My favorite movie...

This is similarly hard to nail down, but if required to choose one, I always have to say Ingmar Bergman's "Winter Light". It's a story about a small parish Priest who is steadily losing his faith. On a particularly hopeless winter Sunday, the weary Father only needs to tell a suicidal member of his flock why one must go on living... But he finds himself only venting his own deep-seeded anguish and despair. Distraught by the long-past death of his wife and the demands of an affair he has no affection for, he is tormented by "God's silence." It is a foreboding film that is often identified as a masterful argument for atheism. Indeed, Bergman was an atheist for most of his career, and arguably made this film (or the trilogy [loose term] it is part of) while he was first casting off the shackles of his strict Lutheran upbringing...

But this film has always oddly strengthened my faith. In fact, most of his very weighty films have taught me something about the beauty of humanity even in the most depraved or pathetic conditions. He's easily my favorite filmmaker and let's face it... Kurosawa is a hard one to edge out. When Bergman died a few years ago, I actually wept. Part of the why had to do with his last film, "Saraband", a touching, unusual "sequel" to an earlier film called "Scenes From a Marriage". "Saraband" had the unmistakeable ring of hope and love. He told a story remarkably similar to his own, and in the end... if I can borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, he allowed his characters to be "Surprised by Joy".

I heartily recommend any and all Bergman films, but especially Winter Light.