The Virgin Spring

Though much of it is predicated on an understanding of human weakness and tragic foreknowledge, Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1960) is nonetheless one of Bergman’s most spiritual films. Centered around a 14th-century Swedish fable where young Karin (Birgitta Pettersson), a spoiled but pure girl, is entrusted with bringing candles to church one afternoon, the serenity of the day soon gives way to rape and murder as Karin is first befriended but then tortured by wandering swineherds.

After pillaging Karin’s clothes and belongings, the men seek to lodge in a peasant town, and are welcomed by Karin’s parents, Töre (Max von Sydow) and Märeta (Birgitta Valberg), who only know that their daughter is missing. This shifting dynamic of alliances is fluid and it generates most of the tension in the film’s second half as Bergman contrasts the initial examination of innocence with a new examination of tragic vengeance.

However, the matter of a truly guilty party is not so pat. Problematizing the issue of guilt is Karin’s half-sister, who intoned a pagan curse on her that morning before Karin departed for church. Moreover, Töre all but mandated that his daughter deliver the candles as a form of penance for the previous night that she spent out dancing, allowing Bergman to posit that Karin’s (and, by extension, everyone’s) blind trust can lead to a tragic fate, but so can an overzealous idolatry.

Once the swineherds unknowingly reveal themselves by offering Karin’s clothing to her mother as trade for their food and lodging, Bergman probes his characters for vengeance. Märeta informs her husband, but now Töre must bear the weight of enacting retribution. Though he ultimately does kill each of the swineherds, with his wife’s sad blessing, Töre’s moral-conflict is largely internalized and subsumed until the end, when his emotions lead to a break-down and spiritual questioning, quoted below:

Töre: "You see it, God, you see it. The innocent child's death and my revenge. You allowed it. I don't understand you. Yet now I beg your forgiveness. I know no other way to be reconciled with my own hands. I know no other way to live."

Witness the physical collapse of Töre after the murders (beautifully handled by the veteran von Sydow), and contrast it against his newfound spirituality at the end, and you will behold a sight to marvel at. This realization is somber yet transcendent, and so is the final image of the film, where Karin’s parents find her body and lift it out of the makeshift burial that the swineherds gave her. This moment, which will not be spoiled here, is filled with such communal spirituality that Bergman transcends the morality fable that the material is based upon. It is a powerful moment, and does justice to a haunting, evocative film.

The Virgin Spring: 9.5/10