Faithless

Faithless
by Liv Ullmann

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Movie Reviews of Faithless

Movie Review: Difficult But Extremely Rewarding
Summary: 5 Stars

The film begins with an old, retired film director named Bergman (Erland Josephson) who summons his muse in order to write a screenplay. At first invisible and reluctant to show herself, Bergman's muse eventually appears as Marianne (Lena Endre) his former wife. Marianne slowly discusses her previous marriage to a famous composer, Markus (Thomas Hanzon), and the subsequent events that resulted in her leaving him for his friend and artistic collaborator, David (Krister Hendriksson) who is also the younger Bergman. The conversation takes place over several days in Bergman's seaside house and assumes the form of flashbacks. The story is not a happy one, and exploring it is clearly a painful experience for Marianne, and for Bergman who for, perhaps the first time, is able to empathize with her and is able to view his own role from the perspective of detached wisdom and sorrow.

Faithless remains a penetrating and honest psychological exploration from start to finish and closely resembles Bergman's earlier films in style and temperament (although this one is directed by Liv Ullman). This film contains its share of difficulties, but if viewers, especially American viewers can get past them they will find it enormously rewarding. Some of the difficulties of this film are:

LENGTH
"Faithless is "142" minutes of largely dialog with subtitles. Even if you're into idea-oriented films, it takes a lot of commitment and stamina to pay close attention to this one.

STYLE
This film is almost like a cinematic play. The plot unfolds almost completely through dialog. While it has its share of symbols and devices, they are very restrained. There is no slick action, or special affects, and there are no obvious heroes or villains.

SUBTLETY
Bergman and Ullman are not trying to pound blunt ideas into our heads with obvious characters and a simple plot. Many of the ideas in this film are subtle and even paradoxical. It raises many disturbing questions and provides practically no obvious answers. One thing that might help is to think of this film as an exploration, or an important conversation that we get to overhear, but not as a product designed to gratify and amuse us (that's what "Star Wars" is for).

The powerful and rewarding thing about "Faithless" is that it relentlessly explores universal emotional and psychological truths that apply to all of us. Many of the terrible things we do in life have no concrete material or circumstantial justification but they do have a powerful emotional one that is almost impossible to explain. Marianne has no immediate justification for leaving Markus, who is a good husband and who pleases her in bed. Yet at the same time she feels no choice but to succumb to the emotional change that slowly and inexorably draws her to David. One day she simply sees him as a different person altogether, and her life takes on a drastic new momentum.

If you can accept the lengthy, conversational nature of this film and are not phased by the parts of it that may seem incomprehensible or alienating, you will recognize yourself in much of it. It is unlikely that the characters, all leading members of Swedish artistic circles, resemble any of us. But we will see bits of ourselves in their emotions, their actions, and in their struggle to explain the incompressible workings of the human soul. Stick it out and see it twice if you can. It's worth it.

Summary of Faithless