RIP Ingmar Bergman

Unless you call every death a tragedy, it's perhaps overstretching the word tragedy to apply it to the death of an 89-year old who died, presumably, peacefully at his beloved home. Certainly, it's unlikely (though not impossible) that we have been deprived of future Bergman masterpieces. (He does seem to be surprisingly spry on the bonus features for his most recent film SARABAND, however.)

But I was more than a bit sad when I went to bed and still sad now, because we've lost a giant, somebody who was absolutely and deeply respectful of the medium of film and working with it as a great artist. I remember my parents telling me once about how they saw most of the Bergman films in college and thereafter - it was just something people of a certain education level did, and part of the general cultural discourse. Now "foreign film", unless it's basically Hollywood film with subtitles (AMELIE, CROUCHING TIGER, etc.), is a subset of a grotto that's unlikely to penetrate the consciousness of anybody who's not already hip-deep and obsessed with it.

And I wonder if the death of Bergman is, symbolically, a death of taking film seriously, as anything more than entertainment.

I think I'm going to go watch WILD STRAWBERRIES.