Rítdómur: Bergman's Virgin Spring
Yesterday, between finishing the set up of the Thor Heyerdahl exhibition and greeting the female students participating in our Lucia festival this year, I showed the Ingmar Bergmann film Virgin Spring, as part of my Viking film series. So it was a busy, long, and strange day. But the film has stuck with me (probably because I watched it 3 times this weekend) and I am still thinking about it. Ingmar Bergman felt it was far from his best film, and most critics seem to agree, but I do not wish to be so harsh. The rape scene is very oddly handled, vacillating between objectifying and sympathizing with the victim, but as the advocate we had on hand (to deal with any possibly trauma viewing such a film might inflict), the good thing is that the rape scene is in no way gratuitous. It is what the film is about, and how the people around it are affected by this act of violence, and that is in some ways very good. I chose to show the film however as a treatment of the Viking Age, or the early me