shot, and the word that
raises the dead sounds across this reverse edit that makes the marvelous
possible.
Finally, montage weaves all of these elements together. P. Adams
Sitney notes that this scene restores cinematic conventions Ordet
avoids. Drawn-out takes, crawling cameras, and long shots deaden the
film, but quick edits, counter-shots, and close-ups enliven the funeral.
He claims that over the years these “most elementary of cinematic
tropes” had lost their “vitality.” Over the course of a few minutes, this
resurrection scene somehow resurrects them.34 The first two hours of
The Word use unconventional editing that renders the film lifeless, so
when the last ten minutes restore these conventions, it resuscitates the
film. Ordet raises the dead with the particular tropes covered above,
but Sitney claims that montage is one of the most vital ways that The
Word bids them arise because it relates all of these isolated techniques
together. The two-shot relates the pastor to the doctor, the cut-out
relates Morten to Peter, the cut-in relates Maren to Johannes, and
reverse editing relates Johannes to Inger. Montage also relates these
otherwise segregated pairings to each other. If this scene resurrects
conventions, it is because this sequence weaves these secluded people
together in a single shot. Montage visually connects individual shots
into a scene, narratively relating different characters into a commu-
nity, which in turn miraculously subjects individual experience to an
audience.
104 J. Ponder
“Eternal and the Same”: Badiou and the Subject

With a site and witnesses, the event can occur that might produce the
miraculous subject. According to Badiou, Saul disbelieves, despises, and
seeks to decimate Christianity, and only an uninvited encounter with
Jesus can inspire Paul to believe, love, and spread the good news. Given
this Pauline conversion, Badiou claims, “The Christian subject does
not preexist the event he declares (Christ’s resurrection)” because faith
begins after amazing events occur in unprompted ways.35
In Ordet, editing shows the extent to which the resurrection event
produces different kinds of subjects. First, Inger responds to that event
across a shot that resurrects the film’s old form with new content. In this
scene, early shots cut at a lively pace, but the shot of Inger in the casket
resumes The Word’s lifeless rhythm. The take holds for fifteen seconds
of stasis, appearing as dead as the corpse it portrays, but, suddenly and
subtly, that body begins to stir. Nature’s laws overturn as new life fills
the old carcass, and the style of Ordet upends as new substance fills the
old style. This scene mimics the film’s motif of lengthy takes, but once
Inger awakens, the shot seems to mock the dead technique that preceded
it. Throughout the movie, this daughter of Borgensgaard is one kind of
religious subject, one that believes in the lot of little miracles that happen
every day. After Johannes declares Christ’s resurrection, she resurrects in
the first event that allows her to become a different kind of Christian.
This transformation opens the evental site where witnesses can mar-
velously change their subjectivity. After the miracle, characters relate to
Inger as she occupies the center of the montage and subsequent reac-
tion shots respond to her. The first of such shots is a cut-in that shows
Morten and Peter. Unlike the previous cut-out that pushed them to the
fringes of the frame, this second shot thrusts them to the front. The tai-
lor emerges from the shadow and stands in the light, and the farmer rises
from his dusky seat to find illumination. While they lacked the vigor to
disbelieve or believe in miracles, they look on bravely enough to receive
the marvel once it happens. These characters had denied that wonders
continued. Morten had said modern doubts prevented them from hap-
pening, and Petersen had suggested the greatest marvel that believ-
ers could ever anticipate was belief itself. When the camera cuts back to
them for their final appearance, however, they become new subjects by
responding to Inger’s resurrection with the declaration that they have
witnessed “the God of old, the God of Elijah, eternal and the same.”
After the shot of these seniors who never believed comes one of the
young girl who always did. A cut to Maren repeats the composition
and length of the previous two medium close-ups that depicted her
at the foot of her mother’s coffin. A smile fills her face as she looks at
Inger before beaming up at the offscreen uncle who raised her mother.
According to Badiou’s argument, this smile represents the new faith
that this event has inspired, but editing does not support this conclu-
sion. A few moments earlier, a long shot shows Maren committing the
same action. Even before Inger rises, her daughter looks up at Johannes
with the same knowing smile she emits after resurrection. Replicating
this action, this shot does not represent a new faith born out of the
event, but it replicates an old faith that preceded the event. Maren upsets
Badiou’s theory of subjectivization, but she also upsets religious dis-
course in Ordet. Others declare what they believed before this moment,
but she states what she wants. Badiou claims the miraculous produces a
subject that proclaims a belief, but Maren speaks no beliefs at all. Instead
of a faith subject, she is a desiring subject. The adults postulate the-
ologies, but this daughter articulates longings. With this yearning, she
stands outside Badiou’s philosophy and The Word’s theology, and with
this desire, she becomes placeless in the funeral she helped end. Because
this child doesn’t fit, editing ushers Maren out of the frame never to be
seen again.
But Maren is not the only misfit in this scene. Ordet’s unconventional
editing left numerous holes, but this scene’s conventional editing patches
them up. Nevertheless, even the funeral’s traditional style dismisses
Maren, ushering away the child whose desire raises the dead before she
can even embrace the mother she caused to rise, and this abrupt exit-
ing prompts the vanishing of other characters. Before the miracle, editing
restores the space-time unity of a scene by setting up a laundry list of
characters reacting to Johannes’s attempt to raise Inger. After the mira-
cle, editing preserves that spatiotemporality by running down a checklist
of reaction shots. After crossing off Inger, Morten, Peter, and Maren,
editing omits a pair by never returning to the two-shot of the pastor and
the doctor. The former interrupted Johannes’s prayer for resurrection
but disappears once Inger rises, and the latter insisted that miracles could
happen but is lost after one occurs. If the Christian subject stems from
the resurrection event, editing refuses to confirm or deny the subjectivity
this event produces in these characters by excluding reaction shots from
them.
106 J. Ponder
While Maren, the pastor, and the doctor disappear from the event,
the man who initiated it removes himself. According to Bordwell, this
final sequence ends unconventional editing that was once bothersome,
but Johannes, the force that started this chain of incidents, “continues
to be troublesome.”36 The funeral scene solves the problem of Anders’s
engagement, Morten’s feud, and Inger’s death, but “there remains a
problem: Johannes.”37 After the miracle resolves everything else, the
unresolvable miracle worker leaves the frame. This man was able to raise
the dead in Jesus’s name once he realized he wasn’t Jesus, and after he
has resurrected Inger, he becomes most Christlike by disappearing. If
Jesus existed in the form of God and did not regard it robbery to be
equal with him, it was because he emptied himself, taking the form of
a bondservant and making himself in the likeness of men. Conversely, if
Johannes assumes the form of God and becomes equal with God, it is
when he empties himself, takes the form of an absence, and leaves the
miracle event before men can call him a miracle worker. In this regard,
Johannes becomes the Christian subject in response to the miraculous
event, not by declaring resurrection but by leaving that moment to the
glory of Christ after the resurrection has been declared.
“I Have Found Your Faith”: Badiou and Mikkel

According to Badiou, what decides whether the resurrection event will
produce a Christian subject “remains of the order of grace.”38 On the
Damascus Road, soldiers, scribes, and servants indifferently followed
Saul, but he passionately hunted Christians. The indifference of the for-
mer would seem to make them more open to receiving Christ, but the
miraculous present renders prior personality irrelevant. All of the figures
on this road heard a sound, but only Paul fell from his horse. He claimed
to see the marvelous event, but others only perceived its audible effect.
They carried Paul off and remained unchanged, but only he arose per-
manently changed. This sublime capriciousness shows that these charac-
ters do not will their subjectivity into being, but the wind subjectivizes
whom it listeth. Given this Pauline conversion, Badiou concludes provi-
dence unleashes miracles without discernible warning and produces wit-
nesses without decipherable cause. The site and the audience allow the
miraculous event to happen unpredictably, and the order of grace per-
mits that moment to generate subjects unforeseeably.
Mikkel is one such character who experiences unexpected subjectivi-

zation. Before the miraculous event, he shows no predisposition toward
the marvelous; the only theology he suggests is his disdain for religious
discussion. Beside Inger’s deathbed, he rebuffs Morten’s invitations to
pray for a marvel, sneering, “You can do that, father!” At her coffin, he
snubs Petersen’s proclamations about wonders, scoffing, “Enough has
been said here.” Alongside her corpse, he scolds Johannes’s whispers
regarding miracles, sobbing, “What is all this, standing here and shout-
ing over my wife’s dead body?” Because Mikkel lashes out against con-
versations about the miraculous, he seems least likely to be moved by it,
but the order of grace renders his decisions irrelevant. He neither argues
for nor against marvels, but responds to the remarkable moment by tell-
ing the resurrected Inger, “I have found your faith.” With this simple
profession, miracles most impress one who has no stance on them, and
the marvelous most reforms one who lacks preconceived ideas about it.
Narrative elements like this proclamation prove the event changes
Mikkel, but visual elements nuance his conversion. First, match on action
emphasizes the extent to which forces beyond the faithful produce faith.
This editing technique splices two shots by continuing the actions a char-
acter begins during the first into the next. Here, the principal subject
bridges frames by exiting one in a certain direction, at a certain pace, and
from a certain distance before entering the next in the same direction, at
the same pace, and from the same distance. After Inger rises, Johannes
exits screen left in a medium shot, but Mikkel enters the next shot mov-
ing the same way at the same time from the same length (see Figs. 3.7
and 3.8). This cutting on action conventionally replicates movement
from one shot to the next, but it unconventionally replaces actors from
the first to the second. Johannes speaks the words that compel Inger to
rise, but he also moves in ways that propel Mikkel to approach the risen.
The faithful determine movement in the first shot, and the faithless are
predetermined to the same action in the second. The event moves in
ways that override the laws of nature to produce a miracle, and Johannes
travels in a manner that supersedes Mikkel’s character to change his
subjectivity.
While match on action negates Mikkel’s individual will, close-up
accentuates his subjective desires. Others form theories about marvels,
and Maren expresses desires for them, but Mikkel touches one. Montage
cuts the pastor and doctor from the wonder, while a reverse shot dis-
tances Johannes and Maren from the resurrected, and two-shot permits
108 J. Ponder
Fig. 3.7 (2:01:47, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Johannes exits screen left
Morten and Peter to profess the miracle from afar. While they exalt the
resurrection, the husband is the only one who touches the undead. Inger
returns to life in the film’s final scene, but he returns to her side in “the
film’s first close-up.”39 Other characters feel the words of the resurrected
burning within their souls, but this cut-in onto the doubting Mikkel
shows him feel the word against his flesh. The corpse escapes the grave,
surveys the living, and wolfs the air, but her husband envelops the sub-
lime. Some deny miracles with doubt, others proclaim them with faith,
and some produce them with desire, but Mikkel goes beyond the pale.
The film surveys how uncertainty prevents miracles, faith believes them,
and longing causes them. Because it awards Mikkel the film’s only close-
up, editing suggests that greater than all these is the subject that actually
embraces marvels.
Finally, the fade-out that ends the film implies that the unforeseeable
faith produced miraculously is the strongest. After match on action pro-
pels Mikkel to confront the resurrection and a close-up compels him to
Fig. 3.8 (2:01:49, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Match on action has Mikkel enter
from screen right
embrace the resurrected, the film holds on the face of Inger and Mikkel.
The wife and husband, miracle and witness, and resurrection and subject
intertwine as gentle strings warm the soundtrack. The couple embraces
under close-up, soft lighting, and rising music in ways that bear all the
hallmarks of a romantic movie, and this scene continues to follow con-
vention by concluding with a sentimental fade to black. Once dark, how-
ever, this edit commits contravention by keeping on the abyss longer
than usual. Without end credits to roll or title cards to raise, this cavern
becomes as distressing as the grave from which Inger escaped. Holding
for 47 seconds, this final shot of the film returns to the unusually long
takes that pervaded the movie. Pondering the darkness, Ordet’s final
scene alludes to the theme of death that permeated the movie. But a ray
of hope continues in this night, and one glimmer of faith survives the
pit. The same strings that sounded when Mikkel enveloped the miracle
continue even after that embrace succumbs to darkness; the same music
110 J. Ponder
that bonded the resurrection to its subjects survives death. Like Lazarus,
Dorcas, and Eutychus, Inger does not undergo resurrection as much as
resuscitation, because all of these characters reanimate to live for a while
before dying again once and for all. During this fade to black, the pitch
from which Inger escaped reclaims her. Her face, flesh, and family all
fade into oblivion, but the sound of Mikkel embracing the resurrected
dead survives darkness until the resurrection of the dead.
Ultimately, the character of Mikkel shows that the most profound
faith is the kind that is most unpredictable. The evental site and universal
audience are required for the event to become possible, but it remains
unforeseeable who will be changed by that occasion in miraculous ways.
The order of grace changes Mikkel and causes him to profess a faith that
is new to him, original in the film, and different from most in the world.
Match on action suggests that he is compelled beyond his will, close-up
stresses that he is the character who embraces the miracle, and fade-out
suggests that this unwilled and embracing faith miraculously survives the
darkness.
Miracles and Ordet
Scholars disagree whether Ordet endorses, rejects, or reverses
Christianity, but they agree by interpreting the film’s theology, narra-
tive, and visual techniques. This chapter sought to build on this con-
sensus by relating the word of thaumatology to the flesh of editing.
Techniques such as shot duration, match cut, and sound discredited the
pastor, Petersen, and Morten. Devices such as the L cut, crosscutting,
and dissolve undermined Inger, the doctor, and Johannes, while cut-
in complemented Maren’s desire for a miracle before shooting in the
round belittled it. Whether theologies or longings, all of these characters
take positions regarding miracles before a miraculous event, but Badiou
claims such declarations can only follow after the marvelous. According
to him, the wondrous requires an evental site in which to occur, and the
funeral’s editing restores the space, time, and focalization that make such
a scene possible. Badiou also claims the miraculous requires an audience,
and the funeral scene’s editing restores the two-shot, cut-out, cut-in,
reverse editing, and montage necessary to construct this assembly. He
asserts that the evental site and audience create the conditions for the
event, but that event proves marvelous insofar as it wondrously changes
the subject. In the resurrection scene, editing allows the patriarchs to
declare their new subjectivity, but it also removes other characters in

ways that neither confirm nor deny their beliefs. As it remains unclear
which characters are converted by this resurrection, it remains unclear
how Mikkel becomes the film’s deepest convert. Match on action stresses
that forces beyond him subjectivize him, close-up underlines that he
embraces the marvelous, and fade-out suggests that the faith unleashed
on him conquers death. Interestingly, a film that discusses beliefs so
much ends with this moment, and Mikkel’s conversion implies that the
deepest kind of faith is the unforeseeable one.
Badiou claims the Christian subject comes into being through the
event he declares, but Mikkel’s subjectivity becomes the declaration he
shares. Others proclaim views on miracles before one occurs, while he
professes a miracle only after one happens, but these final moments of
the film suggest that his words are not enough. If the Christian subject
exists through the event he declares, Christianity exists through dialogue
with the event. Rather than confess resurrection once, this dialogue
keeps God, the dead, and the miraculous moment alive, allowing that
deity, those people, and these events to continue declaring whatever they
will for all moments to come.
If The Word asserts anything regarding wonders, it seems best artic-
ulated through Mikkel. Significantly, he draws fewer conclusions about
miracles than others. He favors a stance on marvels that makes peace
with ignorance and waits for an event that probably will never happen
but responds with love if it impossibly does. To answer the unforeseeable
in this way, he physically embraces the marvelous, intellectually changes
thoughts, verbally changes words, and intersubjectively exchanges dia-
logue with the resurrected corpse he lets have the final say. If the word
can become flesh, raise the dead, or inspire faith, it is because the word
exists among other words in communication between communicants
that forego any guarantees that they will ever discover definition but,
nevertheless, commune and commune and commune in hopes of one
day and for all time finding the right word.
Notes
1. Ib Monty, Portrait of Carl Theodor Dreyer (Copenhagen: Danish
Government Film Foundation, 1965), 6.
2. Tom Milne, The Cinema of Carl Dreyer (New York: A.S. Barnes, 1971), 20.
3. Raymond Carney, Speaking the Language of Desire: The Films of Carl
Dreyer (New York: Cambridge, 1989), 255.
112 J. Ponder
4. Guido Aristarco qtd. in Carl Theodor Dreyer, “Metaphysic of Ordet: A

Letter from Carl Th. Dreyer,” in The Film Culture Reader, ed. P. Adams
Sitney (New York: Praeger, 1970), 27; David Bordwell, Films of Carl
Theodor Dreyer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Mark
Nash, ed., Dreyer (London: British Film Institute, 1977).
5. Augustine, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean (Bombay: Aeterna, 2014),
26: 3.
6. Mark Nash, Dreyer (London: British Film Institute, 1977), 16.
7. Bordwell, Films, 153.
8. Origen, Origen Against Celsus. Vol. 1 (Whitefish, MTL Kessinger, 2004),
1.46.
9. Robin Wood, “Carl Dreyer,” Film Comment 10.2 (March–April 1974):
10–17, 11.
10. Wood, “Carl Dreyer,” 16.
11. David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in Enquiries
Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of
Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 114.
Da Capo, 1972), 136.
13. Noel Burch, “Carl Theodor Dreyer: The Major Phase,” in Cinema:
A Critical Dictionary, Vol. 1., ed. Richard Roud (New York: Viking,
1980), 305.
14. Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Boston: Brill, 1997), 4.17.
15. Spinoza, 4.88.
16. Ken Kelman, “Dreyer” in The Film Culture Reader, 154.
17. Isaac Newton, Theological Manuscripts, ed. H. McLachlan (Liverpool:
University of Liverpool Press, 1950), 17.
18. Claude Perrin, Carl Th. Dreyer (Paris: Cinéma d’aujourd’hui, 1959), 38.
19. C.S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 35.
20. Lewis, 83.
21. Julian Murphet, “Character and Event,” SubStance 36.2 (2007):
106–125, 120.
22. Hume 128; Origen, 1.48; Lewis, 35.
23. Herbert G. Luft, “Carl Dreyer: A Master of His Craft,” The Quarterly of
Film Radio and Television 11.2 (Winter 1956): 181–196, 181.
24. Mk 10: 13–15 KJV.
26. Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray
Brassier Stanford (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 70.
27. Kirk Bond, “The World of Carl Dreyer,” Film Quarterly 19.1 (Autumn
1965): 26–38, 37.
29. Murphet, 121.
30. Murphet, 122.
31. Acts 9:20.
32. Badiou, 19.
33. Vladimir Petric, “Dreyer’s Concept of Abstraction,” Sight and Sound 44,
no. 2 (Spring 1975): 108–112, 110.
34. P. Adams Sitney, “Moments of Revelation: Dreyer’s Anachronistic
Modernity,” in Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Cinema
and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 53–80, 71.
35. Badiou, 14.
37. Bordwell, 170.
38. Badiou, 71.
CHAPTER 4
“The Whole Earth Is Full of His Glory”:

Lighting and Suffering in Ingmar
Bergman’s Winter Light
As the organ wanes, the parson rises to his feet and faces the sanctuary.
He has lost his wife to the grave, a parishioner to depression, and his
security to suffering, but he musters his strength for the Sanctus. Despite
the depravity he has seen, and contrary to the despair he has experi-
enced, he gulps and proclaims, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
The whole earth is full of his glory.” With such an ending, Winter Light
concludes ambiguously. This film chronicles a reverend’s crisis of faith,
and these final words prove that he has changed his beliefs, but they also
obscure what his creed has become.
Long before this unclear transformation takes place, Tomas Ericsson
(Gunnar Björnstrand) begins the film by holding communion for dis-
tracted congregants. After giving his benediction, he retreats to his sac-
risty where he makes plans to lead a second service that afternoon until
a young couple requests his counsel. Karin Persson (Gunnel Lindblom)
explains that her husband has been battling dread, and Tomas confesses
his own hopelessness until Jonas Persson (Max von Sydow) marches off
to certain doom. Alone, the minister asks why God has forsaken him
and declares himself free from his “ridiculous” faith moments before he
receives word that Jonas has shot himself. Beside the body, Tomas gazes
on the man he could not help. Across from Mrs. Persson, Tomas realizes
his futility against sorrow. While he confronts the emptiness of his faith,
he still enters the second church building. Waiting for the last service, he
listens to Algot Frövik (Allan Edwall), the sexton, conjecture that Jesus
suffered the physical pain of whips and nails less than the metaphysical

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58556-7_4
116 J. Ponder
pain of doubt and abandonment. After hearing this interpretation,

Tomas enters the sanctuary, stares down the electric light, and surveys
the nearly empty church before asserting that the whole earth is full of
the Lord’s glory.
This declaration proves that Tomas’s beliefs change, but scholars disa-
gree over what those views become. Some argue that the parson adopts
humanism. For example, Robin Wood claims Tomas realizes that the
existence of suffering proves the nonexistence of God. Witnessing the
death of his deity, Tomas enlivens himself to others, and when he feels
spiritually rejected by the Almighty, he realizes how he also has emotion-
ally rejected Märta Lundberg (Ingrid Thulin), his ex-lover. Wood claims
that when Tomas recites the Sanctus, he does so for the profana—for the
woman at his side when the Lord is not, for the same person who keeps
his church from being as empty as his heavens. According to Wood, this
ending shows a “disillusioned priest celebrating Vespers for the con-
firmed atheist as a sort of explicit communion between them.”1 Here,
the Eucharist ceases to be a ritual between God and man but becomes a
ceremony between a man and a woman. As they renounce their faith and
believe in each other, these communicants learn how to commune, and
they use the host to hold a mass for humanity.
While some argue that Tomas embraces humanism, others claim he
espouses mysticism. According to Arthur Gibson, the parson rejects a
personal god that rescues him from discomfort, but he accepts an imper-
sonal force that remains hidden. Humanity petitions the Almighty and
demands to know the point of suffering, but Tomas discovers that this
sublime power “cloaks himself in a dreadful silence in the face of all of
man’s pertinent and impertinent questionings.”2 While others argue
that God remains silent because he doesn’t exist, Gibson claims he keeps
his silence because he is mysterious. He argues that Tomas realizes the
Lord does not serve humans by ridding the world of anguish but permits
torment for reasons that surpass human understanding. Immanent yet
transcendent, the immortal supersedes mortal interrogations. According
to this interpretation, the god of Winter Light is more than good, an
amoral force whose actions trounce the parson’s need for comfort until
he harbors suffering as well as security in a form of mysticism.
The central question that divides these approaches is whether Tomas’s
final piece of dialogue is ironic or sincere. After seeing the suffering that
fills the earth, the parson seems unlikely to proclaim the world glorious.
Marc Gervais claims Tomas’s last lines are significant because they convey
4 “THE WHOLE EARTH IS FULL OF HIS GLORY”: LIGHTING … 117
the film’s final word. When the protagonist declares, “Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory,” Winter Light
concludes the same. Therefore, interpreting the text’s ultimate state-
ments about woe hinge on whether this declaration is sarcastic or literal.
Gervais asks, “Is this an affirmation of faith, or a final withering irony,
a confirmation of empty routine, death, meaninglessness?”3 On the one
hand, the humanist interpretation claims Tomas rejects Christianity,
adopts existentialism, and becomes an atheist; scholars from this group
conclude that the parson’s final declaration about the Lord’s holiness is
sardonic. On the other hand, the mystic analysis claims Pastor Ericsson
only renounces a false idol, accepts suffering, and becomes a truer
believer; those in that camp determine that the reverend’s last proclama-
tion regarding the earth’s glory is sincere.
To decide whether Tomas’s announcement about the world’s splen-
dor is ironic, genuine, or something else, it is important first to see what
these differing interpretations have in common. First, they analyze the-
odicy. Regardless of what the parson means when he professes the words
that conclude the film, the story that precedes them depicts his struggle
to accept that God and suffering can coexist. The Lord’s silence devas-
tates the reverend because he can’t believe an omniscient, omnipotent,
omnipresent, and omnibenevolent deity could keep quiet in the wake of
torment. Charles B. Ketcham claims Tomas shares the struggle of all who
grapple to reconcile a righteous Creator with the evils of creation. When
the clergyman confesses that he has smashed his security god, Ketcham
argues that he represents the insecure believer who demonstrates more
“defiance” than “doctrine” and can neither accept the old religion nor
construct a new faith.4 The minister’s struggle to accept God in light
of unacceptable sorrow represents the crisis of ministry in the modern
world, and regardless what Tomas believes in the end, most agree that his
central motivation is to formulate a way to understand the point of pain.
Second, these approaches analyze plot. Scholars disagree about
whether Tomas embraces humanity or conceptualizes a deeper divin-
ity, but they agree that he undergoes a process. The film portrays three
hours between two services, and it charts the parson’s evolution in that
narrow window. According to Allan Lacy, Winter Light emphasizes
the importance of time as it concentrates on Tomas “waiting for that
which has not yet come.”5 This chamber drama charts what happens
to Pastor Ericsson as he anticipates the Almighty and the doubt that he
118 J. Ponder
feels during the delay. Most of this change occurs within the minister’s
soul, but the film depicts these modifications through specific moments
of transformation. Tomas declares the Lord’s light, God’s silence, and
the Father’s forsaking at crossroads in his spiritual development. He
announces his freedom from God, the hollowness of his faith, and the
glory of earth in distinct plot points that signal conversion. The film is
character-driven insofar as it focuses on the minister’s internal growth,
but the text remains narrative-driven because it concentrates on the
external episodes that inspire this progress. With the film’s focus on epi-
sodic progression, scholars explore Tomas’s theology by examining plot.
Finally, these approaches analyze lighting. Essential to the movie’s the-
ological discussions and plot is its grayness. Philip Mosley points out that
the movie replicates the diffuse sunshine that pervades Sweden in winter.
As rays scatter through the overcast, they emit neither light nor shadow
nor darkness but illuminate the countryside in pewter. Mosley claims
this luminescence borders on many states of brightness without becom-
ing any, and this uncanny brilliance is fundamental to the film’s tone.
According to him, “the whole film is set on a grey winter day, in condi-
tions that cause the very landscape to seem peculiarly mute and static.”6
Tomas’s vital dread is that God hides behind a shroud of silence, and the
film’s central motif is the sun buried behind a veil of cloud. To replicate
how the reverend achieves different elucidations over a single day, 500-
watt lamps, Double-X negatives, and seven-armed candelabras project
various illuminations across that afternoon. If this is the case, one can
examine Tomas’s changing beliefs by analyzing the film’s changing light.
This chapter will build on these scholarly agreements to interpret the
film’s word regarding torment through the flesh of its lighting. It will
consider scenes where Tomas discusses God’s goodness, silence, and
existence in addition to pain’s purpose, management, and alleviation.
The chronology of these events implies that the parson’s faith evolves
from the film’s opening communion to its closing liturgy. In between
the two ceremonies, Tomas uses dialogue to articulate changing beliefs,
but Winter Light uses lighting to chart how those ideas develop. As the
preacher claims the Lord demonstrates goodness, forsakes him, or fills
the earth with glory, the film casts him in light, darkness, or shadow. As
Tomas makes these statements, characters give voice to various thinkers
who have made arguments about suffering. As cinematography depicts
them during these declarations, it editorializes them, implying some
are blinded by sunlight and others sulk in darkness while some embrace
shadow and others enlighten the world. Ultimately, lighting privileges
a worldview that merges Wood’s humanism and Gibson’s mysticism to
suggest that if the Lord fills the earth with glory, he does so through a
human community devoted to those who suffer.
“To Our Consolation and Bliss”: Augustine

and Communion
One of the most important arguments relevant to Winter Light

belongs to Augustine. According to him, suffering exists to save souls.
Manichaeism divides the world into dark and light, claiming evil consti-
tutes blackness and purity comprises brightness. Augustine contradicts
this dualism to insist on God’s unity, and he argues that the Almighty is
too omnipotent to share power with The King of Darkness. This church
Father claims the omnibenevolent Lord did not create discord, but suf-
fering sprang into being as a privation of the peace God did create. The
“beautiful reason” why he permits anguish is that it directs the soul from
darkness to light.7 In his own life, Augustine claims to have wallowed in
torment until “a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into [his] heart”
that dispelled “all the shadows of doubt.”8 While this theodicy coun-
ters the dualism that split God, it still explains suffering in dichotomous
terms. For Augustine darkness is the force of doubt while brightness is
the power of faith, and complacent souls writhe in blackness until suffer-
ing drives them into light.
This perspective appears in Winter Light during the communion
scene. Augustine claimed that anguish brought humanity to God, and in
this chapter of the film, Tomas commemorates the sorrow that brought
Christ to Christians. Reciting the liturgy, the parson quotes Jesus at the
Last Supper, saying, “This is my body which is given up for you,” and
“this is my blood of the New Testament which is shed for many for the
remittance of sin.” By stating these passages, Tomas articulates the belief
that Christ surrendered his flesh and spilled his blood so that he might
reconcile creation and Creator, but by voicing these excerpts the minister
also verbalizes the view that God creates a new testament with human-
ity through suffering. According to this doctrine, torment ceases to be
the chaos that corrupts peaceful life and becomes the strategy that brings
the anguished together. This Eucharist resonates with an Augustinian
120 J. Ponder
worldview in which souls agonize in darkness until crucifixion ushers

them toward the light.
While articulating theology, this scene reveals Tomas’s ambivalence.
The Eucharist begins the film’s meditation on God’s silence in the face
of sorrow. From its opening, Winter Light examines how agony can help
humans relate to the Lord or assist the Almighty in understanding peo-
ple. Tomas leads the ritual that facilitates this exchange, but it remains
unclear if he believes the words he recites. Peter Cowie claims that the
parson remains “agnostic,” and his skepticism appears in this scene.9
Tomas declares that crucifixion bridges the gulf between God and
humans as he stares at the crucifix that adorns the altar. Before he shares
the emblems of the Lord’s anguish, he gazes upon the reredos of the
tormented Son, but after he partakes of his torn flesh and shed blood, he
calls Calvary “a ridiculous image.” With these contradictory statements,
Pastor Ericsson quotes liturgy that calls misery a consolation, but he later
calls such sorrow absurd. Therefore, he beholds the misery that joins
communicants and Christ in suffering, but he doubts that a communion
of pain is one worth having.
In addition to this inconsistent dialogue, lighting reflects Tomas’s
worldview in many ways. First, the parson seeks the Lord in light.
During communion, he stares into the sun that illuminates his face.
Parishioners recline behind the rail, but the clergyman charges into the
glow. There, he shines as he blesses the symbols of divine agony, say-
ing, “The Lord let the light of his countenance shine upon you.” By
referencing this liturgical passage, Tomas evokes a tradition that associ-
ates God with the radiant, and by reciting this benediction, the minis-
ter presumes that the Lord exists in brightness. Quoting scripture that
associates different shades of elucidation with various states of grace, he
articulates the history in which Christians have sought redemption in
the luminous. While Tomas shines as he speaks these words, he seeks the
Lord in the light although he doubts he will find him there.
Second, Tomas finds suffering in darkness. The pastor invites peo-
ple to access the radiant God, but he hosts them in a darkened church.
Narrow windows restrict sunlight, and the altarpiece eclipses even one of
these apertures. As the crucifix blocks the window that restricts the sun,
the suffering Son obscures the brightness that comes from the Father.
Whatever luminescence might escape heaven and sneak into the church
shrinks behind the darkness of Jesus’s torture. In this blackness, Tomas
extends the bread and wine, and in this penumbra, congregants eat
body and blood. They seek the Lord’s face in the light, but they devour
Christ’s suffering in the darkness.
Finally, Tomas tries to endure in shadow. Light gleams from heaven
but darkness fills the earth, and the Lord offers his face but the cruci-
fix threatens anguish. Tomas tries to stand in the window’s sun, but he
sinks into the altar’s shadow. The clergyman declares the Eucharist for
“consolation and bliss,” but he doles out communion with agitation and
sorrow. Blocked from the light of the Lord’s countenance and retreating
from the darkness of Christ’s suffering, Tomas sulks in the shadow of the
retable. He fulfills his duty to hold communion, but he calls that cer-
emony “ridiculous.” He stares into the light that this ritual provides and
beholds the darkness that this reredos honors, but he ridicules the claims
that either will alleviate anguish. While he might seek peace in the sun,
Tomas faces suffering in the dark and resigns to endure in shadow.
Ultimately, the Eucharist scene uses lighting to deride suffering.
Augustine claims that anguish guides the soul to redemption, and Winter
Light reflects this opinion with the communion scene. As Tomas stands
before the altar, he commemorates the torment that brings Christians
to Christ with a ceremony that emphasizes the saving power of sorrow.
While the pastor performs the service faithfully, this scene expresses his
doubt in two ways. First, Tomas publically proclaims that he believes
crucifixion is a consolation, but he privately confesses that he finds
anguish ridiculous. With these different lines of dialogue, this scene
juxtaposes what Tomas says and what he believes. Second, the parson
blesses with the light of the Lord, but he issues this benediction in a
murky church. Given these facts, this scene contradicts the bright theol-
ogy Tomas represents with the gloomy cinematography that represents
him. As the reverend seeks his Lord in sunshine, finds suffering in dark-
ness, and endures in shadow, he cites scripture he does not endorse and
fails to locate the brightness he espouses. Because visual irony under-
mines Tomas’s shining God with shadow, the parson’s verbal declaration
that suffering is a consolation also becomes ironic.
“Life Must Go On”: Kant and the Perssons

While Augustine claims misery guides the soul toward salvation,
Immanuel Kant argues that suffering drives the self toward duty. The
philosopher articulates these views on anguish when he considers the
morality of suicide. Doing so, Kant acknowledges a tortured man might
122 J. Ponder
seek to end his life out of self-love, but he claims that true self-love
requires one perpetuate life regardless of what she might suffer while
living. He concludes that “the supreme principle of all duty” becomes
treating human life as an end instead of a means.10 According to this
logic, committing suicide to stop agony would immorally treat exist-
ence as a vehicle for pleasure, but persisting through pain would mor-
ally revere existence as an end no matter how unpleasant. Here, Kant
equates comfort with ignorance and resolve with reason. Elsewhere, he
casts these terms in photometric metaphors that associate despair with
darkness and duty with light. Such motifs suggest one may wallow in the
blackness of vice, but a person may step into brightness by embracing
virtue.11 In the end, Kantian metaphysics concludes dark suffering exists
and enlightened humans must persevere through it.
Tomas articulates this Kantian view of suffering when he attempts to
comfort the Perssons. In this counseling scene, Karin asks the parson to
speak to Jonas who has been despairing over atomic weapons. Living in
a nuclear world becomes too dreadful for the fisherman, and he con-
siders ending his anguish. In response to Jonas’s fears, Tomas declares,
“We must trust God.” Though life unleashes violence that makes sui-
cide attractive, he says Christians cannot alleviate suffering in this way.
He asserts duty to family, nature, and himself by proclaiming, “Life must
go on.” But when Jonas asks, “Why must life go on?” the parson falters
and the wife gasps. Jonas apologizes for interrogating a taboo that others
take for granted, and his question proves unanswerable because the min-
ister’s claim seems unquestionable. In this counseling scene, Tomas fails
to defend his Kantian metaphysics of suffering because he assumes that
challenging “the supreme principle of all duty” requires no defense.
Scholars claim that this episode shows how Tomas uses the abstrac-
tions of philosophy to deny the suffering of life. According to Daniel
Humphrey, Jonas’s anxiety comes from diffuse sources, but Tomas seeks
an exact reason for torment. The parson asks the fisherman if he has
money problems, marital troubles, or medical complications. By launch-
ing this investigation, Tomas presumes that anguish has a cause, and if
he defines that source he can eliminate pain. When Jonas explains that
his finances, marriage, and health are fine, the minister assumes that
atomic war must be the root of his dread. Humphrey claims this logic
is flawed because the nuclear threat is a scapegoat for “an existential vul-
nerability and a sense of futility” that persists without reason.12 Pastor
Ericsson presupposes woe is a flaw that begins to corrupt life, but he fails
to consider how despair has been a feature of life since its beginning.
Because he abstractly concludes that life must persevere through suffer-
ing, Tomas falters when he faces the real desire to end life.
In this counseling scene, lighting betrays Tomas’s perception in a
few ways. First, mise-en-scène privileges the parson as he favors perse-
verance. In this episode, Ericsson commands Persson to trust God and
go on without proof, defense, or justification. As the parson dominates
the discussion, he occupies the center of the room. The stony office pro-
vides scarce rays of sun, but Tomas hoards them all. In this conversa-
tion, he maintains that one must endure suffering while Jonas wonders
if he can end pain, and in this spatial composition, the former assumes
a seat in light and relegates the latter to darkness. Tomas believes in his
righteousness so he takes the place of radiance, but he supposes Jonas
is deceived so he leaves him in the gloom. The pastor’s position reflects
his presumption that he sees an illumination that others do not, and his
usurpation of light expresses his assumption that parishioners can escape
the pitch if they look upon his enlightened face.
Second, blocking conveys Tomas’s arrogance. As the clergyman
talks down to the congregant, he moves above others. Karin and Jonas
crane their necks upward as he dominates their space, and they squint
their eyes to see him as he violates their light. Tomas’s office permits
brightness through barred windows, and he steps in front of even those
restricted slats. Trying to direct Jonas toward the sun, Tomas also blocks
its rays. Like his reredos symbolized a community’s suffering, the rever-
end commiserates with Persson, but like the altarpiece blocked commu-
nicants’ access to the sun, Tomas impedes the fisherman’s vision of the
radiant. Standing in the way of the light, he declares, “Life must go on,”
and while looking down on the suicidal man, he proclaims one must per-
severe. Condescending to those he assumes live in darkness while simul-
taneously hindering their ability to see the light, Tomas exalts himself in
arrogant ways.
Finally, high-contrast lighting reveals Tomas’s foolishness. He sits in
the sunshine as he proclaims the duty to persevere, but when Jonas asks
why one must live, their roles reverse. The lofty parson perches in the
brightness to assert that life must continue, but the lowly fisherman sinks
in darkness to ask, “Why do we have to go on living?” When he utters
this question, Jonas is lit more intensely than any previous character, and
he steals the radiance Tomas has kept, shining brighter than his counse-
lor ever did. When the parson issues his imperatives, he garners soft light
124 J. Ponder
amidst mere shadows, but when Jonas questions him, the parishioner
receives hot light that divides the pitch. Sunshine makes the former sim-
ply visible, but 500-watt lamps turn the latter positively radiant. Ericsson
looked down on Jonas when he stared at darkness, but now the preacher
realizes he is the one who has been blind. It is the congregant whose face
shines with revelation, and it is the clergyman who is afraid to come nigh
him. Once he sees the high-contrast lighting reserved for Jonas’s ques-
tion, Tomas sees how dim his answers have been all along.
In the end, the counseling scene uses lighting to expose the limits of
the parson’s moralizing. Tomas accepts that humans must bear suffer-
ing, but his premises wither under scrutiny. He presumes he can face a
world where people must shoulder anguish, and he positions himself in
the center of this reality’s harsh light. With a single question, however,
Jonas reveals that he has confronted an even harsher illumination. Even
though Tomas attempts to blame the media and nuclear proliferation,
Persson’s suffering has no cause. Despite Ericsson’s appeals to impera-
tives, pain requires no duty. Jonas sits in darkness and sees the light while
Tomas occupies shadow but only sees glimmers. When the face that has
seen radiance even in blackness looks upon him, the parson’s superficial
light fades beneath the elucidations that come from the dark. As Jonas’s
single question erodes Tomas’s answers, the soft lighting afforded to the
moral minister pales compared to the high contrast awarded the nihilistic
fisherman.
“He Has to Show Up”: Leibniz and Märta

After Tomas calls redemptive suffering ridiculous and realizes one can
end anguish, he considers a third position. Augustine claims torment is
a privation and Kant argues woe is an obstacle, but Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz implies suffering is for the best. According to him, the Creator
is perfect and can only create perfect things, so creation must be bet-
ter than what remains uncreated. Because evil requires the benevolent
Lord’s permission to exist, Leibniz concludes even malevolence is part
of “the greatest goodness.”13 Humans may bellow that their suffer-
ing is pointless, but he maintains that anguish is purposeful. He evokes
the Principle of Sufficient Reason to argue that God uses pain to teach
humans righteousness. The “natural light” of reason and the divine
light of revelation direct those in darkness to learn that “God is the sun
and light of souls.”14 Leibniz concludes that suffering rationally guides
people to godliness, anguish exists for this divine reason, and no matter
how dark the world may seem one must fixate on the light.
Tomas articulates this view of suffering in a conversation with Märta.
After the Perssons leave, he tells her that he fears God’s silence, and she
replies, “God has never spoken because God doesn’t exist.” The parson
argues that Jonas suffers malevolence because the omnibenevolent has
yet to speak, but Märta claims anguish is real because God is not. She
asserts that humans must love each other in a godless world, but Tomas
insists on God’s goodness while sneering that the schoolmarm cannot
teach him love. When she flees crying, the minister clings to the bars of
his window and clutches the threads of his faith. As he mutters, “He has
to show up,” Tomas both begs Jonas to return and pleads the Almighty
to appear. He fears Jonas has killed himself, and he knows he hurt his
lover. Subsequently, Tomas observes suffering but concentrates on the
light of the Lord. No matter how silent his God seems in this world of
anguish, Tomas resembles Leibniz insofar as both insist that this is the
best of all worlds and God will appear.
This episode depicts a worldview that allows Tomas to fixate on God
and ignore people. In this scene, he accepts that suffering plagues the
world, but he maintains that anguish serves a purpose. The reverend
focuses on the Lord’s goodness, but he overlooks how he treats others.
Paisley Livingston notes that Tomas fears God’s silence so much that he
silences others.15 The parson can’t speak the words of life that would
save Jonas, the words of love that would comfort Märta, or the words of
liveliness that would inspire his church. In all these instances, Tomas fails
to understand humans because he tries to hear his Lord by muting peo-
ple. The cries of his soldiers, the whimpers of his lover, and the moans of
his parish quiet beneath the reverberations of his echo god. His doctrine
provides assurance while he wails to the heavens, but Tomas’s concentra-
tion on the goodness of God is the very thing that allows him to disre-
gard humans.
While these narrative elements show how Tomas focuses on God and
discounts humanity, visual elements accentuate how he stares at the light
to ignore others. When Märta first enters his sacristy, Tomas retreats to
his window. She puts an arm around his shoulder and peers at his face,
but he folds his hands and stares at the sun. He discusses God’s silence,
his sickness, and his lack of love so much that he cannot hear her sigh in
distress. He scours the light, searches the sky, and surveys the brightness
but fails to see how he casts Märta in shadow. The rays beaming through
126 J. Ponder
the window illuminate him alone, but this selective lighting also isolates
him in loneliness. Tomas stands in the daylight that pulls him into the
realm of visibility, but he keeps his lover in the shade that makes her dis-
appear. Ultimately, Tomas seeks God but ignores Märta, and he pursues
the Lord’s sunshine but flees the shadow where his lover lies.
Tomas stares at the sunshine to avoid people, but nondiegetic light
reflects how he occupies radiance to overshadow them. When Märta pro-
poses they marry, asks him to read her letter, and tries to comfort him,
Ericsson ignores her advances, steers talk back to his dread, and rebukes
her failure to understand him. When the reverend proves insensitive, real-
istic sunlight gives way to symbolic cinematography. The window stands
screen left of the pair, which means sunrays would come from that direc-
tion and cast shadow to the right. But as Tomas and Märta leave the win-
dow, he faces screen right and stands aglow while she hugs from behind
and in his shadow. She turns him toward the darkness to declare God
does not exist and mortals must learn to love, but even there he fastens
eyes on the light and looks away from his lover. Searching for God in that
luminescence, he ignores the darkness on her face. Fixing on radiance to
avoid suffering, the parson slights the pain he causes her. At this moment,
lighting defies diegesis. Sunshine that would naturally radiate through the
window supernaturally beams from offscreen bulbs. At this moment, the
film breaks with reality to stress how much Tomas overcasts Märta.
Transfixed by light, the parson neglects to recognize when Märta
leaves and the camera follows her. In the first shot that rejects his per-
spective, she flees into the sanctuary and slumps against a pillar. In its
shadow, her face twists with the pain Tomas caused, but when the frame
cuts to him, he still looks into the dusk. Thick bars dissect his sun, and
heavy rods barricade his cell. He becomes like an inmate as he clutches
the mourner’s bench and weeps that the Lord has to show up, but when
he learns his appointment with Jonas and God has passed, Tomas sees the
divine may have already appeared. While peering into the light for God’s
explanations, he has ignored the glow of Märta’s compassion, and while
looking for the sunshine of heaven, he has chased away its glimmers on
earth. Ericsson pursues it into the sanctuary, but all that greets him is the
shadow beneath the balcony and the death mask snarling from the wall.
Throughout this scene, he hounds light by ignoring darkness and insists
on God’s existence by overlooking torment, but when the clock chimes,
he experiences the darkness into which he has driven others.
All in all, this conversation scene uses lighting to disparage Ericsson’s

isolation. During this episode, Tomas dreads God’s silence, rejects his
nonexistence, and demands his appearance. While the parson concen-
trates on the light of the Lord, he ignores what happens to Märta. He
responds to the problem of suffering by looking for God instead of see-
ing humans, and he focuses on proving the Almighty’s existence rather
than improving the existence of sufferers. As the clergyman directs
attention to divine light, he plunges others into his gloom, and when
he realizes his cruelty, he stands in darkness and death. Therefore,
Tomas’s fixation on the Lord yields unflattering results. He claws his bars
and demands God enter his life instead of embracing his lover before
she leaves his office. The fact that he peers into luminosity to avoid
Märta implies that the brightness is a distraction, and the way lighting
divorces him from her suggests his obsession with radiance is a problem.
Ultimately, cinematography shows that as long as he tries to understand
why pain exists, Tomas fails to alleviate the suffering he causes.
“Why Have You Forsaken Me?”:

Kierkegaard and Jonas
Theologians focus on the divine reason for suffering, but Søren
Kierkegaard concentrates on human responses to it. He finds an exam-
ple of courageous torment in the Crucifixion, and he calls the “extremity
of superhuman suffering” that moment when Jesus cries, “My God, My
God, why have you forsaken me!” Although the Father abandons him,
the Son remains steadfast, and it is this faithfulness despite doubt that
makes Christ the way.16 Others assume suffering is malevolent and God
is benevolent, but Kierkegaard considers a deity who has more power
than mercy, harms worshippers, and must be served without reward.
Against the darkness of despair, what he calls “the light” are “those first
thoughts about how glorious it is to be a human being.”17 In the end,
Kierkegaard claims that serving God will not dispel darkness, but the
closest one might get to his glory is to find light in forsakenness.
Tomas flirts with this account of anguish during his conversation with
Jonas. The clergyman wakes from a fevered dream to discover the fisher-
man standing over him. Rather than listen to his parishioner’s confes-
sion, the parson confesses details about his wife’s death, failed dreams,
and war experiences. When Tomas admits he believed in the Lord
128 J. Ponder
as long as that deity kept him safe, he realizes the shallowness of his
faith. He assumes no god exists if there’s not one who eases torment,
and he speculates that there is no reason for mortals to live if there’s
not an immortal being to fight death. After Tomas justifies suicide to a
depressed man, Jonas leaves the room. Realizing what he has done, the
reverend asks, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” During
these moments, he considers a kind of theism that does not guarantee
security, but he devolves into a nihilism that makes Jonas even more inse-
cure. In this way, the parson dabbles in Kierkegaardian ideas, but he fails
to turn them into a sustaining theology.
If we return to and unpack this scene, we find Tomas cannot build
a belief because he is selfish. Without a security god, he assumes God
doesn’t exist, and without comfort, he presumes life has no design. This
scene concludes when Tomas feels that the divine has deserted him, but
that forsakenness comes on the heels of his own shortcomings. According
to Jesse Kalin, Winter Light suggests that “abandonment by God and
the concomitant experiences of religious doubt and loss of faith” happen
because of “the failure of a person.”18 Tomas fails God because he reveres
a security god, and he fails Jonas because he dominates the conversation.
God might be silent because he does not exist, but it may also be the case
that Tomas does not listen. Deaf to the heavens, he does all of the talk-
ing; unable to hear humans, he fills the air with his words. Whatever his
reason for steering conversation to himself, Ericsson claims God has for-
saken him long after he has forsaken God. He reduces the Almighty to an
echo god who repeats his assertions and diminishes Jonas to a sounding
board for his confessions. In doing so, Tomas fails to hear anything other
than the reverberations of his own voice.
While Tomas meets with Jonas, lighting reflects his selfishness in a few
ways. For example, his physical blackness reveals his psychological dark-
ness. The clergyman admits he made his Lord entirely benevolent and
feared the slightest difficulties would turn that deity into something hor-
rific. Tomas says, “I thought to shield Him from life, clutching my image
of Him to myself in the dark.” He confesses that he clasped this god
in the darkness because light reveals him to be “a spider god, a mon-
ster.” As he questions the amorality of the Almighty, Tomas faces the
light but stands in darkness, and his face contrasts with Jonas’s radiant
one. The former looks out the sun-filled window while the latter turns
from diegetic light, but this shot inverts the laws of optics to elucidate
the one who would be in shadow and darken the one who would stand
in the sun. Fill lamps twist reality to show that the parson, who seems
to see the light, falls into darkness, and filters defy physics to reveal that
the fisherman, who appears to turn from the sunshine, receives enlight-
enment. Therefore, this chiaroscuro implies that Tomas clutches his self-
ish image of God in the dark, but Jonas faces whatever monstrosity the
Almighty might become in light of suffering.
In this scene, Tomas tempts Jonas to join him in the darkness. Tomas
flees to the window where he clutches his bars once more, but as he
draws closer to its light, he falls deeper into darkness. He fades into
blackness until he is nothing but a silhouette over Jonas’s shoulder that
hisses, “If there is no God, would it really make any difference?” He
wonders if death would merely snuff out life, which adds despondency
to Persson’s despair. He declares, “Suffering is incomprehensible so it
needs no explanation,” but his explanations for anguish fail to alleviate it.
In their first conversation, Tomas stood in the light to insist Jonas must
trust God, but now Tomas stands in the darkness to consider the nonex-
istence of God. As the parson reverses his theological stance to find nihil-
ism, he switches his physical position to talk from the blackness. When
Märta spoke from the shadows to proclaim God never existed, Ericsson
ignored her by staring at the light. Now it is the clergyman who states
there is “no Creator” while it is Jonas who fixates on brightness, and as
doubt falls on his faith, he tempts another with gloom.
During this episode, once he drives Jonas into blackness, Tomas is
overwhelmed by light. When the fisherman leaves the sacristy, the par-
son is left alone. In the most dramatic lighting of the film, the sunshine
swells through the window and drowns the room in white (see Fig. 4.1).
The clouds part and Tomas declares, “God, why have you forsaken me?”
This surge in brightness could suggest the believer renounces his faith,
or it could imply that he has refined it. Whether the parson kills God or
just his idol of him, this change in luminescence signals some revelation.
During communion, he turned his back on communicants so he could
face the sun; while counseling the Perssons; he peered into brightness
away from Jonas; and as he talked with Märta, he stared at the daylight.
When Jonas leaves the room, however, Tomas sees his fixation on the
light has plunged others into darkness. When he realizes that his radi-
ance has kept others in pitch, he receives the film’s brightest light, and
while that brilliance once gave Tomas security, it now illuminates his
insensitivity.
130 J. Ponder
Fig. 4.1 (43:22, Winter Light, Bergman, 1962). Lights rise on Tomas
In the end, these moments from the Jonas scene accentuate how
Tomas concentrates on light to blot out others. He tries to commiser-
ate with the fisherman but ends up pitying himself. Looking at the
radiance so he can evade people, Tomas is left with enveloping sun-
shine. He has stockpiled radiance from clouded peers, and he suffers
full light when Jonas descends into darkness. Throughout this conver-
sation, Tomas quotes Jesus and feels forsaken in what Kierkegaard calls
the bravest confrontation of the ultimate suffering, but he differs from
the Christ he cites. His concentration on the light plunges others into
darkness, and his search for the Lord’s countenance drives Jonas to the
grave. This self-absorption at the expense of others exposes the limita-
tions of this concept of suffering. Kierkegaard’s analysis of anguish is For
Self-Examination rather than other compassion, and his focus on the
relationship between God and the individual ignores the relationship
between pain and community. Like Kierkegaard, Tomas peers into the
light to confess that God can be monstrous, but that luminescence also
reveals his own monstrousness.
“Could You Please Guard the Body?”:

Sartre and Suicide
Augustine, Kant, Leibniz, and Kierkegaard voice historical theologies,
but Jean-Paul Sartre represents the views contemporary to Winter Light’s
release. For him, suffering helps the individuals discover themselves
through the anguish that proves they are alive, but he also concludes
that such torment undermines God’s existence. Sartre takes atheistic
freedom as existentialism’s starting point, stating, “Indeed, everything
is permissible if God does not exist.”19 On the one hand, the empty
heavens liberate “the plane where there are only men,” and individuals
can foster their being out from under the shadow of some “infinite and
perfect consciousness.”20 On the other hand, this freedom is burden-
some because the individual “is without excuse” and becomes person-
ally bound to live authentically. In the blackness of Sartrean metaphor, all
one can hope for are “little flashes of sun on the surface of a cold, dark
sea.”21 Nevertheless, one must cling to the light by overcoming anguish
on her own.
In the conversation with Jonas, Tomas expresses a similar view of
suffering. He asks, “If there is no God, would it really make any differ-
ence?” and contemplates Sartre’s reply that “Everything is permissible if
God does not exist.” He considers that there are no commandments to
endure anguish, and he wonders if one can end life if it has no design.
After Tomas admits he feels God has forsaken him, he enters the sanctu-
ary, passes the crucifix, and gazes out the windows. He declares himself
free, but his celebration ends when coughing drives him to his knees.
Märta takes him in her arms as he mourns his faith, but this comfort
is cut short by news of Jonas’s suicide. Beside a roaring river, Tomas
joins officials beside the corpse and is asked, “Could you please guard
the body?” Alone and beneath the opaque sky, the parson beholds the
bloody face of his parishioner, and there he witnesses the bondage of
freedom.
With these events, this scene explores the contradiction of existential-
ism. Hubert I. Cohen claims this sequence creates a “complex, if not
paradoxical, effect” because freedom helps the clergyman cast off God
moments before it drives the congregant to shoot himself.22 As Tomas
discovers emancipation from heaven’s commands, he also finds the
shackles of the human condition. The scene highlights the absurdity of
human freedom by giving him the chance to declare his freedom, only
132 J. Ponder
to stifle that declaration moments later. In the church, coughs throttle

his liberty; beside Jonas’s body, the river silences his speech; and in the
car, the engine smothers his words. In these moments, visuals allow his
lips to move, but sound mutes whatever statements he makes. According
to Cohen, this effect creates the feeling of “a vacuum” where freedom
becomes inexpressible and therefore “meaningless.”23 Tomas frees him-
self from God, but he finds himself bound to humans. He claims his god
is monstrous, but his debt to humans proves hellish. In this paradoxical
situation, Tomas can sever ties with the god he kills, but he still shoul-
ders the blame for Jonas’s death.
While these narrative events limit Tomas’s independence, lighting
foregrounds his dependence on others. First, cinematography suggests
he pursues light but falls into darkness. In this scene, when he declares
God’s absence, he stands in horrible brightness. Once he emerges from
his sacristy, the light of his countenance frightens Märta into the shad-
ows. He walks past the “ridiculous image” of Christ on Calvary, and he
steps into the cross of rays beaming through the window. He presses
deeper into the church until he eclipses the only sunlight escaping the
sky. Coughing thrusts him to the floor, and a flare beatifies his head.
Kneeling beneath the aureole, he raises eyes to his halo and clutches the
altar but watches the window to sigh, “Now I’m free. Free at last.” In
this sanctifying light, clouds part to show him a new twilight, teach him
a deeper truth, and give him a fuller freedom. He glows in his annun-
ciation for a few instants until his cough leaps up again, reminding him
that torment lies at the core of his condition, and although he may steal
glances of revelatory light, suffering drives him into darkness once more.
Second, while Tomas fails to attain the light, he relies on the shadow
of others. His illness sends him to the floor until Märta clutches him.
She kisses his face as he weeps, “I had this fleeting hope that everything
wouldn’t turn out to be illusions, dreams, and lies.” He shudders and
falls beneath the frame, but Märta remains in focus. There, she absorbs
the sun that scorches him but also casts Tomas in her shadow. He rejects
her shade, denies his dependence, and reenters his light. He declares
he is leaving for the second service, and she says she will join him, but
he abandons her in the brightness where she met him. Suddenly, out
of the gloom of the pews, a congregant draped in a charcoal dress and
a hood as grim as death announces Jonas’s suicide. Throughout the
scene, Tomas had stared into the light, but frailty forces him into dark-
ness. Märta pulls him from the murk, but her help casts him in shadow.
Rejecting the shade for radiance, Tomas leaves his comforter on the
floor to stand in the light before death reveals the darkness into which
he drove Jonas. Reveling in his freedom from illusions, dreams, and lies,
he refuses his reliance on people. Scorning the assistance from those that
put him in the shade, Tomas denies help to others in ways that cast them
to the pitch.
Finally, this sequence exposes Tomas to the darkness of the light he
has sought. As he exits the church and drives away, the minister enters a
unique haze. The landscape swells with a winter glow that is neither dark
nor light. When Tomas stands with the body, the river radiates. While he
glances at Jonas’s corpse, the sleet about him shimmers. The sun refracts
off the fog until its source obscures, and its rays become so diffuse they
cannot forge a shade. The scattered light seems to come from nowhere,
but its brilliance emanates everything. Throughout the film, Tomas has
stared at the sun to avoid despair and people. In the sacristy, he receives
light that removes darkness, but this luminosity is not the sun. By the
riverside, Ericsson discovers a distorted radiance, a deformed truth, and a
crooked freedom. As he rejects the help of others and fails to assist them,
he occupies infernal winter that casts no shadow but also beams no light.
Ultimately, as Tomas learns of Jonas’s suicide, lighting exposes his
inescapable shackles. He liberates himself from God, but he cannot shake
his ties to others. Before his window, he thought he saw a revelatory
light, but beside the river, all he finds is a desperate haze. Tomas shed his
protector god, but he cannot shrug off his debt to people. With his hor-
ror and guilt, the parson shows the limits of existentialism. While Sartre
eventually considered it one’s duty to alleviate the anguish of others,
that aspect fades in comparison to the absolution his atheism promises.
During moments where Tomas articulates early existentialism, lighting
accentuates the isolationist aspects of Sartre’s thinking. When the parson
glares into the light, he asks, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” not,
“Our Father, why have you forsaken us?” He deifies himself by quoting
Christ, but he never sacrifices himself for others like Jesus did. Transfixed
by his light, his god, and his forsakenness, Tomas does not chase down
Jonas. Standing in his flare, declaring his freedom, and mourning his
faith, he does not even mention the desperate man until an interrup-
tion announces his death. Having pursued the light by ignoring others,
Tomas is condemned to look upon the dark suicide under a shadowless
glow that is too twisted to belong to the sun.
134 J. Ponder
“That I Become a Clergyman”: Nietzsche and Karin

Some claim God uses anguish to punish sinners, purify saints, or push
souls toward heaven, and others claim torment means nothing, remains
pointless, and justifies suicide. Between this asceticism and nihilism,
Friedrich Nietzsche claims anguish purges humans of base emotions such
as guilt and fear. Theologians argue that sorrow is an evil, and philos-
ophers claim it forms a lack. But Nietzsche calls it a gift, stating, “To
those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering …,
because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is
worth anything or not—that one endures.”24 According to Nietzsche’s
madman, humans have killed God and when they “light lanterns” people
will illuminate the fact that they have defied deities but must now see if
they can conquer despair.25 The church fails to give torment a meaning
that is convincing, and nihilism fails to grant suffering any significance at
all. Between these poles, Nietzsche argues that because religions falter,
one must create new values, and because people succumb to despair, one
must overcome the self. According to Nietzsche, all one must do to elu-
cidate darkness and give sorrow a purpose is endure.
Karin demonstrates an almost Nietzschean endurance during her con-
versation with Tomas. The parson reports Jonas’s suicide, offers to read
scripture, and tells her that he tried to save the fisherman, but the widow
accepts she is alone, makes funeral plans, and tells her children their
father is dead. As Ericsson watches her report the tragedy to her fam-
ily, he slinks away to his car. In this sequence, he adopts religious asceti-
cism when he uses his scriptures to insist anguish has meaning, and Jonas
symbolizes suicidal nihilism when he uses his shotgun to declare torment
is meaningless. Karin stands between these extremes, and she refuses
to surrender to God or grief. She declines reading the Bible verses that
will explain away her woe, and she rejects shedding a tear of the sor-
row for that which took her husband’s life. Instead of solving agony or
experiencing torture, Karin focuses on overcoming misery. Her parson
might fixate on theology and her husband may obsess about angst, but
this widow acknowledges her aloneness. Most demand meaning for their
anguish, but Karin recognizes that adversity means she must endure.
In this scene, Karin’s perseverance challenges Tomas. For months,
she has had to carry a baby in her womb, care for children in her home,
and console a spouse in depression. Tomas knows she has been through
all this, but he sees that she remains steadfast. On the one hand, her
husband reads an article on possible war, and it drives him to end his life.
On the other hand, Karin holds her family together against actual trag-
edy, and she gasps at the mention of suicide. According to Jörn Donner,
this tenacity should inspire others, but it also shames Tomas.26 She is a
congregant he could not help, and her presence reminds him of his fail-
ure. She is a widowed mother who rejects self-pity and persists in ways
that expose Tomas’s narcissism. He declares himself to be like Christ at
the slightest whiff of doubt, but she accepts her fate without a sob. While
her parson insists he wanted to help but could not, she carries on and
does what is necessary to survive. By forsaking the feelings that torment
inspires and embracing the fortitude that is required to continue, Karin
becomes a symbol of endurance.
Throughout this sequence, lighting accentuates Karin’s stamina in
multiple ways. For starters, the scene casts her in high-contrast lighting
just as she walks the line between opposing forces. After the parson deliv-
ers the devastating news, Karin crosses the room and sits on the stairs.
She evaluates her situation and reports, “So, I’m all alone.” While she
interprets her lot in this way, the reverend offers to read the Bible. She
snaps, “No” before providing a courteous “No, thank you.” She deliv-
ers these lines at the base of a stairwell, and an offscreen window casts
half her face in shadow. Between the light of asceticism and the dark of
nihilism, Karin considers how to respond to suffering. She rejects the
gloom that sent her husband to the grave, and she rebuffs the sunni-
ness that blinds Tomas to the horrors of life. The widow stands between
sublimating anguish and submitting to it while she sits betwixt light and
darkness. Mrs. Persson refuses to either hinder day or hasten night and
instead chooses to persist in the twilight, and when she refuses to blind
herself with the parson’s light or the suicide’s dark, Karin endures by
embracing shadow.
While high contrast illuminates Karin’s liminal stance, low-key light-
ing emphasizes her balance. After hearing about Jonas, she says, “I’ve
got to tell the children” before pressing past the minister. He flees out-
side but looks in, gazing through her window. As she tells her kids of
tragedy, she stands between the lamplight illuminating her face and
her shadow on the wall. At this junction of lantern and darkness, she
acknowledges suffering without accepting defeat in a shadow that proves
most peculiar. While shooting Winter Light, Bergman told his crew to
track shadows and even went so far as to designate one member to be
the “shadow hunter” whose sole job was to scour each frame and rid
136 J. Ponder
every shot of shade.27 Because exceptional care went into ridding the
film of shadows, special purpose exists for these to remain around Karin.
This scene constitutes one such moment where an unusual character
receives strange shadow for rare reasons. Tomas stood at the retable chal-
lenging his congregants to let the light of the Lord shine upon them, but
now Karin challenges him by allowing shadow to wash over her. When
this model provokes him, Ericsson steps into the dusk. There, his cassock
bleeds into blackness, but Karin remains at the table between the light
and dark where shadow resides.
Having seen Karin embrace shadow in ways that he never has, Tomas
sinks deeper into the pitch. When the parson leaves the Persson’s, he lets
Märta drive him farther into the sunset. The couple stops at a railroad
gate and sits before the fuming train when Tomas breaks the silence, say-
ing, “It was my parents’ dream that I become a clergyman.” After he
suggests his faith was never his, he sits in darkness lit by a probing head-
light and haunting smoke. In the next shot, the train hauls boxcars as
grim as coffins against a sky as dark as tombs.28 Death creeps in because
the parson questions institutional values without the personal convic-
tions to replace them. Conversely, Karin can replace the deed of dis-
cussing scriptures with the act of talking to her children because she can
reject the power of her church and find purpose in her family. With these
events, Tomas has seen the light of his forsakenness, the darkness of
Jonas’s suicide, and the shadow of Karin’s endurance. Like Mrs. Persson,
he negates Christianity, but unlike her, he cannot replace it, and without
her strength to stand in shadow, the enlightened Tomas descends into
darkness.
Ultimately, because of Karin’s fortitude, Tomas falls into blackness.
He is as disinterested in religion as the widow, but he lacks something
she has. She can reject biblical explanations for suffering and still make
meaning out of anguish, but the moment Tomas questions Christian
reasons for torment he veers into woe. She can decline asceticism and
stay in shadowy endurance, but when he challenges his faith, he plunges
into dark nihilism. In the swelling light of the sacristy, Tomas kills his
Lord, and in the billowing night, he watches trains that look like cas-
kets. Like Nietzsche’s madman, he declares God dead, but unlike the
philosopher’s superman, he proves unworthy of this great deed. Karin
can stand between light and dark, and she can share her shady woe with-
out casting her children in darkness, but Tomas sentences himself to the
pitch because he insists on sunlight so much that he finds no solace come

nightfall.
The Bells Are Ringing: Barth and Frostnäs

Most theologians and philosophers ascribe darkness to cowardice and
brightness to courage, and their arguments suggest Übermenschen stare
into luminescence while sinners cower in blackness. Karl Barth defies
these metaphors of light by venerating shadow, and Church Dogmatics
articulates his worldview through the symbols of photometry. In this
cosmology, light is the grace that redeems creation, and darkness is the
evil that was too irredeemable to create. If something exists, it remains
redeemable, and if radiance can shine on it, blackness becomes mere
shadow. In this understanding lies what Barth says is “the harmony of
creation to which shadow belongs but in which the shadow is not dark-
ness, deficiency is not defeat, sadness cannot become despair, trouble
cannot denigrate into tragedy and infinite melancholy is not ultimately
forced to claim undisputed sway.”29 Some Christians obsess about the
light to insist that suffering is meaningful, and some existentialists con-
centrate on the night to maintain that anguish is meaningless. This
Christian existentialist, however, hopes that purpose for sorrow may
receive illumination but admits that the point of angst might remain
darkened; between blessed assurance and accursed doom, Barth finds
true faith in shadow.
As Tomas approaches his second service, he begins to realize a simi-
lar belief. Throughout Winter Light, the parson avoids peril, condemna-
tion, and distress by staring into the sunshine until parting clouds reveal
forsakenness, the absence of darkness unveils suicide, and the growing
night exposes the limits of light. When he sees Karin’s shadow, Tomas
descends into darkest dusk, but as he presses through the twilight, he
begins to resemble Mrs. Persson. While she grieves the loss of her hus-
band but still tends to her children, Tomas suffers a crisis of faith but
remains faithful to his flock. Despite the sickness of his body, despite the
sadness of his mind, and despite the skepticism of his soul, he presses on
to his next church. Rather than healing his fever, calling Reverend Broms
back from his test drive, or fleeing into the night, Tomas trudges toward
Frostnäs. After witnessing Mrs. Persson’s endurance, he develops a har-
mony in which shadow is not darkness, sadness cannot become despair,
138 J. Ponder
and infinite melancholy does not claim undisputed sway. As Tomas

admits his suffering, he embraces the light of his darkness, but as he per-
sists in obligation, he reveals shadow pervades all creation.
Persevering between light and dark, Tomas approaches a new faith.
John Simon divides the film into three movements. The first occurs in
Mittsunda’s church, the second happens outside that building, and
the final unfolds at Frostnäs. He claims that this progression from one
parish to another symbolizes the parson’s evolution from one faith
to another. In the first, he clings to his wish-fulfilling god before the
enveloping light destroys him. Tomas mourns that loss by leaving the
church before entering the haze of suicide and the darkness of death.
Finally, he embraces shadow between his echo god and his emptiness
to awaken “a new faith.”30 Throughout the film, Tomas articulates his
old doubts, but he keeps this fresh belief silent. He verbalizes his skep-
ticism in dialogue about insecurity, spider gods, and meaninglessness,
but he actualizes his creed in actions that direct him at Frostnäs, pull
him from the car, and push him to the church. The tenets of his dogma
remain unclear, and Tomas might conduct these religious chores emp-
tily. Nevertheless, the minister who voiced his despair falls quiet in this
scene. As he fulfills the duties of his service without a word regarding his
doubts, Tomas appears to develop a different type of devotion.
As Tomas adopts this new faith, lighting employs a new motif. While
he approaches his second service, the parson enters a different land-
scape. Black trees vein the overcast sky, onyx hills carve the horizon, and
fog bleeds across the land. Märta and Tomas exit the car and make the
march to the church. He says no words but exhales vapors, and these
wisps talk somewhere between silence and speech. Ericsson holds no
guarantees, but he pursues the temple and communes with shadow
between light and dark. Exterior shots cast him in pure haze beside the
river or in pitch black outside the house, but this particular shot along-
side the church splits his face with shadow. His eyes blacken from what
they have seen, and his lips darken from what they have said, but his gen-
eral countenance remains lit. Part in sun and part in gloom, Tomas’s face
attains the shadow reserved for Karin. The sacristy seared him with day-
light, and the Persson house draped him in night, but his second church
permits him the shadow that lies between the two.
This motif of shadow continues as Tomas traverses one last symbol of
gloom. Lost in his thoughts, the reverend trudges toward the church,
but one obstacle remains. In the penumbra of the building stands a
gated cemetery, and its white headstones jut from the shade to announce
the death they contain. Tomas has crossed the death mask at Mittsunda,
the suicide at the river, and the coffin cars at the railroad, but now the
grave threatens once more. The ringing bells offer heavenly peace, but
these cold tombstones note earthly suffering. Before the clergyman can
enter his new church, he must walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, but as Tomas treads that ground, he fears no evil. Despite doubt,
he continues. Against anguish, he endures. Chronologically, Ericsson
leaves Karin’s porch before he arrives here, but the sky over the cem-
etery is somehow brighter than it was there. When he first witnesses Mrs.
Persson’s peace, he experiences blackness, but as he develops her forti-
tude for anguish, his night brightens into shade. When Tomas accepts
suffering, the sun reverses its setting and supernaturally turns night back
to dusk. As he passes through the cemetery, the clergyman defies the
realities of this world. He reduces the valley of death to mere shadow
and the suffering of this life to something less than darkness.
As Tomas approaches his final destination for the film, he begins to
change. Humbled by Karin’s endurance, he falls into darkest night, but
then he rides into brighter shadows. He acknowledges his crisis of faith
but completes duties faithfully, and he accepts suffering without fixating
on light or plunging into blackness. Persevering between myopic hope
and blind despair, the parson develops a new belief. While he never pro-
fesses this faith in word, he proclaims his doctrine in deed. He never says
much at all for the rest of the film, but he perseveres without complaint
and serves without protest. As he grows comfortable with preserving an
orthopraxis without orthodoxy, Tomas sees the world in a different light.
Consequently, as the minister sees the truth between religious light and
nihilistic darkness, that world depicts him in shadow. Although ghosts
of fog roll over the hills, phantoms of breath escape his lips, and rows
of graves cover the ground, Tomas proceeds through the valley of death
with a new faith that is rooted in shadow.
The Positivity of Double-X Negatives:

Hauerwas and Incarnation
While interpreters of pain arrive at different conclusions, they share
some common assumptions. Most importantly, these Christians, athe-
ists, theologians, and philosophers discuss anguish in individualistic
140 J. Ponder
terms, and their analyses of the soul, self-love, and forsakenness privilege
solitary epiphany, singular will, and self-examination. Theologians focus
on the relationship between the believer and her belief, while philoso-
phers emphasize the connection between the sufferer and her suffering.
The former might reference how the church can combat woe, and the
latter might discuss how humans must help others in a godless world.
Despite the differences between these groups, thinkers from both are
similar in that most examine why misfortune befalls the individual, how
misery affects one person, and what responsibilities affliction requires of
the solitary subject. In this regard, many from Leibniz to Nietzsche and
Kierkegaard to Sartre focus on the problem of suffering as a problem of
autonomy. Following the presuppositions of the Enlightenment era from
which theodicy arose, these writers suggest one must surmount torment
independently.
Rejecting this flawed approach, others advocate a more interdepend-
ent approach. For example, Stanley Hauerwas claims most accounts of
anguish fall short because they overlook how individuals need others to
prevent, stop, and heal misery. According to him, sorrow propels the self
toward others, and community provides some of the most powerful ways
to connect people. He claims thinkers bent on explaining agony should
focus on alleviating it and shifting focus from individualistic theodicy
to communal Christianity is one way to do this.31 The church repeats,
performs, and cites scriptural accounts of torment that weave personal
suffering into interpersonal narratives of anguish across dozens of coun-
tries, thousands of years, and billions of people. Instead of explain-
ing away misery, this process commiserates by showing the subject her
intersubjectivity. When a sufferer admits her dependence on others, she
can join this intertextual network of woe, and by accepting the limits of
autonomy, one can become part of a community that makes suffering
sufferable.
Winter Light signals the importance of this community with the motif
of flame. Throughout the film, Tomas suffers as he searches for light on
his own. He stares into the sunshine to ignore congregants, rebuff his
lover, and declare forsakenness. As he seeks direct access to the Lord’s
countenance, he is blinded by the sun during the day and left in dark-
ness by night. After Tomas plunges into the blackness of graveyards,
the camera cuts from the parson to the parish. Inside lies pitch that is
blacker than any previous setting. Sunset has driven away daylight, and
walls block even hints of dusk. But in this deepest darkness, even in this
coldest gloom, there is a flicker. The faintest spark that traces the trem-
bling church replaces the unmitigated darkness of Tomas’s loathing, the
direct light of the Lord’s face, and the point-blank shadow of Karin’s
grit with a mediated flame. A hand that does not belong to Tomas lights
this candle, and its flicker symbolizes the consolation that can only come
from others. Ericsson rebuffed people to stare at the sun, but when
night fell he needed them for light. At this moment, he requires a hand
to ignite the glimmer that dispels darkness, and its flame represents the
comfort that others provide.
Interpretations note that Tomas seeks community to ease his suffer-
ing. For example, he storms out of the school alone just to return and
ask Märta for help, trudges off the Persson’s porch by himself just to
see Karin’s support system, and declares that God has forsaken him mere
moments before going to serve the godly. According to Simon, these
episodes of contradiction occur as Tomas comes to grips with his need to
share. Whether through communion or communication, he accepts that
he must subject himself to others and that subjectivization into a com-
munity might be the thing to heal his pain. Simon claims that the film’s
thesis might be “hell together is better than hell alone,” and in this lake
of fire, one can lessen the burns felt by the self when looking at the flame
lit by others.32 To this point, Tomas’s inferno has been dark because it
has been lonely, and his pit will isolate as long as he concentrates on his
soul, his self-love, and his doubt. Exhausted by relating to nothing more
than his God and his suffering, Tomas begins to seek help from others.
By letting Märta drive him, Karin inspire him, and the hand illuminate
him, he subjects himself to the intersubjective community that might
give comfort.
As Tomas seeks consolation through community, the scene features
an icon of mediation. Up to this point in the film, the parson has been
the focus, and almost every shot foregrounds him or his perspective.
But as he crosses the cemetery, the camera cuts from him to enter the
church. When this mediating device leaves this believer, it concentrates
on other media that facilitate belief. Candlelight flickers on a statue of
Madonna and child, a symbol of the Christian family. The communion at
Mittsunda began with the minister staring into the sunlight as he tried to
view heaven directly, but the service at Frostnäs starts with an object of
Mary and Jesus that represents the community Tomas must look upon to
see the divine. In this building, if he seeks the Lord, he finds the Father
through the Son born of Mary, and this simple close-up of this simple
142 J. Ponder
image signals that his world has shifted from the alienation that comes
from individualism to the mitigation offered by intersubjectivity.
While depicting an icon that symbolizes intermediation, this scene
also features lighting that requires intercession. Throughout the film,
Tomas seeks sunlight and finds isolation, but this scene takes candlelight
to give solace. The parson pursues the Lord in the sun that disappears
come nightfall, but the parish retains the holy in candles that survive
sunset. As the camera scans the lit statue, the frame comes upon the
source of illumination: a seven-armed candlestick that defies darkness and
abates shadow. Bergman says he selected this particular set of wax and
wick because it was “terribly ugly” and “horribly poor.”33 These flick-
ers lack the splendor of sun or the beauty of day, but, despite their ugli-
ness and notwithstanding their poverty, they remain when blackness falls.
As Tomas relies on these objects to ignite this radiance, he also depends
on the people who make them. Workers sell matchsticks to retailers who
sell to sextons who light candles for reverends who require a network of
humans to make brightness. By focusing on the precarious candle, this
scene transitions Tomas from the sun that shines autonomously to the
flame that gleams dependently, and this good light stresses the fact that
one requires a community to shine in the dark.
As this image features lighting that relates many individuals, this shot
uses technology that joins many eras. The candlelight that Tomas sees
in the church relies on the community that makes flame possible, but
the glint that appears on the screen depends on technology that renders
flares visible. In this shot, the director of photography, Sven Nykvist,
took extraordinary pains to “remove all artificial light sources and illumi-
nate” the frame with nothing but a close-up on the flickers.34 Before the
release of Winter Light, such a feat would have been impossible because
wisps of fire would have saturated the celluloid; however, for the first
time, new Double-X negatives could represent how candles illuminate
the blackness. Therefore, the modern world creates the atomic weapons
that give Jonas a new darkness to dread, but it also innovates the spectral
sensitivity that provides moviegoers a new light to see. Facing modern
blackness, the church lights ancient candles, but conveying this old com-
fort, film seeks new technology. In this flame, candles of the past and the
celluloid of the present combat modern darkness together, and Tomas
finally sees the light through the sacred community that uses candle in a
moment where cinematic technology makes it seeable.
Ultimately, this scene inverts the métier of Winter Light with the
motif of flame. Throughout the film, sunlight symbolizes the divine, but
Tomas abuses it to escape the world. As he articulates different asser-
tions, he resembles various thinkers that assume one can be autonomous.
Striving for individuality has brought him sunny forsakenness, hazy sui-
cide, and shadowy endurance. Mittsunda challenged believers with sun-
light that seared a carving of an impassible Father holding a crucified
Son, but Frostnäs comforts them with a flame that glows on a sculpture
of a loving mother cradling a humble babe. Beneath Madonna and child
the candles flicker between the light of the Lord, the darkness of despair,
and the shadow of suffering. This glimmer appears to be a poor substi-
tute for sun, and sparks seem unable to withstand dusk, but longer than
day and stronger than night, braver than shade and greater than woe
remains the fragile flame. It takes the human community to make, ignite,
and keep the candle, but this wretched dependence proves brilliant.
“Our Spirit of Reverence”: Hauerwas and Algot

While Hauerwas favors community over the autonomous, he focuses on
humanity more than the divine. According to him, theodicy rose when
critics claimed the existence of suffering proved the nonexistence of
God and defenders responded by insisting that the Lord could coexist
with anguish. In this debate, theologians concentrated on defending the
Almighty more than helping the powerless because the “creation of ‘the’
problem of evil is a correlative of the creation of a god that, it was pre-
sumed, could be known separate from a community of people at wor-
ship.”35 Theologians deemphasized the function that the church plays in
comforting the anguished, but Hauerwas concentrates on the assembly
of the faithful more than the object of their faith. This collective, with
all of its rituals, ceremonies, and liturgies, becomes divinity continued on
earth, and Christians, with all of their flaws, shortcomings, and imperfec-
tions, represent Christ in the world. To face suffering, theologians stare
into the sunlight, atheists peer into the darkness, and supermen gaze into
shadows, but Hauerwas claims the church provides a fragile flame that
alleviates torment.
Similarly, Winter Light begins to focus less on divine sunlight and
more on human candlelight. As the camera pans down the flickering
candles, it reveals the hand that lights them. Preparing the church for
144 J. Ponder
everyone else, Algot Frövik, the church sexton, also attends services,
opens churches, and sounds bells, and, despite the pain that hunches
his back, he fulfills his duties. Discussing his creation of the character,
Ingmar Bergman states, “Algot Frövik is an angel to me. Really, literally:
an angel. There is fifty times more religion in that man than in the whole
character of the parson.”36 If Algot is an angel, he is a cherub of service.
Metaphysical pain overwhelms Tomas and drives him to hurt others,
but physical anguish consumes Algot who remains helpful to the par-
son. Karin gives the minister a saint who pushes through torment to sur-
vive, but Algot shows him an angel who presses through woe to serve.
Although few have communion at Mittsunda and none might attend at
Frostnäs, he ignites the candles that light the darkness in case anyone
would seek illumination in the community of worship.
In this regard, Algot’s candlelight symbolizes a form of religion at
odds with the modern world. Wood claims Winter Light shows a tradi-
tional culture struggling to make sense of the modern world as values
that once tied the community together wither in the wake of war, media,
and technology. Such issues even pervade the church, as postwar skepti-
cism reduces attendance, test drives distract preachers from their post,
and electrical lighting seeps into the service. According to Wood, these
details illustrate “the movement away from religious orthodoxy, the dis-
covery of God’s ‘silence’ (or nonexistence), and progression into a kind
of tentative existentialism.”37 For example, Jonas is more concerned
about nuclear proliferation than spiritual consolation, and the Frostnäs
church values mechanized bulbs over Algot’s candles. In this context of
secularism, the sexton becomes a stalwart of premodern faith, and he
offers the flame of an ancient hope. Although it is easier to flip a switch
and radiate the temple, Algot keeps the little light that has elucidated the
church for millennia.
These flickers illuminate the congregation, but they also expose its
flaws. After the candles ignite, the camera cuts to a full shot of Algot
limping through the sanctuary, Tomas and Märta enter as he deacti-
vates the bells and apologizes for letting them ring too long. He explains
that he usually starts the chimes, lights the candles, and returns in time
to stop the clanging, “But today I bungled it. An unfortunate mis-
hap.” Here, the brightness that persists in darkness relies on humans
who botch, and the flickers that shine in the night depend on worship-
pers who commit accidents. The bolder Tomas could have brightened
the room if he had not been wandering the graveyard, and the stronger
Jonas could have ignited the flame faster if he had not killed himself.
Nevertheless, these better candidates become less qualified to enlighten
the sanctuary than this imperfect sexton, and Algot becomes the sym-
bol of the community of worship because his candles both elucidate his
imperfections and require them.
The glorious blemishes of this worshipper reflect sublime imperfec-
tions in the larger community. As Algot admits his share of responsibil-
ity for letting the bells ring too long, he also spreads the blame. After
confessing his mistakes, the sexton claims, “Those candles were tricky to
light. Probably a factory defect.” Saying this, he suggests the inadequacy
that compromises this radiance belongs not to the lighter but to the
light itself, something in the nature of the object that would make it dif-
ficult for any human to spark them. Engineers who make machines that
make the candles that make the light have miscalculated, or the workers
who pack for truckers who ship to clerks who sell candles have come up
short. Regardless of what caused the defect, the interesting thing is that
this light can be defective at all. The sun shines as long as its convec-
tion churns, but these precarious candles rely on human contingencies.
Candles might be trickier to light than the sun’s eternal fire, but when
clouds cover, haze obscures, or night falls these delicate lights remain. If
this is the case, then candlelight might be defective, but the human flame
remains effective.
Finally, this scene depicts this insecure light as the most worshipful
radiance. Tomas seeks the divine in brightness, Jonas resigns to darkness,
and Karin finds solace in shadow, but Algot says that he prefers to “leave
the temple in semidarkness until just before the bells start.” The parson,
the fisherman, and the widow all function in a light they do not control,
but Algot chooses to reject brightness, darkness, and shadow for candle-
light. And although he could request they hold service in daylight, or he
could illuminate the sanctuary with electric bulbs, he doesn’t. Such radi-
ance would be brighter, less defective, and more resistant to bungling,
but Algot elects not to use them because he believes “electric lights dis-
turb our spirit of reverence.” Here, he suggests that technology compro-
mises spirituality, and the filaments that ease elucidation are profane. For
Algot, devotion requires struggle, the temple needs nightfall, and rever-
ent light demands risk. The modern world has gloom, and the modern
church has electricity. Nevertheless, Algot fosters a community that over-
comes darkness by hazarding some.
146 J. Ponder
In the end, the Frostnäs scene shifts focus away from sunlight to
c andlelight, and the camera moves concentration from Tomas to Algot.
While the parson seeks the sunlight of Christ, his sexton provides the
candlelight of Christendom, and while the former broods once night
falls, the latter remains after sunset. The flickers are flawed substitutes
for the sun because they are vulnerable to defects, but they remain glori-
ous because they are the divinity on earth. Tomas pursues the perfec-
tion of an echo god, but Algot provides the imperfection of the godly.
It might not appear less dark than Jonas’s blackness, as bright as Karin’s
shadow, or as easy as electric bulbs, but the faulty light this community
offers is the semidarkness that remains reverent in the night. Suffering
might require the explanations that religion provides, but it might also
request the alleviation that believers afford. Thinkers might furnish the
radiant truth Tomas pursues, but Algot grants the candlelit reverence he
might need.
“God’s Silence”: Lamentation and Algot

By focusing on community over theodicy, Hauerwas claims one might
comfort by replacing explanations with lamentations. Theologians have
offended victims of tragedy because they defended the Almighty’s good-
ness. Hauerwas invites more humane responses to sorrow by looking at
the psalms of lament. In these scriptures, Solomon, David, and Moses
seethe against misery and bristle at Yahweh. According to Hauerwas,
these passages exemplify a tradition where “suffering is simply acknowl-
edged for what it is with no explanation given for it.”38 Rather than
intellectualize anger, this approach entitles the tormented to their
rage and permits a theology of protest. In this regard, Hauerwas frees
Christians from the burden of explaining inexplicable anguish, and he
lets the faithful rave that sorrow exists for incomprehensible reasons. At
the same time, he challenges worshippers to accommodate even the most
blasphemous ferocity from the afflicted if letting them vent such anger
will help heal their pain. Previously, criticisms against God for suffering
provoked theologians to become defensive, but accepting lamentations
might be a way for Christians to become more responsive.
Exemplifying Hauerwas’s argument, Algot uses lamentations to com-
fort Tomas. As if knowing what the parson has said, the sexton also
quotes Christ, saying, “My God, my God. Why has thou forsaken me?”
As if knowing what Tomas needs to hear, Algot supernaturally repeats
another phrase the minister has used when Algot says Christ’s greatest
suffering must have been “God’s silence.” Hauerwas claims that the
psalms of lamentation can help anguished people digest sorrow. Algot
deals with agony by citing the Passion, a narrative beyond theodicy, a
discourse besides explanation—a tradition in which Jesus laments
anguish, questions God, and dies suspecting his sorrow is meaningless.
Despite Christ’s suffering and doubts, he stays on the cross, endures tor-
ment, and continues to suffer even when he wonders if his suffering is
pointless. Instead of interpreting this tale of anguish, Algot lets it hang in
the air, and it is this humble acceptance of suffering, doubt, and silence
without the audacious justification of omnipotence, omnipresence, and
omnibenevolence that draws Tomas out of his pain and into agreement.
Scholars claim that Algot’s lamentation foregrounds the importance
of human interaction. Throughout the film, Tomas concentrates on
what human suffering reveals about God, but during this scene, Algot
stresses what God’s anguish suggests about people. According to William
Alexander, the sexton “knows that Christ’s greatest suffering rose from
His desertion” and he also knows that mortals “have abandoned each
other and therein lies their suffering.”39 Tomas feels God has forsaken
him, so he forsakes others, which further isolates him; Algot embraces
suffering so he embraces others, which allows him to help. Alexander
notes that because Tomas focuses on his own abandonment he cannot
help Jonas, but because Algot addresses the abandonment of Christ he
can assist people. Whereas Tomas’s explanations push Jonas over the
edge, Algot’s recollection of common lamentation pulls Ericsson from
the brink.
As Algot overcomes himself to accommodate others, lighting sug-
gests the ways in which he surrenders his preferences to serve sufferers.
First of all, electric light implies that Algot denies himself to help Tomas.
He states that he likes to keep the sanctuary in semidarkness, claiming
light bulbs disturb reverence, but he singes the sacristy with brightness
and flips on a desk lamp to serve Tomas. This abrasive filament blares
high contrasts around the room, and it snaps the division between light
and dark into crisp shadow (see Fig. 4.2). By descending into the light
he least prefers, the sexton becomes most supportive. Algot dislikes the
lamp for reverence, but the spectacled Tomas needs it to see. Therefore,
the former submits his preferences for the latter. In an atmosphere that
undermines his ability to revere God, Algot illuminates the room in ways
that might cheer the godly. As he discusses the need Christ had for his
148 J. Ponder
Fig. 4.2 (1:13:04, Winter Light, Bergman, 1962). Algot comforts Tomas by

the light of the desk lamp
disciples, the sexton implies the need Christians have for each other,
and by humbling himself into the brightness that Tomas admires, Algot
focuses on the sufferer’s needs more than his own beliefs.
Once Algot changes the room to suit the parson’s tastes, high-con-
trast lighting reflects Tomas’s change. As Algot notes that Jesus’s follow-
ers “never grasped what he meant,” the parson sits in shadow. Like in
the graveyard, this shade suggests he remains as prepared to endure the
absence of light as Karin. Like her, he acknowledges the shadow he casts,
but unlike her, he accepts that he resides in the shadow of another who
cares for him. The wall receives the shadow of this suffering parson, who
sits in the shadow of his suffering sexton, who lives in the shadow of his
suffering Christ. The parson venerated sunlight before experiencing the vir-
tues of shade, but now high-contrast lighting creates a frame that suggests
even this thinking has changed. Now the shadow that falls on Tomas reveals
his suffering in light of Algot’s—in light of humanity’s—in light of God’s.
Rather than justifying the Lord for unleashing torment upon humans,
this high-contrast lighting and chain of shadows occur as Tomas accepts a
Christ willing to suffer with humans.
Finally, high-key lighting helps Tomas bare his torment and start to
heal. Algot validates the parson’s feelings that the Almighty seems dis-
tant when he admits Christ’s greatest suffering must have been “God’s
silence.” Tomas had told Jonas that God was near, and Märta had
asserted God’s nonexistence, but Algot’s declaration earns his agree-
ment. At this moment, the light beams across Tomas, the electric lamp
capturing the perspiration on his brow. For the first time in the film,
Tomas is lit by diegetic electricity, showing how the parson’s suffering
is met with accommodation. In this unfamiliar environment, he begins
to sweat beneath those scorching bulbs, but their heat also draws out his
infection. The fever that has afflicted him throughout the entire movie
perspires its way through the skin, and as this physical illness leaves his
body, metaphysical pain departs his soul. It is in this context that Tomas
sees his pain in a new light, causing him to begin to heal.
Instead of trying to explain suffering, Algot helps Tomas lament.
Theologians theorize misery away, but this sexton acknowledges the
emotions it incites. He uses the same words Tomas said in private,
asking, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” with no way of know-
ing the parson had just said the same thing. He declares the problem
of “God’s silence” when there is no way he could have known Tomas
shared the same concern. The former is able to share these expressions
with the latter because they reference the story of Jesus; Algot seems to
quote Tomas only because the parson cited the words that Christ said
at a moment of suffering that is supposed to link all of nature. Through
crucifixion, the Creator suffers with creation, and this final cry on
the cross grants creatures permission to lament. Rather than insist on
God’s goodness, Jesus questions his abandonment; instead of defend-
ing the Father’s righteousness, the Son exercises his right to rage. As
Algot alludes to this story and justifies being angry with God, Tomas is
stunned silent into processing his anger. So used to fighting life, God,
and others, the parson seems at a loss once he has a friend, and this ally
challenges him to see anguish as part of a long line of sorrow that con-
nects each sufferer to another, all the way back to the light of the Lord.
That sunlight and countenance of divinity might prove unattainable, but
the lamplight and shadow of its community could offer a radiance that
never sets.
150 J. Ponder
“Shall We Have Service, Then?”:

Utilitarianism and Fredrik
While rationalism and romanticism emphasized autonomy, pragmatism
stressed utility. Many scholars have analyzed anguish to maximize ben-
efits and minimize suffering. Hauerwas claims this thinking assumes “the
good must ultimately triumph” and “our belief in God is irrational if
it does not put us on the winning side of history.”40 According to this
logic, the Lord deserves service if he protects and he deserves abandon-
ment once he allows discomfort. Hauerwas claims that these presupposi-
tions show the assumption “that god or the gods are to be judged by
how well it or they ensure the successful outcome of human purposes is
underwritten in the name of Christianity.”41 Although the community of
worship provides a network to alleviate suffering, many members remain
just as long as the object of their worship dispels pain. The faith offers an
opportunity to write personal misery into a shared narrative, but some
remain faithful only if that story guarantees their individual success.
Tomas faces pressure from one such believer in the character of the
utilitarian Fredrik. At Mittsunda, this organist (Olof Thunberg) ful-
fills his duties with yawns, sighs, and indifference. At Frostnäs, Fredrik
declares they should cancel service due to low attendance. He recalls
how he used to arrange musical soirees for the things Tomas achieved,
but now that those accomplishments have faltered, he pronounces the
ministry dead. He quotes one of the parson’s glorious sermons, saying,
“God is love, and love is God. Love proves the existence of God,” before
calling these beliefs a mere “drill.” In this conversation, the organist tries
to quantify the value of a religious community with business data, and he
evaluates the virtues of a spiritual leader based on social achievements.
The moment this institution fails to garner a greater share of the mar-
ket, Fredrik discredits it; the instant that God lets one suffer, the organist
mocks his love. Concerned with assessment and consumed by outcomes,
Fredrik voices the utilitarianism that has sapped faith, and he personifies
the Christian who remains faithful as long as his services are attended, his
soirees are applauded, and his faithfulness is rewarded.
Throughout this scene, Fredrik’s utilitarianism challenges Tomas.
Bergman’s Winter Light picks up where Through a Glass Darkly left
off.42 In the earlier film, David sincerely asserts that God is love, but, in
the second, Fredrik sarcastically parrots this claim. The former believes
that love proves the Lord’s existence, while the latter thinks suffering
disproves it. Brother DePaul argues that both films show the shortcom-
ings of doctrines that are based on love. He believes “‘God is love. Love
is the proof of God’s existence’ is an ironic and hopelessly crippled state-
ment” because the weakness of characters “prevents the words from
having any significant meaning in their lives.”43 In this scene, Fredrik
questions whether love can be a “real force for mankind” because of
how forceless it has been for Tomas. The organist admits that the parson
loved his dead wife, but he says, “So much for that love story.” The sen-
timents the minister felt toward his spouse could not conquer the grave,
so Fredrik claims that death disproves the power of love, and the weak-
ness of love disproves the existence of God. He brings up these past out-
comes to tempt Tomas to forsake present faith, and the former suggests
that the futility of the latter’s beliefs provides grounds to abandon them.
In this scene, different lighting methods contrast characters and the
various options they represent for Tomas. For example, Fredrik’s block-
ing around the parson’s source of practical light reflects utilitarianism’s
grand challenge to faith. He lumbers into the sacristy where Tomas
pours over scripture under lamplight and notes the all-but-empty sanctu-
ary before asking, “Will there be a service?” Fredrik says he would like to
sleep before his performance at the Masonic Lodge, but Tomas just fixes
on his glowing verses. The organist leans into this light, interjecting his
views, luring the reverend to cancel service, while Algot stands in semi-
darkness, withholding his opinions, waiting for the minister’s decision.
As the reverend considers whether to serve, these two characters repre-
sent a shoulder devil and a shoulder angel, respectively, each highlighting
Tomas’s conflicting desires. One pressures him to recognize the build-
ing’s emptiness and the church’s uselessness, but the other waits for him
to realize the edifice’s potential and Christianity’s significance. In the
end, the former retreats from the light as utilitarianism loses to Algot’s
reverence.
As Fredrik impinges on the parson’s light to challenge his faith, back-
lighting infringes on Märta and challenges her to believe. Alone in the
sanctuary, she kneels in the pews and offers a prayer in the moonlight
that halos her silhouette, saying, “If only we could feel safe and dare
show each other tenderness. If only we had some truth to believe in.”
With this imploration, she delivers a conditional proof, and with these
antecedents, she asserts the start of agnosticism. As she proclaims that
152 J. Ponder
she will only believe in an Almighty who gives guarantees, she descends
into a darkness that reflects her wretchedness. When Märta questions
her doubt and risks the hope that there might be safety, tenderness, and
truth where she has found danger, cruelty, and lies, she receives a halo
that sanctifies her from the blackness and borders her with light. This
shot reduces Märta to a silhouette in ways that suggest her conditional
faith is shallow. Nevertheless, backlighting exalts her in a manner that
implies her courage even to consider agnosticism is hallowed.
Given reverence, utilitarianism, and agnosticism, Tomas illuminates
his beliefs. After surveying the sexton’s candlelight, the organist’s dark-
ness, and the lover’s halo, the camera cuts to the parson’s profile under
lamplight. As the screen shows him bowing to the bulb, the voice-over
carries Märta saying, “If only we could believe.” As the parson thinks
about what Ms. Lundberg says, he lowers his head to struggle with belief
and measures his faith against his peers. Algot offers compassion, Fredrik
propagates cynicism, and Märta lays down conditions, but Tomas rises
from his chair. Algot smiles and asks, “Shall we have the service, then?”
not awaiting a reply before limping to the fuse box. With each flick of a
switch, circuits light a new part of the church, elucidating all from Algot
in the sacristy to Fredrik in the balcony to Märta in the sanctuary. Tomas
considers what could be “if only we could believe” but accepts that he
need not believe in order to serve, and as he displays the praxis that out-
lives doxy, he dispels darkness with radiant light.
All in all, this scene depicts Tomas’s temptation by and rejection of
conditional faith. Fredrik articulates the cynicism that assumes the for-
tunes of the faithful determine the value of their faith. At the faintest
whiff of adversity, Fredrik seeks another venture, and with the slightest
hint of low attendance, sickness, or fatigue, he abandons his service. As
Fredrik tempts Tomas to do the same, he inadvertently helps the par-
son see the pragmatism that has permeated his own beliefs. Suffering has
enticed Tomas to forsake his devotions, but at that moment, he decides
to continue. Against all odds, against all data, against all signs that prove
his faith is fruitless, he holds his service. The ceremony at Frostnäs began
in semidarkness before a desk lamp flicked low over Bible verses, and
now the whole church is full of radiance. Fredrik’s criticism still stands,
and Märta’s logic remains, but Tomas decides to follow Algot. Electricity
might disturb their spirit of reverence, but as they turn on the bright
bulbs, the faithful surrender reverence for service.
“Holy Is the Lord”: Isaiah and the Congregation

Those who analyze suffering make valuable points, but scripture pro-
vides different contexts for torment. While theologians take their conclu-
sions from rationality and philosophers base their allegations on reason,
the prophets draw their assertions from revelation. For example, in the
sixth chapter of the book that bears his name, Isaiah receives a vision.
He has witnessed his country having plunged into war and his peers hav-
ing fallen to despair. After these perilous days, his nation rose to a level
of comfort that steered people from God. During this complacent time,
the prophet sees the Lord seated on a throne with a train that fills the
temple. Around him fly seraphim who cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.” While these beings show
adoration, Isaiah feels fear as the Almighty quakes the foundations of the
building and fumes the house with smoke. The prophet declares he will
die for seeing such holiness because he is unclean, so an angel takes a
lump of coal from the altar and burns the prophet pure. After this pain-
ful ordeal, God orders him to preach to hardened hearts, plugged ears,
and shut eyes until his country is a wasteland and his people suffer exile.
In the end, the only comfort Isaiah receives is that his nation will be cut
down so it can survive as a stump of holy seed.
In Winter Light, Tomas has a similar encounter with the divine. Some
members of his society dread impending war while others seek comfort
in test drives, comic books, and Mason lodges. During this time of dwin-
dling church attendance, the parson longs to see what Isaiah saw and
behold the Lord exalted with a robe that fills the empty church. Around
him hang electric lights whose bulbs overwhelm the sanctuary as he
declares, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full
of his glory.” While this liturgy expresses adoration, Tomas recites it out
of heartfelt devotion or heartless duty as only Algot, Fredrik, and Märta
occupy the building. Throughout the film, the minister has declared
himself a wretch, and suffering has scorched his soul. Nevertheless, he
still performs the Sanctus to hardened hearts, plugged ears, and shut
eyes. Even after announcing God has forsaken him, he continues to serve
that absent deity, and even after realizing he has failed others, he persists
in serving them. As Tomas cites Isaiah, he invites comparisons between
himself and his forebear: Both have unclean lips; both seek purifica-
tion through suffering; and both have been cut down to survive like a
154 J. Ponder
stump. Given these similarities, perhaps both remain a holy seed insofar
as, despite their world of suffering, they proclaim the whole earth full
of glory.
Scholars spend much time debating these final words. Some claim
Tomas emptily quotes Isaiah to exaggerate how much he differs from
the prophet, but others claim the parson faithfully cites this passage to
express how much he identifies with this predecessor. Gervais argues that
such debates remain because the film is “bathed in ambiguity and ambiv-
alence” as it both roots in Christianity and acknowledges atheism.44
Given the film’s final words, he asks, “Is this an affirmation of faith, or a
final withering irony, a confirmation of empty routine, death, meaning-
lessness? From the same data, that is, from the same open structuring of
open signs, the believer and the non-believer can come to opposite con-
clusions.”45 Part of the difficulty of interpreting this dialogue arises from
the fact that the film’s final lines are not dialogue at all. When Tomas
declares, “The whole earth is full of his glory,” he quotes the Sanctus,
which quotes a prophet who quoted a seraphim. Throughout the film,
the parson uses his words to articulate his views, but in this scene, he
cites the words of others in ways that blur his beliefs.
While verbal expression might obscure Tomas’s faith, visual represen-
tation may elucidate it. To examine the parson’s status at the film’s end,
one must also analyze how lighting represents him. Interpreting how the
parson has evolved from the beginning of the movie requires that one
must contrast the opening and closing shots of Winter Light. Doing so
reveals that the luminance range of the Sanctus scene differs from the
Eucharist scene in a few ways. First of all, Tomas is more illuminated
at the end than in the beginning. The film opens with the parson star-
ing into the sunlight as firmament hazes shadow upon his face, and as
he invites the light of the Lord, the parson is merely lit (see Fig. 4.3).
The film ends, however, with Tomas peering into electric bulbs as fila-
ment singes him in full light; as he declares the earth glorious, the rev-
erend positively shines (see Fig. 4.4). Ultimately, when he associates the
Creator with incandescence, Tomas is dimly lit, but when he calls crea-
tion luminous, he brightly radiates.
In addition to making Tomas brighter, this scene brightens his setting.
The film starts with the parson challenging congregants to seek the light
of the Lord in a church that permits light from the sun through a sliver
of window during an overcast day. At Frostnäs, however, Tomas calls the
assembly to see the earth’s glory in a shining sanctuary where electric
Fig. 4.3 (9:19, Winter Light, Bergman, 1962). Tomas during the opening
Eucharist
chandeliers allow radiance to fill the temple. Here, he seeks illumination

in a nineteenth-century church, where utilities accommodate the wir-
ing necessary for an artificial glow. Then the film ends as Tomas presses
congregants to see the world’s glory as they sit in a brilliantly lit sanc-
tuary that shines brightly, even at night. Scholars agree that he under-
goes some kind of evolution from the start of the film to its end. While
they disagree on his psychological change, the fact that his environment
changes seems indisputable. In the beginning, his place of worship relies
on the sun and falls into shadow, but in the end, it becomes capable of
human lighting and rises to radiance.
Beyond brightening Tomas’s setting, this final scene illuminates
his world. His perspective began before an altarpiece that depicted the
Crucifixion. This shadowy carving showed an impassible God holding
his suffering Son behind a pair of candles that were too small to illumi-
nate the room. This gloomy place affected Tomas’s perception, requiring
156 J. Ponder
Fig. 4.4 (1:21:00, Winter Light, Bergman, 1962). Tomas during the conclud-
ing Sanctus
him to wear glasses to see through the drear, and those lenses became
the same thing that cast shadow upon his face. Conversely, the film ends
before an altarscape of the Incarnation. This radiant sculpture presents
the Virgin cradling her child behind a pair of seven-armed candela-
bras that are long, elegant, and large enough to light the statues. This
enlightened room affects Tomas’s outlook as he removes his eyewear to
survey the sanctuary and lets the glow of the Lord’s house shine upon
his countenance. These changes in mise-en-scène show that Tomas has
moved from a world that concentrated on Christ’s death to one that
meditates on his birth, and this transition suggests that he has moved
from a worldview that fixated on how suffering pervades the earth to one
that focuses on how glory entered it.
In the end, this scene suggests Tomas’s final words are sincere. He
has witnessed a world of depravity, so scholars claim he is ironic when
he declares the earth glorious. However, Pastor Ericsson quotes a liturgy
that quotes a scripture that quotes Isaiah in ways that suggest otherwise.
This prophet witnessed suffering that makes Tomas’s discomfort pale in
comparison. Isaiah had seen horrible anguish and beheld unprecedented
complacency. Nevertheless, he still saw a particular vision of the Lord.
Despite his torment, Isaiah’s divine Merkabah insists on God’s holiness.
Although he experienced horror, the prophet’s seraphim proclaimed
glory. Therefore, a man who has been through worse than Tomas affirms
creation better than he does, and the fact that this is the source that he
quotes at the end of the film suggests his utterance can be genuine.
If this intertextual evidence is not enough, visual data imply that the
parson ends the film by extolling goodness. If this setting symbolizes a
character’s psychology, the new church suggests Tomas has found a
renewed mind that replaces a Lord whose light is found in suffering with
a Lord whose glory fills the world. If the radiance that illuminates him
externalizes his internal disposition, Tomas has evolved from the gloom
at Mittsunda to the luminescence of Frostnäs. If this brightness physi-
cally represents the reverend’s spiritual state, he moves from the former
church to the latter in ways that suggest he also moves toward a brighter
worldview. Tomas replaces his desire for direct and divine sunlight with
an appreciation of humanity’s electric bulbs, trading a Eucharist of suf-
fering for a Sanctus of celebration and supplanting his echo god with
the glorious world. Ultimately, elements—from the chandeliers to the
Madonna and from the Sanctus to Tomas’s lens-free eyes—suggest he
has adopted a belief that is sunny enough to shine even after sunset.
Suffering and Winter Light

Critics debate whether Winter Light promotes humanism or mysticism,
and they arrive at conclusions based on plot, cinematographic, theologi-
cal, and philosophical analyses. This chapter sought to interpret the film’s
ending by examining how the flesh of lighting represents the word of
various theodicies in different ways: smoky chiaroscuro undermines com-
munion, high-contrast lighting contradicts the parson’s counseling, and
nondiegetic sunshine criticizes him during the Märta dialogue. Swelling
rays expose Tomas’s selfishness during his conversation with Jonas, while
the winter haze reveals the emptiness of freedom when he guards the
suicide. The stark shadows extol Karin’s endurance while the setting
sun suggests Tomas’s growing perseverance as he marches to Frostnäs.
Candlelight exemplifies the fragile yet vital force of faith inside that
158 J. Ponder
cathedral, and the Double-X negatives that make this precarious flame
visible demonstrate the importance of human communities dedicated to
comforting those who suffer.
While these faint flickers may create the most reverent environment
for evening services, they might not prove the most effective way to
serve. Frövik demonstrates a model for confronting anguish when he
replaces the candlelight he prefers with the lamplight Tomas favors. He
surrenders his theology for empathy and his personal convictions for
interpersonal compassion. When the film concludes with high-key light-
ing beneath a singeing chandelier, Tomas seems sincere as he declares
that the Lord is holy and the whole earth is full of glory. Scholars claim
his words are ironic because of what he has endured, but this assumption
reveals an Enlightenment era theodicy at work, one that is utilitarian,
rational, and pragmatic, one that makes a religion of personal comfort
and negates the existence of God if the godly suffer. When Tomas quotes
Isaiah, he aligns himself with an ancient prophet who endured terri-
ble things. Regardless of whether the witness of the Merkabah retained
faith for himself despite what he suffered, he articulated a declaration of
hope for others to help them through suffering. When Tomas quotes
these words during Winter Light’s liturgical end, it seems to matter lit-
tle whether he personally believes they will help alleviate his pain. The
point is that he interpersonally communicates the words to help relieve
the pain of others.
Notes
1. Robin Wood, Ingmar Bergman, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 2012), 157.
2. Arthur Gibson, The Silence of God: Creative Response to the Films of
Ingmar Bergman (New York, N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1969), 104.
3. Marc Gervais, Ingmar Bergman: Magician and Prophet (Ithaca: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 1999), 80.
4. Charles B. Ketcham, The Influence of Existentialism on Ingmar Bergman
(Lewiston, Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 167.
5. Allen Lacy, “The Unbelieving Priest: Unamuno’s Saint Emmanuel the
Good, Martyr and Bergman’s Winter Light,” Literature Film Quarterly
10, no. 1 (1982), 55.
6. Philip Mosley, Ingmar Bergman: The Cinema as Mistress (Boston:
Marion Boyars, 1981), 113.
7. Augustine, On Order (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007), 1.8.25.
8. Augustine, Confessions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008),

8.12.29.
9. Peter Cowie, Antonioni, Bergman, Resnais (London: Tantivy Press,
1963), 117.
10. Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of The Metaphysic of Morals,
trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books,
1988), 70.1.
11. Marco Giovanelli, Reality and Negation—Kant’s Principle of
Anticipations of Perception: An Investigation of its Impact on the Post-
Kantian Debate (New York: Springer, 2010), 13.
12. Daniel Humphrey, Queer Bergman: Sexuality, Gender, and the European
Art Cinema (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 28.
13. Gottfried W. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom
of Man and the Origin of Evil, trans. E.M. Huggard (Chicago: Open
Court, 1998), 195.
14. Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology, trans. George
R. Montgomery (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1992), §28.
15. Paisley Livingston, Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1982), 252.
16. Søren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination: Judge for Yourself, ed. and
trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
17. Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, ed. and trans.
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
18. Jesse Kalin, The Films of Ingmar Bergman (New York: Cambridge
19. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1947), 27.
20. Sartre, 28.
21. Sartre, Nausea (New York: New Directions, 2007), 153.
22. Hubert I. Cohen, Ingmar Bergman: The Art of Confession (New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1993), 189.
23. Cohen, 189.
24. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and
R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967), 532–533.
25. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Vintage, 1974), 182.
26. Jörn Donner, The Personal Vision of Ingmar Bergman, trans. Holger
Lundbergh (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1964), 222.
27. Vilgot Sjöman, L136: Diary with Ingmar Bergman, trans. Alan Blair (Ann
Arbor, M.I.: Karoma Publishers, 1978), 88.
160 J. Ponder
28. Birgitta Ingemanson, “The Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman:

Personifications and Olfactory Detail,” Literature Film Quarterly 12.1
(1984): 26–33, 29.
29. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: Vol. III/3 The Doctrine of Creation, trans.
G. W. Bromiley and R. J. Ehrlich (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark,
1960), 50.2.
30. John Simon, Ingmar Bergman Directs (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1972), 143.
31. Stanley Hauerwas, Naming the Silences: God, Medicine, and the Problem of
Suffering (Grand Rapids, MI.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990), 49.
32. Simon, 205.
33. Sjöman, 153.
34. Sjöman, 167.
35. Hauerwas, 41.
36. Sjöman, 32.
37. Wood, Ingmar, 144.
38. Hauerwas, 80.
39. William Alexander, “Devils in the Cathedral: Bergman’s Trilogy,” Cinema
Journal 13.2 (Spring 1974), 27.
40. Hauerwas, 56.
41. Hauerwas, 56.
42. Through a Glass Darkly, directed by Ingmar Bergman (1961; New York,
NY: Criterion Collection, 2004), DVD.
43. Brother DePaul, “Bergman and Strindberg: Two Philosophies of
Suffering,” College English 26.8 (May 1965), 629.
44. Gervais, 80.
45. Gervais, 80.
CHAPTER 5
“No One Must Know of This”: Close-up

and Heresy in Luis Buñuel’s The Milky Way
Two blind men (Marius Laurey and Paul Pavel) stumble through the
woods, stabbing brush with white canes. Casting their heads from side to
side, they zero in on some distant sound. Approaching the camera, they
dart opaque irises. Pressing into a forest, they stagger toward Jesus, and
one man falls to his knees, crying, “Have mercy on us, son of David.”
Christ (Bernard Verley) spits into their eyes. When the blind men declare
that they can see, he replies, “No one must know of this” and leads his
disciples through the reeds. Their marching feet leap a trench, but when
the blind men reach its edge, their canes still test the ground. One pair
of feet discovers the limits of the furrow and crosses, but the other finds
it daunting and stays as the camera holds on the swaying grass.
This scene concludes Luis Buñuel’s The Milky Way, a 1969 film that
follows two pilgrims as they travel the Way of St. James to the Cathedral
of Santiago de Compostela. This journey begins in the French country-
side as Pierre (Paul Frankeur) and Jean (Laurent Terzieff) meet a caped
man (Alain Cuny) who commands them to impregnate a prostitute.
Confused by the instruction, they wander on until they encounter an
inn where a priest and an officer debate transubstantiation before order-
lies from a psychiatric ward haul the priest away. As Pierre and Jean find
shelter for the night, they stumble upon a goatherd who invites them to
attend a secret ritual. The pilgrims decline the offer, but the camera fol-
lows him to a sect of Priscillians conducting a ceremony that culminates
in an orgy.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58556-7_5
162 J. Ponder
The next day, the pair of travelers happens upon a restaurant where
the staff debates the dual nature of Christ. Shortly thereafter, Pierre and
Jean watch the students of a boarding school recite doctrine and declare
certain heresies anathema. Exhausted by their journey, the pilgrims try
hitchhiking, but when a car ignores their request and races by, Jean
hopes the driver breaks his neck just moments before the car careens off
the road. The men inspect the crash only to find the dead driver and a
mysterious figure (Pierre Clémenti), who claims to have entered the car
the second Jean cursed the motorist. While they are still trying to make
sense of these events, the vagabonds encounter a church where nuns
practice crucifixion. Horrified by this asceticism, a Jesuit priest (Georges
Marchal) challenges the Jansenist count (Jean Piat) who sponsors the
convent to a duel and asks Jean and Pierre to serve as their seconds while
the swordsmen debate free will and predestination before strolling off as
friends.
Once the pilgrims cross the border into Spain, they agree to watch a
donkey for a pair of men named François and Rodolphe, who infiltrate a
village to witness a bishop burn the corpse of his predecessor for hereti-
cal writings. Outraged, the two denounce the church official’s orthodoxy
and are chased by soldiers into the woods, where they dress in stolen
clothes. As they stroll through the forest, François finds a rosary in his
pocket and shoots it into pieces, but that night, the Virgin Mary appears
and returns it to him intact. While the men warm themselves by a fire, a
priest compares their miraculous encounter with many others in which
the Virgin appears to people in their time of need.
Tired from their retreat and calmed by these stories, François and
Rodolphe each decide to take a room for the night. As the innkeeper
shows them to their chambers, he instructs them not to open the door
for anyone, no matter how persistent he may be. As François gets into
bed, he discovers a woman already lying in the bed next to his own.
When the couple begins to flirt, the priest from the fireside knocks on
the bedroom door. Following instructions, the pair deny him entry, so
he starts talking to them from the hallway as he details the mystery of
Mary’s perpetual virginity. Time and again, he breaks from his explana-
tion and asks them to let him in, but each time they reject his request.
Finally, the priest gives up but not before dropping a saber on the floor
and picking up the deadly weapon, which he had been hiding beneath
his cassock all along.
5 “NO ONE MUST KNOW OF THIS”: CLOSE-UP AND HERESY … 163
The next morning, the camera opens again on Jean and Pierre as they
approach their final destination, but before they can finally enter the
Santiago de Compostela, a prostitute tells them that the church is closed.
Seeing they are dejected, she asks them to follow her into the bushes and
impregnate her, effectively fulfilling the prophecy that the caped man
declared at the beginning of the film. As they scurry into the woods, the
camera follows them before veering off to focus on the two blind men
as they emerge from the trees. It is in this scene that they confront Jesus
and ask to be healed. After Christ spits in their eyes, they claim that they
can see, but as they walk into the horizon, they still rely on their canes.
This plot chronicles the events that take place as a pair of pilgrims
seeks a church, but what unfolds throughout this story is a strange jour-
ney through Christian history. The travelers encounter waiters discussing
the dual nature of Christ, exhumed bishops who have denied the Trinity,
and insane priests who debate transubstantiation. A Jesuit priest duels
with a Jansenist aristocrat, Priscillianists gather for an orgy, and the devil
listens to the radio. Weaving these disparate parts into a bizarre whole,
the film’s story diverges from its plot to follow the fantastic wherever it
leads. According to Francisco Aranda, The Milky Way discards the con-
straints of narrative film to open “a speculative, essayist cinema,” and the
theme that this movie explores is doctrine across the ages.1 Instead of
following protagonists down a causal chain of events toward a concrete
goal, it uses episodes to explore the concept of dogma across millennia.
In this structure, the Marquis de Sade can appear alongside the Virgin
Mary as spatiotemporal logic fades to let the film interrogate different
moments from centuries of Christianity in unique ways.
Because this religious exploration concentrates on heresy, scholars
have interpreted The Milky Way through a theological lens. Among those
who have done so, some claim the film endorses unorthodox beliefs.
For example, John Baxter claims La Voie lactée denigrates the church
by depicting it as a petty institution embroiled in self-righteous bicker-
ing. According to him, the film levies withering criticism by threading
together “2000 years of self-delusion, self-deception, nit-picking and
hair-splitting.”2 In addition to criticizing the orthodox, the film seems
to praise dissenters. Baxter argues that, while the religious seem esoteric
and myopic, “heretics in general blaze as beacons of logic in a fog of
sophistry.”3 If this is the case, the film constructs an illogical story world
to applaud the logic of those who are alien to it, disparaging the religious
164 J. Ponder
for their violent bigotry and praising contrarians for their rebellious
courage.
While some claim The Milky Way honors heresy, others argue that it
endorses orthodoxy. Despite the film’s anticlerical moments, the church
received the film well and even went so far as to defend its controver-
sial material. When Italian censors banned the movie, Rome stepped in
to counter the verdict, and even Franco’s regime allowed the film to
show in Spain. Religious festivals across Europe invited La Voie lactée,
and U.S. organizations awarded Buñuel for his depiction of faith. Such
events embarrassed the auteur and led friends to accuse him of accepting
Vatican bribes.4 These consequences led Derek Malcolm to consider how
the film upholds Christianity, noting how carefully it represented theo-
logical issues and how rigorously it delineated heresies.5 The Milky Way
might rail against the church, but it also provides “an unprecedented
primer for Catholics.”6 And while the film’s surrealism seems nihilistic,
La Voie lactée explores religious issues with unprecedented faithfulness.
Some claim The Milky Way applauds heresy and others argue it
defends orthodoxy, but the film’s religious stance remains more elusive.
Ian Christie notes Buñuel reveled in the fact that his movie was so divi-
sive. As some insisted it attacked Christianity and others accused it of
propagating religion, the director realized his goal of being like Christ
who “has come, not to bring peace but a sword, setting everyone against
each other.”7 In part, the film’s theological stance seems ambiguous
because it provides an overwhelming amount of religious symbolism.
The sheer wealth of imagery undermines consistency because for every
loving depiction of Mary there is a scathing representation of a bishop,
and for every monk protesting the Inquisition there is a saber-carrying
priest foiling romance. The film permits contradictions without resolu-
tion in ways that lead Freddy Buache to note the movie frustrates view-
ers who might look for a polemic. According to him, the text chronicles
debates without taking a position, because it strives to assert a particular
truth less than show how all truth remains elusive.8 If this is the case, The
Milky Way evades definition and eludes clarity, invalidating both ortho-
doxy and heresy.
Scholars might disagree over the film’s theological position, but they
agree that La Voie lactée calls for careful interpretation in a few ways.
For starters, they note how appreciating a text that blurs the bounds of
time and space requires astute narrative analyses. Virginia Higginbotham
claims this much when she notes the film utilizes a picaresque structure
to raise thematic issues. She says The Milky Way uses this episodic style
so it can raise issues that conventional narrative could not, and the film
employs disjointed sequences to stage debates that wouldn’t occur in a
traditional scene. Bishops, theologians, philosophers, and priests spring
out of the blue to recite argumentative dialogue that would have no
place in typical cinema. Instead of relating one episode to the next, frag-
ments of dreams and fantasies and miracles and anachronisms allow a
spattering of incoherent conversations so “an interrelated dialectic” of
heresy can unfold.9 Replacing realism with surrealism, this structure flat-
tens characters into symbols that burst onto the stage to deliver stump
speeches before a two-dimensional opponent does the same. In the end,
the film almost begs for theological interpretations because it breaks with
storytelling conventions so explicitly to foreground religious issues so
heavily.
In addition to examining what characters say about religion on a nar-
rative level, it is important to consider what La Voie lactée suggests about
these statements on a cinematographic one. The film’s story turns peo-
ple into mouthpieces to amplify theological debates, but the camera casts
each of these dogmata in a different light. One of the most important
strategies in the film is the close-up as the camera breaks through the
unobtrusive conventions of plan américain to thrust viewers into tight
shots. According to Joan Mellen, “Close-ups are rarely used in Buñuel’s
films and are awarded only to the deserving.”10 She points out that
because the director reveres close-ups, he uses them “at great moments
of epiphany on the part of previously deluded characters.”11 The Milky
Way subjects many characters to rupture. Experience takes those who
claim to know the truth and crashes them into the realization that they
are wrong. Throughout the film, close-ups depict this humbling revela-
tion. Some characters embrace this flash of insight while others fear it,
but all wither beneath the scrutiny of tight shots that amplify every gri-
mace, wince, and smirk of those that are scrutinized in close-ups.
In addition to building on the narrative and cinematographic inter-
pretations that have come before, this chapter seeks to analyze The Milky
Way through a different theological lens. Most scholars have detailed
how different scenes relate to particular doctrines. For example, Oswaldo
Capriles pairs the mad priest with the dogma of transubstantiation or the
student protestors with the Council of Nice.12 Theological examinations
of the film survey what the movie suggests about Christology, Mariology,
or charisology in particular, but this chapter explores what La Voie lactée
166 J. Ponder
implies about heresy in general.13 As the film seems less about individual
heresies than heresy as a whole, the following work doesn’t examine how
the film represents any specific heresy as much as how it depicts heresy
overall. For example, instead of interpreting the duel between the Jesuit
and the Jansenist through what Pope Innocent X and the Bishop of Ypres
say about grace, this text explores the conflict between these doctrines
through what Karl Rahner says about the dialectical relationship between
conservatives and detractors. Rather than using the work of Origen,
Irenaeus, or Tertullian to interpret how the film represents any religious
issue, the following employs writers like these to consider what the movie
asserts about how faith communities form doctrines. In the end, this the-
ological interpretation of The Milky Way differs from others because they
examine heresies while this analysis explores heresiology.
Considering what the film’s camerawork suggests about assertions
from its characters, this chapter merges narrative, cinematographic, and
heresiological analyses. To acknowledge the theological complexity of
La Voie lactée, it concentrates on dialogue where characters make claims
about heresy, as well as close-ups where the camera makes suggestions
about those claims. A tight shot might magnify a character in ways that
endorse his argument, while a similar shot might exaggerate a figure
to criticize his position. More often than not, close-ups emphasize the
relationship between clerics and sectarians to characterize the rapport
between orthodoxy and heresy. Some tight shots depict that association
as antagonistic, and others portray that affiliation as collegial. Despite
their differences, all of these close-ups note the ways in which competing
belief systems rely on each other for self-definition. Whether to valorize
or satirize, applaud or scorn, the camera functions like an invisible char-
acter in the theological debate of visible characters, using close-ups to
whisper its opinion regarding the assertions of individuals as well as the
relationship between them.
This analysis reveals that The Milky Way mocks believers and apos-
tates alike. Orthodox believers uphold one faith while heretics promote
another, but both groups delude themselves when they think the truth
is knowable. Rather than exalt prevailing belief or its deviations, the film
concentrates less on what people believe than how they use doctrine.
Both the orthodox and the heretical use creeds to explain the world, but
La Voie lactée deploys faith to muddle preconceptions. The film does not
advocate a position on the mysteries and it does not make claims about
the nature of the Trinity, the duality of Christ, or the virginity of Mary.
Nor does it espouse a Docetist, Nestorian, or patripassianist worldview.

It propagates no canon because all dogmata attempt to clarify the mys-
teries, whereas The Milky Way aims to confuse them further. In this
film, one’s relationship to the church means nothing, and the difference
between orthodoxy and heresy connotes little. In one theological debate
after another, close-ups suggest the only apostasy is dispelling mystery
and the only salvation is confessing ignorance.
This chapter considers how The Milky Way constructs a religion of
mystery by asking questions and foregoing answers. Like Jesus spit-
ting into the blind men’s eyes during the film’s finale, it deploys fool-
ish things to confound the wise. To expose viewers to their blindness, it
challenges how audiences see religion by disrupting how they watch cin-
ema. Where most movies use tight shots to elucidate, this one uses them
to obscure. Most utilize the cinematographic embellishments to clarify
plot, but Buñuel unleashes them to defy narrative logic. Because this film
extols the virtues of mystery, it uses confusing camerawork to make itself
mysterious. Therefore, the following examines how The Milky Way uses
close-ups to deconstruct religious worldviews by deconstructing how
audiences view film.
“I’m Sure of It”: Origen and the Mad Priest

According to H.E.W. Turner, the “classical theory” regarding heresy
presumes that Christian officials “originally kept unsullied and undefiled
the teachings of our Lord and the tradition of the Apostles.”14 Assuming
that every believer is orthodox before becoming a heretic, this brand
of heresiology presupposed Christians knew the actual lessons of Jesus
before false teachers tainted the gospel. Such thinking led Origen to call
believers children of a pure mother and apostates the bastards who reject
her, but he never took into consideration that brothers in the faith could
have different parents.15 History shows multiple versions of Christianity
rose at the same time in different corners of the world, with each iso-
lated sect believing it followed sanctioned dogma. Although the gospel
emerged from a fog of heterodoxy, thinkers such as Origen thought her-
esy was evident, claiming, “All heretics at first are believers; then later
they swerve from the rule of faith.”16 Rather than acknowledge the ways
in which Christianity emerged over the centuries after many doctrines
competed for supremacy, this argument reflects the theological approach
that presumes orthodoxy precedes heresy.
168 J. Ponder
The Milky Way comments on this assumption in the scene focusing on

the mad priest. Church Fathers supposed coherent doctrine had reigned
before heresy muddled it, and this sequence depicts their narrative for
Christianity through the life of one Christian. After the caped man tells
Jean and Pierre to impregnate a prostitute, they approach an inn. Inside,
when a police officer (Claude Cerval) insists the body of Christ cannot
be contained in a piece of bread, the curé (François Maistre) dismisses
him for sounding like an Albigensian who doesn’t believe the host
becomes the body of Christ. When the innkeeper states that Christ is
contained in the host like hare in a pâté, the priest scolds him for echo-
ing the ideas of the Pateliers, and when Pierre asks what becomes of the
Christ after one swallows the host, the curé watches as the chief expels
the pilgrims. While the travelers are being ejected, their question lingers
until the priest declares, “I suddenly feel the Pateliers were right. It’s like
a revelation. I feel that the body of Christ is contained in the Host like
the hare in this pasty. I’m sure of it.” When the chief points out that
the curé has changed his beliefs, the latter hurls coffee at him. When an
ambulance arrives, orderlies explain the priest has a mental health con-
dition and haul him away. In this debate over communion, the curé
defends transubstantiation against everything from Calvinism to sterco-
ranism, and in this role, he holds official doctrine established during the
Fourth Council of the Lateran against controversies raised by the likes
of Amalarius of Metz. Like the scenario outlined by some theologians,
this character begins by standing on correct dogma before vagabonds
fool him into accepting false beliefs, devolving from clear orthodoxy to
clouded heresy.
While the classical theory explores how fringe groups fall away
from the church, Mark Polizzotti examines how this one character
moves away from dogma. He notes La Voie lactée orchestrates debates
between “the orthodox view and its heretical counterpart” to elucidate
Christian mysteries, and this particular scene stages a dialectic regard-
ing the Eucharist.17 The mad priest asserts orthodoxy before the chief,
innkeeper, and pilgrims corrupt him in a sequence that represents what
Polizzotti calls “two potent warring forces: the desire for understand-
ing and the yearning for mystery.”18 As long as the priest tolerates the
chief’s confusion, he can advocate for transubstantiation, but the second
that questions overwhelm him, he rejects faith for answers. According to
Polizzotti, The Milky Way presents a world in which the church defends
“its most implausible tenets” by admitting faith is inexplicable while
Fig. 5.1 (11:11, The Milky Way, Buñuel, 1969). Close-up on the mad priest
heretics attempt to “demystify, pierce the veil, like children questioning

some arbitrary parental structure until the exasperated parent sends them
to their room (or the rack).”19 People quiz the mad priest until he aban-
dons transubstantiation for consubstantiation and thoughtful dialogue
for scalding coffee. In line with what classical heresiologists claim, his
orthodoxy precedes his heresy, and this man of God stands confident in
his dogma before he adopts heresy.
With this chain of events, the narrative structure of this scene appears
to prove that heretics stumble into false doctrine after vagrants make
them lose their way, but the sequence’s close-ups suggest something
more complicated. The first shot implies that orthodoxy stems from
careful contemplation and deliberate meditation. The scene begins when
the camera closes in on the priest’s face as he stares into the distance
with weary eyes before blinking himself awake (see Fig. 5.1). Initiating
the scene in this way establishes the priest as the frame’s principal sub-
ject, but doing so by placing the camera so near him draws attention
to his faintest facial details. He slouches into reverie in a tight shot that
makes him seem wise, and he peers beyond reality with an introspective
look that makes him seem embattled. When he sighs and scowls before
a reverse shot captures the chief, editing implies the priest has been
170 J. Ponder
considering some draining debate with the officer. When the policeman
charges into a religious interrogation and the clergyman provides a quick
response to each inquiry, it appears the close-up caught the latter while
he was collecting thoughts, rehearsing canons, and shoring up doctrine.
Because it shows the priest cohering himself for interrogation, this close-
up suggests that, before erratic questions from heretics assail him, he
holds a coherent orthodoxy.
Although this close-up makes doctrine seem collected, a second
exposes its disjointedness. When the chief returns to the table, he claims
science proves Jesus’s miracles were natural phenomena, and the priest
replies, “Science is more than ever in harmony with scripture.” When the
policeman suspends his drink midair and peers at the priest for clarifi-
cation, the priest continues, “The whole world is Catholic now.” When
the officer asks, “What about the Muslims?” the priest laughs and says,
“Why, Muslims are Catholic.” When he persists, “And the Jews?” The
curé smirks, “Even more so.” These unsubstantiated assertions reveal the
priest is not the thoughtful man he seems to be, and his baseless procla-
mations lead the camera to cut to the officer’s reaction shot. A close-up
shows him slacken his jaw, dart his eyes, and gulp his sherry as he tries to
process what the priest says. The officer trained in deciphering speech,
scrutinizing thoughts, and preparing for the unexpected still hangs his
confused mouth to catch his breath, snaps his sight to evade the priest,
and rushes alcohol to calm his nerves. The priest’s argument is confus-
ing enough to confound the unflappable chief, and the camera punctu-
ates this fact by cutting from a two-shot of their conversation to a tight
shot of the policeman at the precise moment he doubts the priest’s san-
ity. If the scene begins by magnifying the priest’s contemplative face as
he coheres his thoughts, this close-up on the chief’s confused expression
stresses how incoherent that thinking is.
After one tight shot makes him look contemplative and a second
shows how confused he becomes, a third exposes how scattered he
always was. Much of the priest’s catechism unfolds in medium close-ups
that film him as low as the chest. Such shots occur as he claims the host
becomes the body of Christ, but after Pierre asks what becomes of the
Eucharist after digestion, another kind of framing catches the priest’s
belated response. The camera draws close as he smiles until he snaps to
attention as the question takes hold and makes him believe the host is
both Christ and bread; this reaction also happens at the precise moment
a siren rises in the distance. This shot depicts the instant the stercorian
question causes the priest to adopt Patelierism, but it also shows the
second that the blaring alarm reminds the priest he belongs in a mental
institution. In a tight shot, he says he has received a prophetic revelation,
but moments later, he splashes coffee in psychotic retaliation. When the
orderlies grab him, he reveals his true temperament, a shrieking, snive-
ling, and trembling psychiatric patient. The innkeeper says, “He looks
so normal,” and the chief asks, “He’s a real priest?” but the tight shot in
which the priest adopts consubstantiation also constitutes the moment
he realizes he will return to his ward.
In these ways, this scene charts the progression from orthodoxy to
heresy, but it also problematizes the devolution scenario that some sug-
gest. The classical theory presumes doctrine precedes confusion, and
Origen presupposes that irrational blasphemies fall away from a coherent
faith. The mad priest scene seems to authenticate the assertion that her-
etics start as authentic Christians before degenerating into false teachers
by showing the case of one believer defending dogma until he sinks into
confusion. While narrative elements corroborate the assumption that
orthodoxy precedes heresy, a series of close-ups confound the presump-
tion that the antecedent of baffled paganism is unsullied Christianity.
Prudence, confusion, and lunacy appear in three tight shots that seem to
show how the priest falls from grace, but the final close-up shows how
confused the priest has become less than how confused he always was.
Contrary to “classical theory,” his decline into disorientation isn’t pre-
ceded by clear-minded adherence, and opposed to Origen, his descent
into befuddlement wasn’t predated by clarity. In The Milky Way, heresy
doesn’t drive the mad priest insane because he was already mad, and the
close-up that captures his revelation that the Pateliers were right also
depicts the moment he remembers that he is confused. This character
represents orthodoxy before puzzlement plunges him into heresy, but
these close-ups show the extent to which the doctrine he represents is
less coherent than the classical theory suggests because orthodoxy was
always as conflicted as he is.
“Thus, We Were Right”:

Irenaeus and the Priscillianists
While some theologians claim heresy stems from deterioration, others
argue it is the result of repetition. One of the strongest proponents of
such a view is Irenaeus. When Gnosticism threatened Christianity, this
172 J. Ponder
bishop of Lugdunum branded its teachers “false persons” and “evil

seducers” hell bent on deceiving converts.20 In Adversus Haereses, he
rejects the idea that believers accidentally err from the truth and insists
they purposefully “set the truth aside and bring in lying words.”21
According to Irenaeus, swindlers ensnare the simple by “imitating our
phraseology,” mimicking Christian expressions to trap the impression-
able and parroting religious vocabulary to destroy the weak.22 Arguing
that leaders imitate Christians and ape the gospel to brainwash followers,
Irenaeus pressed ecclesiastic officials to stop regarding heresy as a mis-
understanding that needed correction and to start viewing it as a threat
that required suppression before more and more people began repeating
dangerous doctrines.
The Milky Way represents this kind of heresy through imitation in a
sequence that features Priscillian. After Jean and Pierre leave the inn, they
set up camp in the woods. A goatherd in ancient robes invites them to
observe a secret ritual, but they stay by their fire before the camera leaves
them and follows the strange man. Deep in the forest, priests stand before
a crowd adorned in togas and tunics, explaining that Emperor Gratia has
made Priscillian a bishop again. After the restored cleric (Jean-Claude
Carrière) dons his miter, he declares, “Thus we were right” before con-
tending he teaches orthodoxy against the Pope’s heresy. He predicts
they will proclaim their truth in the light of day but begins by declaring
humanity is divine under cover of night. As different parishioners repeat
the tenets of their faith, one follower says God created the soul, another
states the soul is bound to the body, and a third proclaims the Demiurge
exists. When the bishop insists God couldn’t have created unclean bod-
ies, a disciple echoes that the body is a prison; when another states one
must humiliate the flesh with pleasure, a priest declares this degradation
reminds the soul that its true place is in heaven. After his pupils repeat his
doctrine, Priscillian blesses them with the sign of the cross before adher-
ents rush each other into the woods for an unbridled orgy.
In addition to showing how heresy convinces through repetition, this
scene notes how communities thrive from conformity. Baxter notes The
Milky Way advocates individualism, using ecclesiastical bickering “as a
metaphor for the enfeebled Franco regime” and using inquisitors to dis-
parage “Breton’s habit of purging anyone who defied him.”23 In these
ways, La Voie lactée uses settings, characters, and plot to blast the hegem-
ony of groups from fascists to surrealists. Valorizing individualists and
criticizing conformists, the film reproaches leaders who subjugate their
followers while reserving particular scrutiny for adherents who submit

to the mob. Few scenes question group compliance better than the one
where Priscillianists listen to diatribes without question, pledge secrecy
without reserve, and recite ideas that supplant individual speech. The
scene ends with the zealots dissolving into a bawdy mass, but they are
dehumanized long before this moment through the sermon that turns
them into puppets that echo their leader’s phraseology. In effect, these
Priscillianists illustrate what Irenaeus claims about early Christians, and
the bishop imitates orthodox phraseology until the naïve fall victim to
repetitions that hurdle them into the pagan spree.
While this collection of dialogue appears to condemn heretical teach-
ers for deceiving people, its close-ups do something more. At first, they
seem to echo claims that sectarian teachers corrupt their pupils, and the
first close-up of this scene shows a laureled woman leering at him as she
pampers her hair. While her face dominates the screen with an alluring
expression, her leader’s voice fills the soundtrack with pious declarations.
Offscreen, Priscillian declares, “The heretic is not I,” and the devotee
smiles in response with a close-up that magnifies the effect of his words.
He maintains that he defends the faith while the Pope spreads false-
hood, and the tight shot captures how this bishop impacts his students
in ways no other shot could. As she prepares for the ceremony where
the bishop will lead her into the woods, the camera magnifies her face as
one exploited by such teachers. Broadcasting the words of this deceiving
bishop over the shot of his deceived parishioner, this close-up denigrates
the heretical bishop by amplifying the visage of those he exploits.
This close-up suggests teachers dominate their disciples, but another
considers how heresy spreads without leaders. Priscillian initiates his ser-
mon in long shots across rows of trees that capture his congregation as a
whole, but soon editing begins to move the camera among that crowd to
see how his doctrine circulates among them. After the bishop’s offscreen
professions accompany the tight shot of the reveler, his words continue
as the camera pans over half-naked women preparing for debauchery.
He professes, “Our doctrine is the right one” as they brush their hair,
and he proclaims, “Let us give thanks unto the Lord” as they cover their
breasts. Juxtaposing these chaste words with these lascivious deeds, this
shot undermines the bishop’s teaching until the camera cuts back to him.
As his sermon ends, focus switches from him to a deacon, and this shift
shows how the leader’s theology trickles down from this authority fig-
ure to his right-hand man. As soon as the deacon begins preaching, the
174 J. Ponder
camera rushes in on him. Once the screen captures his face in close-up, he
declares the soul is “created by God and subject to the domination of the
stars.” As the camera starts to narrow in from the long shots reserved for
Priscillian to the tight one used for his helper, the scene begins to burrow
into this group’s doctrine, showing how it moves from bishop to priest.
After these close-ups depict leaders, a series of others concentrates
on their community. While noncanonical, these statements by Priscillian
and his deacon aren’t heretical. Interestingly, the dualist ideas that most
resemble Gnosticism and Manichaeism come neither from the bishop
nor his go-between, but from the Priscillianists themselves. The cam-
era closes in on a woman until she says, “This body is the work of the
devil.” A tight shot portrays another woman as she says, “The body must
be humiliated, scorned, forever submitted to the pleasures of the flesh.”
With close-ups on followers as they detail heresy, this sequence connects
these followers to each other. Priscillian doesn’t have to spread his doc-
trine because his lessons have already taken root. Once he imitates the
phraseology of the gospel long enough to deceive others, his devotees
repeat the lesson on his behalf. The bishop disappears from the scene,
and montage reserves close-ups for his disciples. As their magnified faces
bark creed, they influence each other. No longer does this teaching dis-
seminate from the top down because it spreads sideways, and these close-
ups connect believers, suggesting the extent to which heresy might start
with authoritative leaders but also spreads through persuasive followers.
Ultimately, the camera proxemics of the Priscillian scene complicate
Irenaeus’s assertions. Following characters as they recite their leader’s
beliefs, dialogue resonates with his claims that heresy spreads through
imitative phraseology. But when cinematography concentrates on these
followers, it does more than fixate on teachers. While Irenaeus focuses
on false clerics, this scene explores their communities. The camera never
magnifies Priscillian, saving scrutiny for one of the women he leads into
an orgy as well as a deacon who propagates the doctrine on his behalf.
Most importantly, a series of tight shots knit together a number of anon-
ymous characters. Amplifying them in this way, these shots give a face to
the followers who remain faceless in Irenaeus’s argument. While he con-
centrates on how to stop leaders such as these, this scene considers how
their leadership affects members. It notes the ways in which groups from
fascists to surrealists to Priscillianists might start with oppressive leaders
but continue through persuasive supporters. These close-ups examine
how heresy might deceive adherents but also requires their participation,
making them into coleaders within the collective that proliferates the
group’s beliefs. In the end, because these close-ups concentrate on fol-
lowers more than leaders, this scene differs from Irenaean theology in
that it emphasizes how entire communities play a role in developing
heresy.
“He Is Anathema”:
Bauer and the Institution Lamartine
Walter Bauer explores how political power has contested the theologi-
cal definitions of “orthodoxy” and “heresy.” He notes that early believ-
ers began to cluster into regional churches, and disparate groups stitched
together the different scraps of gospel they had inherited. Once authori-
ties formalized the bits of sermons they had memorized into creeds,
many sects cut off from other believers found themselves outside of the
doctrine, and many who had assumed their beliefs complied with all of
Christendom discovered they were heathens. Given this history, Bauer
concludes that “certain manifestations of Christian life that the authors
of the church renounce as ‘heresies’ originally had not been such at all,
but, at least here and there, were the only form of the new religion.”24
Because contextual factors changed dogma, Bauer points out that ortho-
doxy was never a stable identity from which heresy deviated. The his-
tory of creeds that formed the faith chronicles a process by which church
leaders developed what they believed according to what they did not,
and with each council, codification, and conference, certain beliefs began
to emerge by submerging others. While the classical theory assumes
orthodoxy precedes heresy, Bauer claims doctrine came into existence by
creating heresies to oppose.
The ways that orthodoxy defines itself through contrast appear in
The Milky Way during a scene where picnickers gather on the lawn to
hear children recite canons. After the camera follows the Priscillianists,
it returns to Jean and Pierre as they continue their trek. Along the way,
they stop to panhandle at a boarding school picnic where uniformed girls
quote different creeds to denounce certain beliefs before the crowd pro-
claims detractors anathema. After this performance, the camera breaks
with narrative causality by cutting to the Inquisition, where a tortured
man insists purgatory isn’t scriptural and says Jesus never instituted the
ceremony of confirmation. A council of monks sentences him to death.
When a young monk questions this carnage, his superior threatens him
176 J. Ponder
until he submits, ending a sequence of film that shows the orthodox

defining themselves against heretics. The scene with the students por-
trays how authorities formed the Christian community by anathematiz-
ing groups from polygamists to vegetarians. The picnickers reply with
unanimous agreement in ways that suggest these girls recite beliefs every-
one holds, but the fact that the students must cite a swath of edicts from
567’s Council of Braga to 1563’s Council of Trent shows the answers
that come so quickly to these modern believers took centuries to coa-
lesce. The Inquisition scene depicts how some of the faithful enforced
these canons through execution, and the supervisor who threatens to
add his subordinate to the millions killed shows how vehemently the
church delineated the limits of its faith. In these ways, this scene illus-
trates Bauer’s point, depicting Christianity as straightforward before sur-
veying its violent and contested past. Sampling the creeds developed at
councils and referencing the scores burned at stakes, this scene reveals
the orthodoxy that modern Christians take for granted actually required
millennia of heresy to define itself.
Many recognize how La Voie lactée uses such scenes to critique
authority. Robert Stam reviews how Buñuel’s films attack many patriar-
chal symbols, claiming, “God the Father, the Pope, the President, the
Generalissimo, the Pater Familias”—the auteur’s cinema criticizes them
all.25 Behind these particulars stands the general entity this métier com-
bats, and it is “the Law” Buñuel attacks in all its authoritative forms.26
According to Stam, “Buñuel offers a profound critique of the symbolic
structures of patriarchal thought, a critique at once political, economic,
cultural, religious and anthropological.”27 Such an appraisal occurs in
this Institution Lamartine sequence. A children’s play begins innocently
enough with pupils delivering recitations for an adoring crowd, but
editing suggests this delightful gathering is the consequence of terrible
torture. This chapter links each schoolgirl who memorizes anathematiza-
tions with the abbot who hands down executions in ways that show how
the Law of this monastic Father permeates modern Christianity. Stam
claims, “Buñuel brandishes the camera-eye in order to set the world on
fire”; this director does so in this scene by showing how the ashes of
burned heretics stain even something as innocent as a children’s recital.28
While these narrative elements show how the orthodoxy of today
stems from the past, cinematographic features do even more. For starters,
the series of close-ups on the students makes modern orthodoxy appear
deceptively innocent. In a long shot, the girls ascend the stage nervously
holding hands in a line of skirts, blouses, and ties. These opening shots
make them seem meek, but the scene progresses with tighter shots that
make them appear authoritarian. A medium close-up films a child as she
steps from the line to revile anyone who defends polygamy, and a second
shot holds on another who condemns those who question Mass before a
third shot depicts a student excommunicating anyone who claims “God’s
commandments are impossible to keep.” When a fourth student dooms
anyone who “holds that God loathes the newborn babe,” the screen pro-
vides the scene’s tightest shot and lowest angle in ways that make her
dominate the frame. With these close-ups, the students enlarge, invading
the screen more and more in a manner that makes them appear threaten-
ing. While the long shots made them look like nervous children, close-
ups transform them into towering dogmatists, and as each student calls
for anathematization, each close-up enlarges these innocent children until
the orthodoxy they recite seems tyrannical.
After close-ups show how the students detail doctrine, a tight shot
depicts how the young monk questions it. Once the schoolgirls have
relayed their canons, the camera cuts to the dungeon where tortur-
ers formed those beliefs. After the Council of Inquisitors sentences a
detractor to death and the monk questions the tribunal’s leader (Michel
Etcheverry), he moves from the background and transfers from a long
shot to a medium one. He bows to his superior, averts his eyes, and
admits that something troubles him. When invited to proceed, he con-
fesses that he wonders “if burning is not acting against the will of the
Holy Spirit.” He gains confidence and looks at his overseer, and the
camera portrays his growing confidence with a medium close-up that
enlarges his face. “Then those whose brothers have been burned will
burn others, and so on, each one believing in turn he possesses the
truth,” he says, breaking eye contact to stare into space as he forgets his
place and gets lost in thought. Finally, he turns his inquisitive eyes back
upon the inquisitor to ask, “Why these millions of deaths, then?” With
this line of questioning, this young monk represents the church history
that could have been, one that did not burn dissenters at the stake or
anathematize detractors on the Lamartine stage. Cinematography ampli-
fies his position as he challenges the claim that one can possess the truth
and he questions the violence people use to remove debate. While the
camera moves from his timid long shot to a bold close-up, camera prox-
emics appear to magnify the more peaceful approach to heresy that the
young monk espouses.
178 J. Ponder
Fig. 5.2 (46:13, The Milky Way, Buñuel, 1969). Close-up on the Inquisitor
Although this tight shot suggests a peaceful approach to heresy,

another advocates a violent one. When the student asks if burning her-
etics might be wrong, the inquisitor answers, “Heretics are punished
because of the acts of sedition they commit against public order.” With
this explanation, the leader admits he condemns his prisoner to death
not because the detractor rejects the idea of purgatory, confirmation, or
extreme unction but because he threatens the church. He kills the man
who questions these beliefs not to establish theological consistency in the
faith but to maintain political authority in the world. This position is pre-
carious enough that the inquisitor protects it with torture, blood, and
fire, and this power is so fragile that he must oppose all who threaten it.
Even when the young monk asks if the church should commit murder,
the superior sneers, “Do you realize what you are saying?” After his sub-
ordinate says, “I submit, Father,” bows, and retreats into the crowd, the
camera moves in on the inquisitor’s face until it appears in close-up still
seething at the monk who dared question him (see Fig. 5.2). The screen
holds on this face of brutal power until the sequence ends, and com-
pleting this chapter with this authoritarian image stresses how orthodoxy
defines itself by suppressing heresy.
These three close-ups illustrate how approaches to heresy have

evolved. The first shows schoolgirls proclaiming doctrine for a picnic
where the modern believers nibble chicken, sip wine, and anathematize
their foes. After the crowd declares their faith without the faintest whiff
of dissent, the camera cuts to the fetid dungeon where torturers forged
those beliefs. When the final frames close in on the inquisitor who tries
to torture his competitors, cinematography links the schoolgirls who
recite canons to the clerics who kill opponents. While some suggest
the gospel was a clear set of teachings that some distorted, Bauer notes
Christianity emerged as officials excommunicated and executed certain
groups. This history shows how orthodoxy constituted itself against her-
esy, and these close-ups show characters who define their beliefs in oppo-
sition to others. The schoolgirls require the inquisitor who needs the
young monk and the condemned man to discover what they believe, and
this violent contest between what becomes a canon and what becomes
anathema is the battle that defines orthodoxy.
“God Will Have Mercy on Us”:

Koester and the Angel of Death
Because the church so viciously enforced orthodoxy, some hope to
reconsider heresy. Officials like the inquisitor sent opponents to the
stake, but others embrace religious diversity. For example, Helmut
Koester notes authorities formed the New Testament by dismissing cer-
tain views, claiming, “The canon was the result of a deliberate attempt
to exclude certain voices from the early period of Christianity” includ-
ing “heretics.”29 Rather than cutting out multiple perspectives, Koester
claims, “It is the responsibility of the New Testament scholar to help
these voices to be heard again.”30 Church Fathers called the unorthodox
dangerous, but contemporary thinkers simply call them different. Instead
of condemning heresy, these scholars embrace heterodoxy, listening
to opponents rather than burning them alive. While early leaders tried
to stamp out dissent, modern scholars seek to recover it so they might
deepen orthodoxy.
This inclusive approach appears in The Milky Way during “A Worker
from Below.” In this chapter, Jean and Pierre leave the picnic to walk
a country road and end up trying to hitch a ride. When a driver races
past, Jean hopes the motorist will break his neck, and, moments later, the
180 J. Ponder
vehicle crashes. The pilgrims approach the flaming wreck to find a body
sprawled across the driver’s seat, but they also discover an unscathed
passenger. This mysterious rider calls himself a worker from below, and
the scene suggests he is Satan. This figure tunes the radio to a reading
from Father Luis de Granada and translates the sermon on the horrors of
hell. After echoing the friar’s dooming words, the rider concludes, “But
I believe we shall be saved one day. On Judgment Day, God will have
mercy on us.” With this statement, the devil espouses a kind of plural-
ism that counters most of Christian history. The venerable Dominican on
the airwaves damns those who dissent, but this worker on the roadside
promises salvation to all. The conservative voice on the radio condemns
nonconformists, but Satan claims heaven for everyone. While alluding to
the particularism that reserves salvation for the orthodox, this scene con-
centrates on the universalism that leaves room in paradise for pagans. As
Koester challenges scholars to recover the voices of heretics, this charac-
ter asserts that many judged as heretical will be declared righteous on the
Day of the Lord.
Raymond Durgnat explores how this scene promotes inclusion by
contrasting the worker and the radio. He claims La Voie lactée derides
Christianity but also chides any belief that claims to have the truth. The
film complicates all ideology by flooding scenes with opposing view-
points until it undermines “every attempt to explain the world.”31 Time
and again, The Milky Way has a character propagate one view before
another contradicts it, and Durgnat notes this contest happens when
the devil refutes the radio.32 In this scene, Satan voices salvific univer-
salism, but he also undermines all claims to righteousness. The broad-
cast divides saint from sinner and heaven from hell, but the worker from
below rejects this kind of exclusion. When he claims redemption for all,
he asserts that the Lord will forgive people for not believing truths they
could never know. Furthermore, he suggests that if God invites every
soul into his kingdom, godly people should allow more views into their
doctrine. The Milky Way features characters convinced of their rectitude,
Durgnat notes that this is one instance of a figure suggesting the truth is
unknowable and heresy is forgivable.
During this scene, cinematography accentuates this theme through a
few close-ups. The first promotes inclusivity with a tight shot that makes
orthodoxy seem inhuman. In this moment, the camera holds on the
radio with the nearness that cinema normally reserves for faces. Because
this shot treats the transistor with human intimacy, this appliance
becomes the visage for Father Luis whose words it conveys. The dial of
the radio transforms into a mouth, and its knobs morph into eyes. As
the sermon grows louder, the camera zooms tighter, and this camera
movement gives life to the inanimate machine. Nevertheless, the act of
granting human cinematography to a radio ends up foregrounding the
contraption’s inhumanity. No matter how much the camera zooms in on
this filmic subject, the radio remains a soulless object. Regardless of how
long the tight shot holds on this device, it will not smile or cry or blink
the way a moral agent would. As this close-up amplifies the fact that
this radio is inhuman, it magnifies the ways in which the ideas that the
radio relays are inhumane. Father Luis’s lecture focuses on damnation
and ignores the damned, describing hell without addressing the souls
that reside there. The sermon quotes a text from three centuries ago read
by an announcer that didn’t write it broadcast through a dead machine.
Because this close-up accentuates a nonhuman device that ensures this
condemner never faces the condemned, it also foregrounds how much
the heresiology it broadcasts is cold, detached, and mechanical.
This particular shot makes exclusion seem disconnected, but
another links orthodoxy with the pain it inflicts. The radio airs written
and prerecorded doctrine that removes dogma from the world that it
is designed to reach. What further detaches this argument about souls
from actual people is the fact that it broadcasts in Spanish to a French
audience. Two addressers, three centuries, and hundreds of miles
already divide this speech from its listeners, but now linguistic differ-
ences separate writer and recipient even more. To punctuate this chasm
between what de Granada says and what his audience hears, Satan trans-
lates this message for Jean and Pierre. As he converts words from one
tongue to another, the worker must also repeat his content, and as he
interprets castellano into français, the camera captures the ambiva-
lence this parroting causes. A tight shot holds on the devil’s face as he
states, “For beyond the last limits of life, there is no time to do pen-
ance.” This close-up depicts Satan with downcast eyes, a hanging head,
and clenched teeth that show the message causes human pain. Holding
on these deep sighs and welling tears, this shot evokes sympathy for the
translator and antipathy for his text. When the camera zooms in on the
preaching radio, it shows the appliance’s inhumanness, but when the
screen closes in on the translating face, it displays that figure’s humanity.
By personalizing the devil during this anguish, this close-up denigrates
the orthodoxy that pains him.
182 J. Ponder
The final close-up of this scene rejects exclusionism and expresses

universalism. After Satan says hell leaves no time for penance, he glares
into the car before reaching over its driver. A tight shot holds on a
medallion attached to the dash that portrays St. Christopher carrying
the child Jesus across a river. The Milky Way centers on Jean and Pierre’s
pilgrimage, and this emblem features the patron saint of travelers.
Devotees claim that praying to Reprobus protects voyagers, and all who
trust in this “Christ-bearer” will survive any journey. The fact that this
close-up of the medallion appears in the car of a dead man suggests this
charm didn’t work, so the devil takes the object, drops it in mud, and
treads it beneath the slough. After he mashes the saint into the muck,
the worker prophesies salvation for all. Believers claim Christopher inter-
cedes on behalf of the living, and the man who helped people across
rivers is supposed to help souls into paradise. When the devil discards
the saint’s medal, however, he suggests humans don’t need intercession
to enter glory. His words declare that God will have mercy on all, and
his actions destroy a talisman that garners grace for the faithful alone.
Satan’s dialogue proclaims deliverance for everyone, regardless of one’s
relationship to heresy, and this close-up on the medallion suggests
humans don’t need help to get to heaven. One tight shot amplifies how
appealing to orthodox saints does not work, and another shot privileges
the face that declares even heretics will find redemption. With this pair
of close-ups, this scene favors an inclusion that condemns no one and
accepts everyone.
In the end, this scene’s close-ups represent salvific universalism in pos-
itive ways. It disembodies the voice of orthodoxy and makes condem-
nation seem disconnected while it foregrounds the devil and makes his
forgiveness seem compassionate. The zooms on the radio amplify the
coldness of this machine in ways that magnify the inhumanness of its
message, but the close-up on the worker’s face humanizes him in a man-
ner that makes him more relatable. When a tight shot enlarges the St.
Christopher medallion just to show it being stomped into the mire, this
scene suggests his intercession is unnecessary. The sermon says there is a
place where there is no purpose for repentance, no room for penitence,
and no time for penance, but the worker from below suggests these acts
of redemption are unneeded. Father de Granada claims hell awaits sin-
ners, but this devil asserts there is no hell because God will forgive all.
The friar judges those that he thinks the Lord will doom on Judgment
Day, but Satan exonerates everyone he believes will find absolution upon
the end of time. Rejecting the idea that there are damnable beliefs and
fostering the conviction that there is no heresy, the worker from below
articulates a theology that embraces all ideas.
“God’s Ways Are Impenetrable”:

Rahner and the Duelists
Church Fathers sought to destroy heterodoxy for being different, while
modern scholars eliminate differences by making them orthodox, but
Karl Rahner claims the debate between heresy and orthodoxy maintains
unity. He achieves this task by noting that the apostate rejects the gos-
pel and abandons all “dialogue of assent and dissent with Christianity.”33
Conversely, the heretic challenges certain aspects of the religion while
retaining its central tenets, contending with officials while staying with
Christendom. Authorities deny their relationship, but dissidents insist
they remain brothers in Christ. According to Rahner, “Heresy is only
possible among brethren in the Spirit,” and this particular kind of reli-
gious dispute is “only possible when something absolutely common to
all in the religious sphere expressly unites them.”34 Heretics have trou-
bled the church so much because they are neither pagans nor apostates;
they insist that they are Christians but disagree with the version of faith
that the mighty endorse. Given the symbiotic nature of this disagree-
ment, Rahner redefines heresy as Christian debate that refines the faith.
The Milky Way represents this perspective in the “Duel” chapter that
depicts the figurative battle between heresy and orthodoxy through a
literal duel between swordsmen. The Jesuit priest accuses the Jansenist
count of housing Convulsionaries and fanatics who commit “sacri-
lege,” while the latter charges the former with cowardice and villainy.
Outraged, the men agree to a duel and ask Jean and Pierre to serve as
seconds, and the fencers parry and thrust their way through the battle,
sparring until wigs unravel and brows sweat. When the priest swings his
rapier, he also wields his words, declaring, “Grace does not always attain
the aim for which God grants it.” While he thrusts his blade, the count
stabs with doctrine, snarling, “The will is dominated by delectation.”
Although this conflict seems deadly, the lunges and remises prove insin-
cere as the foes sheath weapons and walk off together dusting each other
off, patting each other on the back and sharing a hearty laugh. Such an
ending suggests the extent to which the swordsmen used the battle to
exert themselves more than dominate the other. Depicting the duel as
184 J. Ponder
sharpening each fencer but leaving both intact, this scene resonates with
Rahner’s argument to suggest heresy produces a debate that profits all
debaters.
Higginbotham claims La Voie lactée shows how the relationship
between orthodoxy and heresy benefits both. She notes the film flour-
ishes in paradox and explores the contradictions that fragmented the
church without pining for unity.35 According to her, Buñuel shows how
the Scriptures respect and manipulate irrationality as much as any surreal-
ist text, and heresy becomes “a rich source of the incongruity, absurdity,
and humor which appeal to his surrealist sensibility.”36 Most schol-
ars argue The Milky Way focuses on these contradictions to denigrate
Christianity, but Higginbotham claims the film highlights them to cele-
brate faith. She claims Buñuel exposes discrepancies that would invalidate
religion less than he explores “an interrelated dialectic” between church
controversies.37 For example, the Jansenist-Jesuit duel allows the auteur
to explore debates over free will without favoring one viewpoint. He
portrays these characters swinging swords in a physical battle as violent
as their theological one, but when the pair walks off as friends, the film
refuses to make one victorious. Rather than privilege Jansenist heresy or
Jesuit orthodoxy, this scene juxtaposes conflicting ideas without resolv-
ing differences, though the men leave as friends all the same.
The “Duel” scene achieves these broad theological themes through
narrow cinematographic techniques. As suspense mounts and con-
flict grows, close-ups enlarge the faces of these swordsmen in ways that
heighten the fight between them. When these tight shots depict the clash
between heresy and orthodoxy, they also suggest a few things about the
character of religious debate. The first close-up makes official doctrine
seem like heresy’s passive victim. As the pair launches into battle, the
camera zeros in on the Jesuit’s face, and the shot cowers inches from
the visage of the priest who asserts orthodox theology. His face fills
the screen, inviting viewers to experience every wince as if it were their
own. Because tight shots cause this intimacy between audience and char-
acter, it seems as if this close-up encourages filmgoers to identify with
this Jesuit and his stance regarding free will. While these frames privilege
the face of the priest, they foreground the voice of the Jansenist count
who declares, “To be worthy or unworthy in the fallen state of nature,
man need not have free will exempt from necessity.” As sight and sound
juxtapose in this way, the face that dominates the screen cringes at the
sword thrust from his opponent as well as the claims from his foe. The
shot shows moments the Jesuit defends himself and hides those where he
attacks. This selective framing makes him seem innocent and makes the
offscreen adversary appear blameworthy. If this close-up makes the priest
seem faultless and urges viewers to identify with him, it also pushes audi-
ences to see the orthodoxy he represents as nothing more than a peaceful
belief system that fends off heresy’s violent attacks.
This shot helps portray the priest as a sympathetic victim, but another
shot sides with his counterpart. The camera leaps from the Jesuit to the
Jansenist in a second close-up as tight as the first. The frame draws near
enough to show beads of sweat and strands of hair in intimate detail,
giving the count his turn to look innocent. The screen that holds tight
on his aggrieved reactions also hides his egregious actions, portraying his
face as he responds to violence while veiling the attacks that his hand
commits. As the heretic receives his close-up, the orthodox foe gets his
chance to pontificate. The camera focuses on the Jansenist’s darting eyes,
but the soundtrack foregrounds the priest’s words as he says, “To be
worthy or not worthy in the fallen state of nature, man must be deliv-
ered of all necessity, absolute and even relative.” With cinematography
and offscreen dialogue that mirrors the first close-up, the Jansenist’s face
cringes at the lunges from his adversary and the claims from his antago-
nist. Mirroring this shot of the count with that of the priest, this scene
equates the two figures, but the tight shots also parallel Jansenism and
Jesuitism by placing these shots alongside each other. Receiving equal
treatment in conversation, these two close-ups reveal how much the
scene casts the duel between these figures as a level debate without favor-
ing either.
While these two close-ups equalize orthodoxy and heresy, a third pri-
oritizes mystery. Before the duel, these fencers ask Jean and Pierre to
judge the contest, but the pilgrims never pick a side. Instead of pre-
ferring one swordsman they drink wine; rather than backing a theol-
ogy, they undermine conclusions. The camera leaves the brawlers and
embraces the pilgrims, and this tight shot shifts focus from the for-
mer’s answers to the latter’s questions. Jean asks what free will means,
whether he can be free when the Lord knows his actions beforehand,
and why a good God would let someone choose evil, to which Pierre
shrugs, “God’s ways are impenetrable.” As this character verbally sub-
mits to the incomprehensible, the scene visually does the same. He hol-
sters his interpretive skills, slaps on a smile, and chuckles away answers as
he motions toward the duelers who have sheathed their swords, donned
186 J. Ponder
their caps, and walked away laughing. Close-ups may have concentrated
on the violent conflict between orthodoxy and heresy, but the tight shot
of these vagabonds shifts focus to the lighthearted drifter. The scene may
climax by amplifying the pained faces of theologians as they clash over
truth, but it concludes with the grinning face of the novice who doesn’t
need explanations.
Concluding in this manner, this scene depicts the relationship
between heresy and orthodoxy in unique ways. The first two close-ups
portray the rapport between Jansenism and Jesuitism as a violent one,
but the conflict is resolved as suddenly as it began because the skirmish
was always more lighthearted than it appeared. They locked blades, but
they adhered to the conventions of a duel without resorting to a melee.
Moving their battle to a safer place, procuring objective seconds, and
limiting themselves to the strategies of classical fencing, these foes cease
to be enraged nemeses. They have disagreements within the contest,
but they agree to its rules. Rahner claims the same applies to the conflict
between heresy and orthodoxy: These beliefs fight over theology, but
they agree on Christianity. Apostates sever ties with the faith, but her-
etics preserve the most important ones. Renouncers bombard enemies
from afar, but dissenters bring rapiers that were never designed to kill.
Rahner acknowledges the church’s violent history, but he maintains that
heresy can refine the faith more than destroy it. Such appears to be the
case with these duelers as close-ups show they duel without killing in
ways that improve both swordsmen before they lay down their weapons
to walk away friends. As iron sharpens iron and sword sharpens sword,
so one person sharpens another on the way to learning the unknowable,
and the close-ups in this scene from the Jesuit to the Jansenist to the
pilgrim foregrounds the extent to which heresy might produce healthy
debate.
“This Is Dogma, the Sole Truth”:

Brown and the Bishop
Harold O.J. Brown notes that the ancient world called heresy a “hor-
ribly negative power,” but modern thinkers regard many heretics as “the
truest and best imitators of Christ, no matter how far removed their doc-
trines might be from what he did and taught.”38 In an age that has seen
the horrors of autocratic rule, believers distrust institutions that perse-
cute others and side with the victims of oppression. Those who rebel are
called those who retain their conscience against soulless organizations,

and modern thinkers cease to regard heresy as dangerous, threatening,
or even negative. Instead, heretics are regarded as “the innovators, the
nonconformists, the protestors”—any group of outsiders whose rebel-
lion makes them seem more Christlike than the orthodox mob against
which they rebel.39 With this in mind, Brown suggests popular views cast
orthodoxy as the problem that heresy must solve.
This image of the heretic as a romantic rebel appears in The Milky Way
as well. After Jean and Pierre leave the duel, they come upon François
and Rodolphe (Daniel Pilon and Denis Manuel), a pair of men dressed
in seventeenth-century clothing who ask them to watch their donkey. As
soon as the pilgrims agree to do so, the camera leaves them and tracks
this new duo as they enter a village where soldiers hold the crowd at bay
and workers pry open a casket so that a bishop (Claudio Brook) can con-
demn the rotting corpse of his peer for a manuscript riddled with theo-
logical errors. He orders the coffin placed on a pyre and watches it go
up in flames, and when fire engulfs the corpse, the cleric turns upon
the living to declare, “This is dogma, the sole truth,” before outlining
Trinitarian orthodoxy. After detailing this doctrine, he threatens that the
church shall charge all dissidents with heresy, but these warnings provoke
Rodolphe who shouts, “God is one!” and cause François to insist the
Father died on the cross. Outraged, the bishop orders his soldiers after
them, but the duo outruns the mob, steals some clothes, and disappears
into the woods. Mustering the courage to declare their beliefs, summon-
ing the athleticism to elude a crowd, and rousing the shrewdness to van-
ish, these figures become heroically cunning. With nothing more than
words, they cut the self-righteous down to size, and through nothing
more than ingenuity and pluck, they dupe the entire flock. Glamorizing
heretics in this way, this scene exemplifies the modern thinking Brown
describes, a worldview where those who defy orthodoxy look like the
brave, brash, and blessed protectors of the truth.
While this scene portrays these heretics positively, it represents the
orthodox negatively. Gwynne Edwards surveys Spanish art and notes
how often images of decaying clergy appear. Citing works by Leal, Lorca,
and Dali, she claims Buñuel joins these artists to meditate on the corpses
of church officials. From L’Age d’or where the bishops at the rocks
become skeletons to this scene from La Voie lactée with the rotting cleric,
Edwards claims Buñuel films use deceased clergyman to represent a dead
church.40 With these moments that show religion putrefying, he parodies
188 J. Ponder
dogma’s inflexibility.41 In what Edwards calls some of the auteur’s most

“witty and hilarious situations,” corpses embody beliefs that have grown
so rigid they suffer rigor mortis, and the mind that clings stubbornly to
its assumptions becomes as stiff as a corpse.
This scene might use such a symbol to interrogate religion, but it
also uses close-ups to show how rebels subvert power. The camera pans
across bodies hanging from gallows and soldiers clearing the crowd
before the bishop’s procession emerges from his cathedral. Flanked by
monks and scribes draped in the emblems of his office, this luminary
blesses the throng. Ornamented in gold miter, cincture, and crosier, he
bears the objects that Rome confers on approved authorities. Therefore,
this dignitary moves through the mob as a representative of the church.
During this procession, the camera stands its ground, but the official
invades its space. Disregarding the tripod and ignoring viewers, he grows
closer until the screen fills with his pectoral cross. Made with expensive
metals and studded with precious stones, this piece of jewelry signifies
the bishop’s wealth. Restricted to the Pope, cardinals, archbishops, and
bishops, this pontifical vestment emblematizes this character’s prestige
in the church. As this tight shot magnifies this symbol of that organiza-
tion’s authority more than any part of the bishop’s body, it amplifies the
institution that this pectorale represents more than the man who wears
it. As this object grows larger and larger, violating space more and more,
it connotes the intrusive power of orthodoxy.
While this first close-up accentuates the might of the church, the
next scrutinizes the influence of this official. The bishop proclaims that
those in attendance loved the exhumed leader, believed his doctrine, and
spilled blood for him, but this speaker produces a ream of hidden writ-
ings that proved the dead man had fallen into heresy. After the bishop
orders the body burned, the camera holds tight and low on his sullen
face, and this shot enlarges the official as he declares, “This is dogma, the
sole truth. There is only one God, in three persons.” While this character
speaks these words in this shot, his face dominates the screen, and in this
instant, the embodiment of these views invades the viewer’s space. The
overseer overwhelms as he barks such forceful propaganda through such
intrusive camerawork. With these elements, this scene appears to submit
to the bishop’s words, and casting him as frighteningly large, this close-
up seems to acquiesce to the Trinitarian doctrine he espouses.
The bishop looms over the frame as he articulates his creed, but once
he has said his peace, other close-ups contradict him. When Rodolphe
declares, “God is one!” the camera cuts to him, and when François
alludes to Arianism, editing replies with another close-up of the bishop.
The other tight shots made him appear powerful, but this one makes
him seem powerless. In previous shots, he points at his followers, but
now he clutches his heart. The close-up of his cross displayed his author-
ity, but this reaction shot shows his control wither. When he articulated
consubstantialism, his face dominated the frame, but when a heretic chal-
lenges him, that supremacy crumbles. Therefore, these shots reveal pow-
er’s weakness, and these close-ups expose orthodoxy’s fragility. While the
powerful are too fainthearted to listen, heretics risk their lives to speak,
and the fact that these rebels strike fear in such a frightening man glam-
orizes their rebelliousness and glorifies their dissent.
Brown noted how Christians have changed their opinion of heresy
over millennia. For most of that time, believers thought the heretic was a
lone wolf who threatened the pack, but now some view him as a vision-
ary that protects the flock. While this assessment romanticizes those who
rebel, it mostly criticizes the authorities that suppress. This confidence in
protestors and distrust of leaders appears in La Voie lactée with a series
of close-ups that expose how frail orthodoxy is. The first overwhelms
the screen with symbols of the church’s power, the second floods the
frame with the ecclesiastical figure, and a third shows how anemic that
façade remains. By chipping away at the bishop’s authority, these close-
ups undermine his approach. When he uses gallows, pyres, and spears
to enforce doctrine, his command seems absolute, but when he wilts at
the slightest challenge, he reveals how delicate his dominance is. In these
ways, this scene concentrates on a moment where rebels dethrone ortho-
doxy, and The Milky Way appears to fall in line with modern thinking
that romanticizes heretics.
“This Absurd Belief in God”:

Tertullian and the Reader
While ancient believers demonize heresy and modern ones lionize het-
erodoxy, others take a more moderate approach. Church Fathers con-
demn what they call evil deceivers, but Tertullian merely scolds heretics
for being too curious. He applauds converts for chasing truth as per-
sistently as the woman looking for lost silver (Luke 15.8), the neigh-
bor knocking for bread (Luke 11.5–8), and the widow pursuing the
judge (Luke 18.1–8). Nevertheless, he praises these characters most for
190 J. Ponder
stopping their search when they found their coin, entered their door, or
received their audience. The fact that these people ended their explora-
tions leads Tertullian to warn that “there is a limit both to seeking, and to
knocking and to asking.”42 This caution treats heresy in epistemological
terms and argues less about doctrine than about the limits of knowledge.
Here, Tertullian doesn’t condemn heretics for harboring wrong beliefs
as much as he chastises them for wanting to know too much, and he
suggests their theological error lies not in worshiping false gods as much
as overestimating human understanding. He suggests heretics are those
who seek, knock, and ask because they assume they can attain truth with
one more coin, one more door, or one more trial. Conversely, Tertullian
implies the orthodox are those who confess that the mysteries remain
incomprehensible.
The Milky Way exposes these limits of knowledge in particular ways.
After Rodolphe and François elude the bishop’s soldiers, they discover
a rosary in a pocket of their stolen clothes and mock those who pray to
Mary before shooting it to pieces, but the Virgin appears to them and
returns the string of beads intact. Later that night, Rodolphe reflects on
this encounter until it brings him to tears, and he recalls the story before
confessing that such experiences defy understanding. A priest (Julien
Guiomar) joins them beside the fire and agrees with their assessment, still
discussing faith through logic, even going so far as to follow Rodolphe
to his room and discuss Mariology through the bedroom door while
the traveler lies in bed with a woman (Claude Jetter). After the priest
finally leaves the lovers alone, the camera drifts to another room, where
an unnamed reader denounces science, technology, and religion. With
these events, the scene posits three approaches to the spiritual: Rodolphe
experiences emotion, the priest exercises intellect, and the reader scorns
comprehension. Because this scene applauds the student’s wonder, mocks
the clergyman for rationalizing it, and sides with the bookworm for criti-
cizing human understanding, “The Virgin Mary” chapter resonates with
Tertullian. Like him, this scene questions the desire to know and encour-
ages believers to confess the limits of all understanding.
Given the extent to which The Milky Way critiques human compre-
hension, it comes as no surprise that scholars have explored this theme.
For example, Carlos Fuentes notes how The Milky Way undoes many
forms of intellectualism. He claims this film respects “the mystery of
both the orthodox and the heretical, while denouncing the dogmatic
certitudes of both.”43 The “Virgin Mary” chapter portrays Rodolphe
positively because he doesn’t profess to understand what his experience

means, but it depicts the priest negatively because he insists he can
interpret a mystical encounter that he didn’t even have. According to
Fuentes, when the unnamed reader criticizes both the student’s inartic-
ulate emotionalism and the priest’s snooty logic, he “speaks for Buñuel
himself” and earns the film’s highest esteem. This character admits
he doesn’t fathom the empirical world of science or comprehend the
illogical realm of religion, and when he embraces “this absurd belief
in God,” he doesn’t endorse blind fideism as much as he admits sci-
ence cannot explain mysteries. If this character voices a message for the
film, The Milky Way suggests that one must recognize belief is absurd
and realize that one must, therefore, believe in the absurd that remains
impenetrable.
While Fuentes notes these broad themes, this scene articulates them
through precise close-ups. The first occurs while Rodolphe tries to make
sense of his encounter with the Virgin. Overwhelmed with emotion, he
begins to cry. When the priest notices his tears and asks if something
is wrong, Rodolphe waves it off, trying to keep his experience private,
but, eventually, he blurts out that Mary appeared to him. This moment
receives the chapter’s first close-up as he declares, “Faith doesn’t come
to us through reason, but through the heart.” Close enough to capture
penitent eyes, near enough to take in quivering lips, tight enough to
mediate on humbled tears, this shot foregrounds Rodolphe’s remorse.
The character that defied Trinitarianism with the Bishop now weeps in
silence. He knew the theological nuances of Monarchianism when he
faced the tips of spears but now feels the overwhelming emotion of reli-
gious experience when he meets the Virgin. Arrogant theologians of all
stripes populate this film, so the crying Rodolphe provides a stark con-
trast. Where the others spout interpersonal doctrine, he recounts his
personal experience. Honing in on him during this moment of unique
sincerity, this shot privileges this character over those who claim they
understand. Because this scene magnifies Rodolphe at the precise
moment he insists faith comes through the heart, close-up seems to rep-
resent his experientialism sympathetically.
These frames underscore the value of emotion, but others criticize the
brashness of intellect. After Rodolphe details his supernatural encounter,
the priest rationalizes it away, scoffing that miracles are “nothing to get
worked up about” because only fools lack the logic to believe them. The
clergyman intellectualizes faith even more when he infiltrates Rodolphe’s
192 J. Ponder
Fig. 5.3 (1:28:07, The Milky Way, Buñuel, 1969). Close-up on the priest who
declares, “We must believe dogma.”
bedroom and sits between him and his lover. The couple wants physical
pleasure from each other, but the priest gives intellectual arguments
about the Blessed Mother. The priest glares at them while he talks, until
reverse editing cuts to a shot of him glowering into the camera (see
Fig. 5.3). This reverse shot redirects his gaze from the lovers to the audi-
ence in time for him to insist that only heretics deny Mary’s perpetual
virginity. In one of the film’s tightest close-ups, this imposing person-
ality overtakes every festival, theater, and living room that exhibits The
Milky Way to declare, “We must believe dogma.” Because he espouses
doctrine during a shot that is invasive, this moment makes the ortho-
doxy he references seem intrusive. Through camera proxemics that
interfere with the viewing experience as much as a priest in a bedroom,
this character breaks the fourth wall to tell cinephiles what to believe.
When he does so, the priest argues about a woman who lived millennia
ago, but he remains oblivious to how he affects people in the present.
Because the priest articulates his theoretical beliefs through a tight shot
where he leers at filmgoers, this close-up makes his intellectualism seem
domineering.
These close-ups contrast Rodolphe’s emotions and the priest’s

intellect, but a third sets up another position. After the heated exchange
between the priest and Rodolphe, the screen cuts to a man reading as
the camera dollies in on his face. Each passing second of silence and each
shrinking inch of distance heightens anticipation for what this figure will
contribute to the discussion. When he enters the debate, his eyes flutter
from his page and fix on the distance until he sighs, “My hatred of sci-
ence and my loathing of technology will one day lead me to this absurd
belief in God.” The medium close-up punctuates the furrow in his brow
and the resignation on his lips, and this extraordinary cinematography
stresses how important these words are. And the meaningful message he
conveys promotes a faith that differs from the two characters that pre-
ceded him. Rodolphe takes an emotional experience from his life and
generalizes about how faith works in all lives, and the priest takes the
Sixth Ecumenical Council of 680 A.D. and makes inferences about the
truth of Mary’s virginity. Apart from Rodolphe’s experientialism and the
priest’s intellectualism, the reader advocates absurdism. He recognizes
the meaninglessness of institutions such as science and technology, but
he also finds meaning in the absurd, embracing religion not because it
provides answers but because it reminds him that answers remain unat-
tainable. Because it zeros in on this unnamed character solely so he can
discuss the irrational belief in God, close-up promotes the idea that one
must make a god of absurdity to remember truth will always lie beyond
human grasp.
These three close-ups compare and contrast the views of different
characters. A tight shot magnifies Rodolphe as he details his emotional
conversion, but a second amplifies the priest as he justifies his heady doc-
trine. Despite their differences, both make generalizations about faith.
When Rodolphe says, “Faith doesn’t come to us through reason, but
through the heart,” he takes a unique experience that happened to him
and applies it to all of “us,” suggesting that because faith came to him
through feelings, it couldn’t come to anyone through logic. When the
clergyman says, “We must believe dogma,” he takes the individual path
of training in that creed and requires it of all who comprise the “we,”
implying that everyone must submit their emotional experience to intel-
lectual doctrine. While these two positions are powerful, the scene privi-
leges the reader most. Because this chapter of the film grants him its final
word, close-up seems to favor his subjective approach to meaning. When
194 J. Ponder
he says, “My hatred of science and my loathing of technology will one

day lead me to this absurd belief in God,” he makes no claims about
where life will lead others. Rather than making assertions regarding how
faith comes to everyone or issuing imperatives concerning what each per-
son must do with dogma, this speaker concentrates on his hatred, loath-
ing, and belief. Besides confining himself to a discussion of his feelings
and faith, he seems comfortable with ambivalence. He doesn’t demand
Mary hand him a rosary before he converts or need intellectual certainty
before he embraces religion. This reader can believe in God and still
call that belief absurd, and he can submit to where “one day” will lead
him without holding irrefutable proof in the one hand or indisputable
doctrine in the other. Tertullian called heresy an intellectual overreach-
ing where the faithful took the little they did know and extrapolated on
things they never could. Conversely, he called the orthodox those who
sought, knocked, and asked but knew that no search, door, or question
could reveal the entire truth. According to Tertullian, those who are
faithful inquire enough to arrive at absurd belief but don’t go further to
insist on rationalizing such doctrine. The reader articulates this kind of
approach to orthodoxy because he suggests the faithful study the myster-
ies so they might remember that they can never understand them.
“No One Must Know of This”:

Žižek and the Blind Men
Slavoj Žižek examines the role of religion in the “post-ideological” age
and considers how Christianity might thrive in a world of simulacra. In
trying to separate the genuine from the fraudulent, he explores the rela-
tionship between heresy and orthodoxy. Doing so, he rejects the notion
that the latter are legitimate and the former are false. Instead of eval-
uating a creed according to the doctrines it espouses, Žižek assesses a
belief according to the faithfulness of its believers. He says the ortho-
dox are those who rise to prominence because they water down their
“founding radical message,” and he says heretics are those who suffer
oppression because they “reject this compromise, sticking to the origi-
nal message.”44 He concludes the one follows doctrine while the other
conforms, and he applies this supposition to the postmodern world. The
church leaders of yesteryear asserted truth claims, but the orthodoxy of
the twenty-first century insists there is no truth to claim. The former
used violence to silence detractors, but the latter uses cynicism to keep
them complacent. Rather than encouraging revolutionary risk based
on even flawed belief, it persuades people to save their deeds for some
undeniable truth that will never come. Heretics were radical because they
acted on beliefs despite impinging doubt; this commitment to a version
of truth defied dominant ideology. In an age where cynicism promotes
neutrality, Žižek applauds heretics insofar as they commit to beliefs with-
out needing to guarantee that they are true.
The Milky Way explores this kind of commitment in the final scene.
After the camera leaves François and Rodolphe, it returns to Jean and
Pierre as they approach the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela only to
meet a prostitute that tells them the church is closed before asking them
to give her a baby. They race off into the woods to fulfill the caped man’s
prophecy, but the screen stays with a pair of blind men who ask Christ
for healing. Considering their request, Jesus says, “According to your
faith be it done to you” and spits into their eyes, and the men declare
their vision has been restored. Christ leads his disciples into the distance,
and they march through the tall grass. The Christians leap a trench, but
the duo that joined them comes to a halt. They claimed to see, but they
still use their canes and lurch with surprise when they meet the crevice.
One of them musters the courage to cross the rift, but the other remains
at its edge. This conclusion suggests the first can see enough to cross but
the other stays blind on the brink in ways that resonate with Žižek’s take
on heresy. Like the Christians in his scenario, these men receive a mes-
sage from Christ and do different things with the Messiah’s report once
they face the world. Just as the orthodox dilute the gospel to suit their
surroundings while heretics stick to its radical foundation, one of these
blind men commits to what he has heard and crosses the ditch while the
other awaits guarantees as he dithers on the threshold.
This scene resonates with Žižek’s theories, but film scholars interpret
it according to different heresies. Edwards articulates the most popular
conclusion when she claims the film ends by promoting heresy because
it suggests Christ couldn’t heal the men. She notes The Milky Way ends
with a scene that meditates on “the harshness and the uncertainty associ-
ated with the Christian faith.”45 She claims Christ does cure the men of
their blindness but “fails to enlighten them in other ways,” and while
“their sight has been restored, they have no clear vision of the way
ahead.”46 With this data, Edwards concludes that in Buñuel’s film, the
196 J. Ponder
“subversive suggestion is, clearly, that Christianity is a faith in which the

blind leads the blind.”47 If this is the case, then La Voie lactée finishes
by mocking orthodoxy. If, as Edwards claims, this finale is subversive, it
is inflammatory insofar as it suggests religion creates blindness where it
should produce sight. In the end, this interpretation of this scene and
other similar analyses conclude that Buñuel is an atheistic satirist who
mocks all claims to truth with his biting cynicism.
Most scholars share this interpretation, but a few shots in the scene
suggest something else. The first of these shows the blind men as they
receive their message. They kneel before Jesus who asks what they want
from him. One begs for mercy, and Christ asks if they believe. When
the men confess they do, Jesus replies, “According to your faith be it
done to you.” He raises the petitioners to their feet and applies spit to
their eyes. Moments later, the camera rushes toward them as they blink
amazed eyes. One exclaims he can see the grass and trees while the other
declares he can see Jesus, and the moment pairs dialogue with cinema-
tography, using the close-up to magnify the miracle. As the men receive
their sight, the shot allows the audience to focus on their eyes; irises that
were once milky are now clear, with unconventional cinematography
used to accentuate the unusual moment. This close-up on the colored
eyes proves they have altered, and this change suggests they have fol-
lowed Jesus’s message that they will receive according to their faith.
Although this close-up shows the men undergoing a similar change,
a second shows they respond in different ways. After Jesus’s exchange
with the blind men, he leads his disciples through a field, and as they
trudge ahead, the camera closes in on their feet. This tight shot reduces
the Messiah to a pair of sandals so it might concentrate on the trench; the
camera zeros in on the trough to make it the main subject of the shot.
This fact suggests that the Christ who tells the blind men they are healed
becomes less important than the ditch that tests their faithfulness to that
message. As the camera holds on this moat, the canes of the healed tap
into the frame. These men claimed their vision was restored, but they
still rely on their sticks and stop at the trench. One remains faithful to
Christ’s healing, so he takes a leap into the unknown, but the other fails
Jesus’s word, so he stays on the side he understands. While this trench
casts these characters into uncertainty, the close-up on it does the same to
viewers. The tight shot of the men’s colored irises reveals that they were
changed, but this close-up on the trough hides information regarding
their status. Their eyes could have clouded back over in ways that prove
they are blind again, or their irises could fill with pigment and verify their
sight. A long shot could unveil the truth, but this close-up on the feet of
these men blinds viewers to whether their eyes can see.
After the men claim to be healed, Jesus warns his disciples, “No one
must know of this.” Peter asks why he won’t let them tell of his mira-
cles, and another notes that he has performed marvels before thousands.
Jesus sidesteps these requests for clarity by launching into confusing les-
sons. Where others want the comfort that comes from answers, he tells
them he hasn’t come to bring peace. When followers want the unity of
all believers that seems to validate their belief, Jesus promises he will pit
children against parents, set families against each other, and cause people
to find foes in their own houses. When one of the blind men asks the
son of David to explain what white and black look like, he implies that
he is healed but wants to understand what that healing means. When he
has the faith to ask for sight, Jesus gives it to him, but when he asks for
clarity, Christ denies this request. Instead, the Messiah simply places a
hand on the man’s shoulder and sighs with pity. Instead of providing the
answers the man seeks, Jesus suggests greater uncertainty lies ahead as
he goes on to declare that anyone who loves father and mother or son
and daughter more than him is not worthy of him. It is at this moment
of peak confusion that Jesus leads them all to the trench, and as they
approach this yawning chasm, he provides no instructions and offers no
guidance. Instead, he leaves them with the message he already gave and
grants them their own interpretation. Ending with one man crossing
the ditch and the other staying put, the scene suggests the point is not
whether the message is true as much as whether one commits to it.
All in all, this scene resonates with Žižek’s concept of heresy because
it extols commitment over truth claims. Most theologians evaluate
a creed based on its beliefs, but he does so according to the actions of
believers. Cynicism encourages people to wait for immaculate truth
before acting, but Žižek presses the postmodern subject to find a truth
worth acting upon, despite its many flaws. In this scene, the disciples
want Christ to explain, but he refuses. Without access to the truth, the
blind men respond in different ways. One accepts the message, although
he has his doubts. This believer says he can see people but confesses they
look like walking trees, and he proclaims a bird flew over but admits he
only knows this because he heard its wings. Despite his skepticism and
regardless of his doubt, he remains the one who commits to the mes-
sage enough to cross the trench. Conversely, the other man accepts
198 J. Ponder
his healing but also demands meaning. When he says he can see, he
also insists he can see Jesus. Professing to know the divine as it is, he
wants to hold more beneath his dissecting gaze. He commands Christ
to show him what colors mean so he can have his truth in black and
white. Although he insists he sees Jesus, and regardless of the fact that
he demands meaning, it is this man who gets stuck at the ditch, The one
who claims to know Christ is unable to cross the trough, but the one
who admits his vision is flawed is the one who can leap the void. In the
end, this sequence suggests heretics are those who make truth claims
about faith but fail to act upon them, while those who forego truth
claims to act faithfully might be the people who are truly orthodox.
Heresy and The Milky Way

Scholars disagree whether The Milky Way advocates heresy, but they
agree the film requires examinations of narrative, close-ups, and theol-
ogy. This chapter refined these explorations by focusing on the flesh of
close-ups that occur alongside the word of heresiology. Such a study
showed that tight shots criticize the confusion of orthodoxy, the corrup-
tion of heresy, and the violence of doctrine. At the same time, it revealed
that camera proxemics endorse inclusivity, theological contest, and rebel-
lious dissent. The scene with the reader uses close-ups to redefine the
faithful as those people who study the mysteries so they can remember
that they can never understand them. And the final scene ends with a
tight shot that hides whether Christ was truly divine to focus on whether
Christians truly believe. Surveying close-ups on the mad priest, the
Priscillianists, and the Institution Lamartine reveals how La Voie lactée
denigrates heretics and the orthodox alike when anyone claims to know
the truth. Examining tight shots on the devil, the fencers, and the bishop
shows how The Milky Way privileges those who challenge truth claims
with salvific universalism, collegial debate, or outright disagreement.
The most interesting moments in the film, however, occur when
it sidesteps the orthodoxy-heresy binary altogether to assert some-
thing about mystery. The scene at the inn doesn’t pit a heretic against
a church official like other episodes do. Instead, it contrasts emotion-
alism and intellectualism. Other characters argue about specific aspects
of doctrine, clashing over issues such as the Eucharist, free will, and the
Trinity. Unlike these figures, Rodolphe and the priest disagree, not over
an article of faith but over the nature of faith itself. One character claims
it comes through the heart, while the other says it arrives through the
head. The scene circumvents both these views and gives the last word
to the unnamed reader, who rejects all certainty to suggest that belief
comes when one confesses that faith comes through absurdity.
Here, the Christian becomes the blind man who commits to this
absurd belief in God and still musters the courage to leap the trench. All
he has to go on is the message that he heard, and all he has to follow are
the footsteps of those walking before. He might ask how wide the chasm
is, but Christ commands followers to hide the truth. Jesus says, “No one
must know of this,” because no one can comprehend it. Like the blind
men at the end of The Milky Way, believers see as through a glass, darkly.
But no one must know of this because none are required to know the
truth of their faith to be faithful to it.
Notes
1. J. Francisco Aranda, Luis Buñuel: A Critical Biography, trans. David
Robinson (London: Secker and Warburg, 1975), 230.
2. John Baxter, Buñuel (London: Fourth Estate, 1994), 290.
3. Baxter, 290.
4. Baxter, 291.
5. Derek Malcolm, “The Milky Way,” in The World of Luis Buñuel: Essays
and Criticism, ed. Joan Mellen (New York: Oxford University Press,
1978), 316.
6. Malcolm, 316.
7. Ian Christie, “Buñuel against ‘Buñuel’: Reading the Landscape of
Fanaticism in La Voie lactée,” in Luis Buñuel: New Readings, eds. Peter
William Evans and Isabel Santaolalla (London: British Film Institute,
2008), 129.
8. Freddy Buache, Luis Buñuel (Paris: La Cité, 1970), 165.
9. Virginia Higginbotham, Luis Buñuel (New York: Twayne Publishers,
1979), 160.
10. Joan Mellen, “An Overview of Buñuel’s Career,” in The World of Luis
Buñuel: Essays and Criticisms, ed. Joan Mellen (New York: Oxford
11. Mellen, 20.
12. Oswaldo Capriles, “The Milky Way,” in The World of Luis Buñuel, 309.
13. Mark Polizzotti, “The Milky Way: Easy Striders,” The Criterion Collection,
last modified August 20, 2007. http://www.criterion.com/current/
posts/611-the-milky-way-easy-striders.
200 J. Ponder
14. H.E.W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth: A Study in the Relations

between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Early Church (London: A.R.
Mowbray, 1954), 3.
15. Origen, quoted. in Turner, 3.
16. Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, trans. R.P. Lawson (Mahwah,
N.J.: Paulist Press, 1957), Cant. 2.2.
17. Polizzotti.
18. Polizzotti.
19. Polizzotti.
20. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, trans. Dominic J. Unger (New York, N.Y.:
Paulist Press, 1992), III 15.2.
21. Irenaeus, I, Preface I.
22. Irenaeus, III 15, 2.
23. Baxter, 288.
24. Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania: Fortress Press, 1971), xxii.
25. Robert Stam, “Hitchcock and Buñuel: Desire and the Law,” Studies in the
Literary Imagination 16.1 (Spring 1983), 27.
26. Stam, 27.
27. Stam, 27.
28. Stam, 27.
29. Helmut Koester, “Epilogue: Current Issues in New Testament
Scholarship,” in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of
Helmut Koester, ed. Birger A. Pearson (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1991), 472.
30. Koester, 472.
31. Raymond Durgnat, Luis Buñuel (Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1990), 150.
32. Durgnat, 150.
33. Karl Rahner, On Heresy (New York: Herder & Herder, 1964), 33.
34. Rahner, 10.
35. Higginbotham, 158.
38. Harold O.J. Brown, Heresies: The Image of Christ in the Mirror of Heresy
and Orthodoxy from the Apostles to the Present (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1984), 4.
39. Brown, 4.
40. L’Age d’or, directed by Luis Buñuel (1930; New York: Kino International,
2004), DVD; Edwards, Lorca, Buñuel, Dalí: Forbidden Pleasures and
Connected Lives (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 71.
41. Edwards, 226.
42. Tertullian, “Prosecution Speech Against the Heretics,” in De praescrip-

tione haereticorum, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, trans. A. Cleveland Coxe
(Buffalo, N.Y.: The Christian Literature Company, 1887), 11.
43. Carlos Fuentes, “The Milky Way: The Heretic’s Progress,” The Criterion
Collection, last modified August 20, 2007. http://www.criterion.com/
current/posts/610-the-milky-way-the-heretics-progress.
44. Slavoj Žižek, On Belief (New York: Routledge, 2004), 8.
45. Gwynne Edwards, A Companion to Luis Buñuel (Rochester, N.Y.: Tamesis
Books, 2005), 128.
46. Edwards, 128.
47. Edwards, 128.
CHAPTER 6
Conclusion: … And Dwelt Among Us
According to St. John, when the word was made flesh, God initiated
the plan of salvation and began to reconcile humanity unto himself, but
the Incarnation also holds symbolic meaning. It represents an instant of
paradox, that hour when dichotomies collapse, the minute when dual-
ity implodes, and the second when logos becomes sarx. While this scrip-
ture articulates the way of redemption for Christians, it offers a way of
interpretation. Considering how Christ represents The Father, one can
explore how the visible depicts the invisible in ways that even apply to
film studies, because if the physical can express the spiritual, the flesh of a
movie can reveal its word.
Following this conviction, The Word Was Made Film has explored how
style relates to content, considering the connection between sound and
grace, editing and miracles, lighting and suffering as well as close-ups
and heresy. To scrutinize narrow elements, each chapter focused on one
cinematic feature, and to examine broad implications, each concentrated
on a theological concept. This book linked close readings to broad con-
clusions by letting secondary sources direct the pairings it selected. For
example, scholarship on Diary of a Country Priest gravitates toward grace
and sound, so this book followed suit. Work on Ordet centers on edit-
ing and miracles, so The Word Was Made Film did the same. This book
also expounded on preexisting links that some have already suggested:
exploring the relationship between lighting and suffering in Winter Light
that others have implied and linking the association between close-ups
and orthodoxy in The Milky Way at which others have hinted. In the end,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58556-7_6
204 J. Ponder
to relate cinematic aspects and religious issues convincingly, this text con-
fined itself to a particular data set, taking the pairings others have begun
and fleshing them out.
While this book concentrates on these few films, its method could
apply to many others. Analyzing narrative, audiovisuals, and theology to
understand these movies might work for any that employ these compo-
nents. For example, the chapter on lighting and torment in Winter Light
could model a process for interpreting luminescence and peace in The
Tree of Life; the analysis of editing and miracles in Ordet demonstrates
how one might examine cutting and asceticism in Wise Blood. These
interpretations are invitations, and these studies welcome further applica-
tions. Considering sound and angels in Wings of Desire, pondering close-
ups and prophecy in Breaking the Waves, or contemplating film stock and
simony in Salesman—all are opportunities this writer couldn’t explore
within the scope of this project but others certainly could.
Beyond applying this analytical method to other films, one could
incorporate different cinematographic elements. The Word Was Made
Film concentrated on sound, editing, lighting, and close-ups but over-
looked other features. The filmic vocabulary contains many expressions
for which this book simply didn’t have room, but one could examine, for
example, what camera movement suggests about humility in The Flowers
of St. Francis or what angle implies about Christology in The Gospel
According to St. Matthew. Ultimately, this book analyzes certain films in
particular to show one way of interpreting film in general.
In addition to including more films and audiovisual elements, one
could incorporate greater diversity. To bring greater attention to art cin-
ema, I analyzed some of the most prominent auteurs, but concentrat-
ing on Bresson, Dreyer, Bergman, and Buñuel has its pitfalls. Many in
theology and film examine blockbusters in ways that privilege American
directors, but my focus on auteurs centralizes French, Danish, Swedish,
and Spanish filmmakers. Striving to break the hegemony of Hollywood,
The Word Was Made Film risks being Eurocentric, and while this might
be my consequence, it is not my intention. Past the shores of the United
States and beyond the borders of Europe lie nations whose auteurs have
produced works that make the word into film. One could delve into
Russian cinema to consider how Andrei Rublev relates focus and icons,
another might wade into Cuba’s Third Cinema to study how La última
cena links mise-en-scène and social justice, and a third may plunge into
the South Korean New Wave to investigate how Secret Sunshine pairs
6 CONCLUSION: … AND DWELT AMONG US 205
lighting and forgiveness. The same way theology and film could broaden
its focus beyond popular cinema, The Word Was Made Film can influence
the study of films beyond those produced in Europe.
One could even apply this heuristic method to other film genres and
other religions. For the sake of specificity, this project concentrated on
applying Christian thought to art films that overtly focus on Christian
themes, but close readings of audiovisuals alongside broad examina-
tions of theology might help interpret movies representing, for exam-
ple, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and secular humanism through the lens
of different theologies, philosophies, and theories. Furthermore, this
book zeroed in on art cinema instead of Hollywood movies because the
field of theology and film already provides so much scholarly attention
to popular films. Nevertheless, the flesh of Transformers, Dr. Strange,
Guardians of the Galaxy, or Batman v Superman might contain a word
as profound as the art cinema covered here.
After acknowledging how these narrow findings might apply to a
wider range of films, cinematographic elements, national cinemas, reli-
gions, and genres, it would be valuable to show how the four films actu-
ally covered here talk to each other. Each chapter examined Diary of a
Country Priest, Ordet, Winter Light, and The Milky Way in isolation, but
it is worth pointing out some common themes that run throughout all
of them. Granted, these films represent different issues, but they depict
those matters in similar ways.
For starters, these films criticize authoritarianism, disparaging charac-
ters that advocate the kind of anti-individualism that ancient theologians
espouse. In Ordet, Petersen resonates with Origen when he claims that
miracles are supposed to prove the righteousness of the miracle worker.
In The Milky Way, the Priscillianists prove Irenaeus’s claims that eccle-
siastical authorities should come down hard on heretics. And in Winter
Light, Tomas submits to Eucharistic ritual in ways that sap his strength.
In each of these instances, films denigrate the autocratic leadership that
these characters advocate: The tailor seems antagonistic, the pagans look
manipulative, and the parson appears lifeless. Rather than extol personal
marvels, heterodox communities, or the personal expression that would
enliven night service, these negative characters articulate beliefs that
seem oppressive because they privilege the authority of the Church at the
expense of the community. Because these movies represent such charac-
ters in negative ways, they disparage ancient doctrine’s authoritarianism.
206 J. Ponder
In addition to criticizing hierarchies, these films vilify isolation-

ism. The Word Was Made Film details how some characters resonate
with Enlightenment-era theologies, and these movies show figures
that romanticize independence in misguided ways. During the Age of
Enlightenment, philosophers rejected the oppressive doctrines that char-
acterized ancient doctrine and began constructing theologies rooted in
rationalism. Trying to break from premises that served the powerful in
unjust ways, these thinkers suggested that the subject could understand
its world through isolated reason. Replacing canons with syllogisms
and swapping scriptures with modi ponentes, such thinkers receive harsh
treatment in these films. In Ordet, Morten expresses views that resem-
ble those of Hume, but the empirical skepticism of both seems as sick as
a malcontent with rheumatism. In Winter Light, Ericsson voices opin-
ions that sound like those of Kant and Leibniz, but their moral impera-
tives and principles of sufficient reason seem unfeeling, selfish, and cold.
Advocating intellectual independence, these figures become solipsistic,
and while these characters might shrug off the oppression of authoritari-
anism, the texts in which they appear suggest that they fall to the tyranny
of selfishness.
Maligning isolationism, these films also condemn nihilism. Beyond
the curmudgeons propagating ancient doctrine or the automatons
promulgating Enlightenment theology are the Übermenschen advocat-
ing modern philosophy. These figures cast off the oppression of authori-
tarianism and confront the selfishness of individualism, but they still fall
into despair. Tomas’s Sartrean confessions drive Jonas to his death, his
Kierkegaardian self-crucifixion aggrandizes his pain at the expense of
others, and Dr. Delbende’s Camus philosophy leads him to suicide. In
these instances, characters discard the meaning that the Church offers
and seek to go it alone. Doing so, they overcome the strictures of
Christianity and the logic of rationalism, but they fail to surmount them-
selves. These characters aspire to high ideals, and their respective films
depict existentialism and absurdism as more liberating than ancient doc-
trine and more self-aware than Enlightenment theology. Nevertheless,
these figures fail to realize those ideals, and these doctors and parsons
seem useless to patients and parishioners. In these ways, these texts
suggest modern philosophy produces self-despair that fails to help the
community.
As they scrutinize authoritarianism, isolationism, and nihilism, these
films critique subjectivity altogether. Ancient doctrine, Enlightenment
theology, and modern philosophy have their differences, but they also
fall into similar traps. Whether advocating authoritarianism, individual-
ism, or nihilism, all these camps share certain assumptions about the self.
The Church Fathers articulate their understanding of a holy God, but
they concentrate on how the godly person might obey the Lord on his
own. Rationalists make arguments based on reason, but they assume the
subject can grasp the infinite through inference alone. Much of existen-
tialism focuses on the responsibility of the individual to realize oneself
in ways that imply one can do so in solitude. These characters stress the
solitary believer, the independent mind, or the lone hero, but these films
represent these characters in critical ways that question individuality.
Skeptical of subjectivity, these films promote intersubjectivity. Many
thinkers construct a coherent, rational, and independent subjectivity, but
these films foreground the fragmentation, incompleteness, and interde-
pendence that deconstruct it. While problematizing the self in this way
risks absolving the individual of responsibility to others, these films also
challenge solipsism by suggesting that one comes into being through
others. Each subject is incomplete, but the intersubjective network pro-
vides the relationships that turn parts into a fuller whole. Some discuss
grace as a gift God gives to the individual, but Diary of a Country Priest
considers how it is exchanged between individuals. Many concentrate
on how miracles heal a solitary person, but Ordet examines the ways in
which the marvel occurs between the restored person and the people
who witness her transformation. Others focus on how suffering causes
one to believe, doubt, or endure, but Winter Light addresses how tor-
ment drives one to faith communities dedicated to alleviating the mis-
ery of others. Many assert truth claims to combat heresy, but The Milky
Way encourages people to concentrate on commitments to others.
Earlier theologies fixated on the solitary subject, but these films confess
that the human can never know faith, the world, God, or the self inde-
pendently. In each of these works, the subject’s incompleteness becomes
providential because it is precisely this lack that compels characters
toward each other. In these films, fragmentation drives the hermit from
his cave to join the ranks of all believers, inherit the friendship of the
saints, and align with the love of all Christendom. Because they ques-
tion the possibility of subjectivity, these films highlight the potential of
intersubjectivity.
The intersubjectivity that runs through these films also characterizes
the cinematic institutions that make their meanings possible. András
208 J. Ponder
Bálint Kovács points out that when “we speak of ‘art films’ … we are
referring not to aesthetic qualities but to certain genres, film journals,
critics, groups of audiences—in short, an institutionalized film practice.”1
For him, to fully interpret an art film text, one must explore the social
contexts that encourage viewers to expect, experience, and exaggerate
certain cinematic features. Art cinema is not a distinct artistic mode as
much as an “institutionalized cinematic practice,” and meaning does not
reside in the individual movie or the solitary viewer as much as the net-
work of meaning that arises between films, articles, books, and filmgo-
ers.2 These films might contain the unique sound, editing, lighting, and
close-ups that I have examined, but they produce conferences, journals,
organizations, and societies devoted to foregrounding the uniqueness of
these features in these works.
The institutions dedicated to art cinema generate a culture. The
individual film features new, unique, and confusing styles that seem
meaningless on their own but become meaningful when placed within
different historical, social, and national traditions. For example, noise
in Diary of a Country Priest seems unfocused until scholars explain how
the soundtrack manipulates noise for particular purposes. Ordet seems
boring until publications explain that its slow editing was intentional.
Winter Light seems poorly lit until documentaries show how significant
certain lighting schemes are. And the sprawling narrative of The Milky
Way seems to be flawed until historians reveal how it fits into the pica-
resque genre. In these situations, films that experiment with esoteric
techniques press scholars to consult experts for understanding. Auteurs
that play with unintelligibility encourage critics to become coauthors in
the construction of meaning. The individual film that makes less sense on
its own relies on the institutionalized practices of interpretation. In this
form of communication, the meanings of one text depend on the wider
contexts that relate one auteur to dozens, one scholar to hundreds, and
one film to thousands.
To a certain extent, these films, institutions, and cultures also promote
intersubjective viewership because they compel the individual to find
meaning through others. Bordwell notes that the cliché that these films
“make you leave the theatre thinking, is not far from the mark: the ambi-
guity, the play of thematic interpretation, must not be halted at the film’s
close.”3 They extend the interpretive process beyond the self, and each
novel soundscape, groundbreaking cut, innovative chiaroscuro, or pio-
neering close-up drives the isolated viewer to interpretive communities.
Appreciating the elliptical style of Diary, the drawn-out takes of Ordet,

the unrealistic cinematography of Winter Light, and the surrealistic plot
of The Milky Way may require some guidance through the mysteries of
the Criterion Collection, La Nouvelle Vague, and Saussurean semiot-
ics. Grasping the nuances of this intricate discourse might necessitate
the secret order of film festivals, academic journals, and graduate pro-
grams devoted to that pursuit. In these communities, members share
the understanding and expectations, as well as the aesthetics and beliefs
of the faithful, and the film-viewing subject finds itself through other
filmgoers. Conveying meaning through inferences, allusions, and refer-
ences, these movies leave much unsaid, and given their ambiguity, one
relies on a discursive network of intersubjectivity to say the rest.
With this intersubjective style, the flesh of these films reveals that the
word dwells among us. Ancient doctrine, Enlightenment theology, and
modern philosophy argue as if the logos became flesh to abide with me
alone, but St. John points out that the Incarnation was not for the indi-
vidual. According to him, God inhabited the form of one human, but he
did so to dwell among all humanity. Similarly, these films do not simply
reside within the subjectivity of every single audience member to “get it”
upon first viewing because they dwell among the intersubjectivity that
arises between members of the community that makes meaning together
and through each other. These films fragment solitary perspective and
construct universes that rely on many perspectives, and watching these
films constitutes a kind of subjectivization that generates a type of filmic
subject. Ultimately, these films imply that reading the flesh can reveal the
word, but only through the intersubjective conversation one conducts
with others who dwell among us.
Notes
1. András Bálint Kovács, Screening Modernism: European Art Cinema,
1950–1980 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 21.
2. Ibid., 7.
3. David Bordwell, “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice.” Film
Criticism, 4.1 (1979): 56–64, 61.
Index
A Blackwell, Marilyn Johns, 22

Affron, Mirella Jona, 28, 64 Blade Runner, 7
Age d’or, L’, 187 Bond, Kirk, 98, 112
Alexander, William, 147, 160 Bordwell, David, 20, 21, 69, 112, 209
Almeida, Diane M., 22 Brant, Jonathon, 23
Andrei Rublev, 204 Breaking the Waves, 204
Aranda, J. Francisco, 199 Bresson, Robert, 4, 11, 18, 21, 23,
Aristarco, Guido, 69, 112 25, 64, 65
Augustine, 18, 19, 71, 72, 74, 112, Brother DePaul, 151, 160
119, 121, 124, 131, 158, 159 Browne, Nick, 57, 65
Ayfre, Amédée, 21, 50, 65 Brown, Harold O.J., 19, 186, 200
Buache, Freddy, 164, 199
Buñuel, Luis, 5, 8, 19, 22, 161,
B 199–201
Babe, 6, 143, 177 Burch, Noel, 80, 112
Badiou, Alain, 19, 98, 112
Barth, Karl, 137, 160
Batman vs. Superman, 205 C
Baudry, Jean-Louis, 21 Camus, Albert, 34, 64
Bauer, Walter, 19, 175, 200 Capriles, Oswaldo, 165, 199
Baxter, John, 163, 199 Carney, Raymond, 21, 69, 111
Bazin, André, 29, 64 Carpenter, James A., 65
Begin, Paul, 22 Christie, Ian, 22, 164, 199
Bergman, Ingmar, 5, 11, 19, 22, 23, Close-up, 2, 17, 19, 95, 97, 102, 107–
144, 158–160 111, 141, 142, 165, 169–171,
Bergom-Larson, Maria, 22 173, 174, 177, 178, 181, 182,
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 211

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58556-7
212 Index
184, 185, 188, 189, 191–193, Forrest Gump, 6

196, 197, 208 Frodon, Jean-Michel, 21
Cohen, Hubert I., 131, 159 Fuentes, Carlos, 190, 201
Connelly, Caryn, 22
Cotes, Paul, 23
Cowie, Peter, 120, 159 G
Cunneen, Joseph, 11, 23, 64 Gallagher, Michael Paul, 23
Gerlach, John, 32, 64
Gervais, Marc, 116, 158
D Gever, Martha, 21
Deacy, Christopher, 23 Gibson, Arthur, 11, 23, 116, 158
Diary of a Country Priest, 14–16, Giovanelli, Marco, 159
18, 25, 26, 28–31, 34, 35, 37, Gladiator, 7
38, 43, 50, 51, 53, 54, 57–59, Godard, Jean-Luc, 6
61–65, 203, 205, 207, 208 Godfather, The, 7
Donner, Jörn, 135, 159 Gospel According to St. Matthew, The,
Dreyer, Carl Theodor, 4, 18, 21, 67, 204
111, 112 Grafe, Frieda, 21
Dr. Strange, 205 Greenspun, Robert, 64
Durgnat, Raymond, 22, 29, 64, 180, Greyson, John, 21
200 Guardians of the Galaxy, 205
During, Lisabeth, 53, 65 Gutiérrez-Albilla, Julián Daniel, 22
Dyer, Richard, 21
H
E Hanlon, Lindley, 21
Editing, 2, 5, 10–12, 16–19, 29, 41, Harvey, Sylvia, 21
42, 68–77, 80–84, 86, 88–90, Hasenberg, Peter, 8, 23
93–108, 110, 169, 173, 176, Hauerwas, Stanley, 140, 160
189, 192, 203, 204, 208 Higginbotham, Virginia, 164, 199
Edwards, Gwynne, 22, 187, 201 Holloway, Ronald, 22, 23
Eichenberger, Ambros, 8, 23 Hume, David, 78, 112
Eisenstein, Sergei, 20 Humphrey, Daniel, 22, 122, 159
Estève, Michel, 29, 64 Hurley, Neil P., 22
E.T., 7
Evans, Peter Williams, 22, 199
I
Indiana, Gary, 21
F Ingemanson, Birgitta, 160
Fellini, Federico, 6 Irenaeus, 18, 19, 46, 50, 166,
Ferlita, Ernest, 22 171–174, 200, 205
Flowers of St. Francis, The, 204
Index 213
J Milky Way, The, 14, 17, 19, 20, 161,

Jansen, Cornelius, 37, 65 163–169, 171, 172, 175, 178–
Jewett, Robert, 22 180, 182–184, 187, 189–192,
Johnston, Robert K., 23 195, 198, 199, 201, 203, 205,
207–209
Milne, Tom, 11, 23, 69, 111
K Monty, Ib, 68, 111
Kalin, Jesse, 128, 159 Mosley, Philip, 118, 158
Kant, Immanuel, 121, 159 Mulvey, Laura, 21
Kawin, Bruce F., 22 Murphet, Julian, 92, 112
Kelman, Ken, 83, 112 My Night at Maud’s, 6
Ketcham, Charles B., 117, 158
Kierkegaard, Søren, 127, 159
Koester, Helmut, 19, 179, 200 N
Kovács, András Bálint, 207, 209 Nash, Mark, 21, 70, 112
Nayar, Sheila J., 23
Newton, Isaac, 86, 112
L Nietzsche, Friedrich, 134, 159
Lacan, Jacques, 42, 65
Lacy, Allen, 158
La Strada, 6 O
Leibniz, Gottfried W., 159 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 7
Lewis, C.S., 18, 91, 112 Ordet, 14–16, 18, 19, 67–72, 74, 75,
Lighting, 2, 9, 17, 19, 20, 51, 109, 77–81, 83–87, 89, 90, 94, 95,
118–121, 123, 124, 126–129, 97–101, 103–105, 108–110, 112,
132, 133, 135, 138, 142, 144, 203–209
147–149, 151, 154, 155, 157, Origen, 18, 19, 74, 75, 78, 94, 112,
158, 203–205, 208 166, 167, 171, 200, 205
Livingston, Paisley, 22, 125, 159 Ortiz, Gaye Williams, 23
Loughlin, Gerald, 7
Luft, Herbert G., 95, 112
Lund, Juliet, 22 P
Parmar, Pratibha, 21
Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 6
M Pelagius, 14, 18, 31, 33, 37, 64
MacCabe, Colin, 20 Perkins, Victor, 20
Malcolm, Derek, 164, 199 Perrin, Claude, 87, 112
Marsh, Clive, 23 Petric, Vladimir, 113
May, John R., 7, 22, 23 Pippolo, Tony, 21
Mellen, Joan, 165, 199 Plate, S. Brent, 22
Metz, Christian, 20, 21 Polizzotti, Mark, 168, 199
Milbank, John, 50, 65 Price, Brian, 21, 29, 64
214 Index
Q T
Quandt, James, 21, 30, 64, 65 Tertullian, 19, 166, 189, 190, 194,
201
Through a Glass Darkly, 23, 150, 160
R Tillich, Paul, 22, 23
Rahner, Karl, 19, 166, 183, 200 Transformers, 205
Reader, Keith, 30, 64, 65 Tree of Life, The, 204
Rohmer, Eric, 6 Truffaut, François, 6
Rossellini, Roberto, 6 Turner, H.E.W., 167, 200
S U
Salesman, 204 última cena, La, 204
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 131, 159
Saving Private Ryan, 7
Schrader, Paul, 10, 23, 29, 64, 79, W
112 Williams, Linda, 22
Shklovsky, Viktor, 20 Wings of Desire, 204
Simon, John, 138, 160 Winter Light, 14, 17, 19, 115–121,
Sison, Antonio D., 23 128, 130, 131, 135, 137, 140,
Sitney, P. Adams, 21, 103, 112, 113 142–144, 148, 150, 153–158,
Sjöman, Vilgot, 159 203–209
Sontag, Susan, 29, 64 Wise Blood, 204
Sound, 2, 4, 11, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, Wollen, Peter, 20
30–35, 38–45, 48, 49, 51, 52, Wood, Robin, 21, 75, 112, 116, 158
54–58, 61–63, 73, 74, 80, 85,
96, 101, 106, 110, 113, 132,
161, 184, 203, 204, 206, 208 Z
Spinoza, Baruch, 82, 112 Žižek, Slavoj, 19, 194, 201
Stam, Robert, 20, 176, 200
Star Wars, 6
Steene, Birgitta, 22

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Art Cinema and Theology

Art Cinema and

ISBN 978-3-319-58555-0 ISBN 978-3-319-58556-7 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948722

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover illustration: Igor Stevanovic/Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

Many thanks to the community of anonymous reviewers and editors who

1 Introduction: The Word was Made Film 1

2 “All Is Grace”: Sound and Grace in Robert

3 “Life. Yes. Life.”: Editing and Miracles in

4 “The Whole Earth Is Full of His Glory”: Lighting

5 “No One Must Know of This”: Close-up and

6 Conclusion: … And Dwelt Among Us 203

Fig. 3.1 (47:34, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). The camera

Fig. 5.1 (11:11, The Milky Way, Buñuel, 1969). Close-up on

Introduction: The Word was Made Film

© The Author(s) 2017 1

Many also apply these approaches to Ingmar Bergman. Studying

create conversation between Hollywood and Christianity via Gladiator,

most directly confront Christianity through a unique style. Nevertheless,

Bresson, Dreyer, Bergman, and Buñuel

While some cover multiple directors, others concentrate on single

predestinationism, or mystical art, but more convincing connections

things they could think. As different lines within an exchange

when films place characters in a debate, movies treat their opinions

In addition to narrative elements, such as dialogue, characterization,

extraordinarily long take. He rejects miracles in a minutes-long

The Word was Made Film

unconventional editing techniques to resurrect conventional ones. The

3. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16.3

13. Paisley Livingston, Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art (Ithaca:

Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); Robert K. Johnston, Reel Spirituality: Theology

“All Is Grace”: Sound and Grace in Robert

The young priest of Ambricourt (Claude Laydu) served cruel ­parishioners

© The Author(s) 2017 25

seeks to rectify this shortcoming by applying the conceptual history of

“Keep Order All Day Long”: Pelagius and Torcy

subordinates. The young priest tries to extend grace to Fabregars, but

children fail to explain communion. One after another, each prospective

“Face up to It”: Camus and Dr. Delbende

“Then Let That Kingdom Come!” Jansen

noise compelled the countess to detain Ambricourt longer than she

“I Was Tempted to…”: Lacan and Chantal

that builds up inside of her. With this statement, Chantal acknowledges

astonishing power for preservation. He claims the countess could enter

“I Filled It at the Pond”: Irenaeus and Séraphita

countess’s death, the canon’s investigation, and Chantal’s deceptiveness.

“Do You Have Some Secret?”: Milbank and Chantal

“I Wouldn’t Be in the Way”: Milbank and the

“All Is Grace”: Milbank and the Cross

As Milbank explores how the Son of Man’s divinity changes human

Throughout the film, sound communicates this subjectivity, but in

The first character involved in this sonic layering is Dufrety, and

Dufrety writes of grace’s power, and contradicting his Catholicism,

of a Country Priest’s use of voice-over in this final scene suggests grace

Grace and Diary of a Country Priest

21. Cornelius Jansen qtd. in Nigel Abercrombie, The Origins of Jansenism

“Life. Yes. Life.”: Editing and Miracles

Inger (Birgitte Federspiel) lies in the casket surrounded by mourners,

© The Author(s) 2017 67

analyzes it through a formal lens, and Mark Nash explores it using a

Fig. 3.1 (47:34, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). The camera

Fig. 5.1 (11:11, The Milky Way, Buñuel, 1969). Close-up on

Bresson, Dreyer, Bergman, and Buñuel

3. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16.3

13. Paisley Livingston, Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art (Ithaca:

“All Is Grace”: Sound and Grace in Robert

The young priest of Ambricourt (Claude Laydu) served cruel parishioners

“Keep Order All Day Long”: Pelagius and Torcy

“Face up to It”: Camus and Dr. Delbende

“I Was Tempted to…”: Lacan and Chantal

“I Filled It at the Pond”: Irenaeus and Séraphita

“Do You Have Some Secret?”: Milbank and Chantal

“I Wouldn’t Be in the Way”: Milbank and the

“All Is Grace”: Milbank and the Cross

Grace and Diary of a Country Priest

21. Cornelius Jansen qtd. in Nigel Abercrombie, The Origins of Jansenism

“Life. Yes. Life.”: Editing and Miracles

“Is It Not Wonderful?”: Origen and Petersen

“Then Miracles Do Not Happen”: Hume and Morten

“A Lot of Little Miracles Happen Secretly”:

“I Believe in Those Miracles Which My Science

Fig. 3.5 (1:27:00, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Morten exits screen left

Fig. 3.6 (1:27:25, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Morten enters screen right

“The Word that Can Bring the Dead Back to Life”:

“When I Say the Name of Jesus”:

“I Bid Thee Arise”: Badiou and the Audience

“Eternal and the Same”: Badiou and the Subject

“I Have Found Your Faith”: Badiou and Mikkel

Fig. 3.7 (2:01:47, Ordet, Dreyer, 1955). Johannes exits screen left

4. Guido Aristarco qtd. in Carl Theodor Dreyer, “Metaphysic of Ordet: A

“The Whole Earth Is Full of His Glory”:

“To Our Consolation and Bliss”: Augustine

“Life Must Go On”: Kant and the Perssons

“He Has to Show Up”: Leibniz and Märta

Fig. 4.1 (43:22, Winter Light, Bergman, 1962). Lights rise on Tomas

“That I Become a Clergyman”: Nietzsche and Karin

The Bells Are Ringing: Barth and Frostnäs

The Positivity of Double-X Negatives:

“Our Spirit of Reverence”: Hauerwas and Algot

“God’s Silence”: Lamentation and Algot

Fig. 4.2 (1:13:04, Winter Light, Bergman, 1962). Algot comforts Tomas by

“Holy Is the Lord”: Isaiah and the Congregation

Suffering and Winter Light

8. Augustine, Confessions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008),

28. Birgitta Ingemanson, “The Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman:

“No One Must Know of This”: Close-up

“I’m Sure of It”: Origen and the Mad Priest