In the 70s, rape/revenge turned into a genre based on feministsploitation. Films like I Spit On Your Grave, Lipstick, and Ms. 45 presented rape as part of the structural oppression of women, and female revenge as a way to overthrow, and often literally castrate, the patriarchy. Even rape/revenge films that did not specifically use feminism as a lever, like Last House on the Left, spent significant time placing viewer identification with the women suffering violence. The film’s were certainly prurient and exploitive, but they also presented sexual violence as important,and its victims as not just sympathetic, but worthy of a privileged point of view and narrative place.
This is not the case for the Last House on the Left’s direct inspiration, The Virgin Spring. Ingmar Berman’s 1960 classic is a rape/revenge in terms of plot; set in medieval times, it is about a young girl who is raped and murdered by bandits on her way to church, and whose father then kills the murderers. But where the 70s rape/revenge films put feminism, Virgin Spring puts God.
Karin (Birgitta Pettersson) does get screentime in the first half of the film, it’s true—but her character amounts to little more than assurances that she is the perfect, perfectly innocent rape victim. She oversleeps and is a little spoiled, perhaps, but she is kind, loving, full of life, and trusting—she feeds the bandits her lunch because she wants to help strangers before she realizes they mean her ill.
All the depth, soul-searching, and internal conflict in the film is reserved for Karin’s friend and parents—and especially for her father, Tore, played by the even-then celebrated Max von Sydow. As far as the film is concerned, Karin’s assault is important less for its place in her life, than for its effect on her father and his relationship with God.
Since it’s a Bergman film, that relationship is fraught and dramatic. Tore chastises himself with branches before he goes forth to slay his daughter’s sleeping killers. In the final scene, after finding his child’s body, he staggers off to the side of the clearing, and looking away from the camera addresses the deity directly. “God, you saw it! God, you saw it!” he declares. An innocent died and God did nothing. Like Job’s, Tore’s loss is an object lesson in the problem of faith and evil. And then, after Tore pledges to build a church as expiation for his sin of violence, a spring miraculously begins to flow from the ground beneath Karin’s head. God did see, and Karin, we’re surely meant to believe, is in heaven. Karin’s death is first a dramatic moment in Tore’s internal life,and then a dramatic moment in God’s narrative of suffering and redemption.
The cinematography throughout emphasizes the sense of a cold, but beautiful order beneath, and gazing upon, the tragedy. The dramatic image of Sydow standing beside, and then wrestling, with the tree serves as a metaphor for Tore’s isolation—and for the fact that God (the tree, the eye watching the tree) is there even in the bleakest landscape.
There’s no question that Virgin Spring is a striking film to look at. And it deals with big, important themes—God, justice, mercy, violence, the place of man in the cosmos. But still, the very elevation of theme and vision can start to seem unseemly, built as it is on the torture and death of a person whose suffering is decidedly tangential. When Sydow goes the full ham Shakespeare route and gazes at his hands to let us know that he’s disturbed about murdering the thugs the staginess becomes almost insupportable. We get it Mr. Bergman. We are watching something profound. How can Karin have suffered in vain if she lets us contemplate the beauty that is Sydow in full stricken emoting?
In comparison, the later rape/revenge exploitation, acknowledging its prurient investment in both sex and violence, seems relatively honest—and certainly less grandly distanced from the trauma. In the 70s rape/revenge, the camera is not at some perfect remove, but often chaotically close to the action, trying to keep up, or get out of the way (as in the still below from Ms. 45).
Exploitation films are often criticized for having no higher purpose; for being exercises in sleaze, stimulation, and unpleasantness for their own sake. Virgin Spring makes me wonder, though, whether a higher purpose can in its own way be more indecent than sensationalism. Better to suffer for no reason, than so that God and dad and the filmmaker can be profound, and reconciled.
“But where the 70s rape/revenge films put feminism, Virgin Spring puts God”.
Isn’t it the same, the way you put it? Or is rape only a serious offense against women that are not represented as being good, or even too good? And is rape a crime that can only affect women? Do women have the monopoly on victimhood? Cannot a man feel revolted by a brutal act that forces him to rethink the way he sees the world and – if he believes in it – god?
Or his feminism – or the caricature of it usually expounded on this august electronic temple to the politically correct – the only true religion?
Sherman
“Or his feminism”. Please, it was just a typing error, do not freudanize it…
Yes.
(“You’re not the only true religion” is what dying religions say to living ones.)
Yes, but what does a dying religion says to another dying religion?
“Yes, but what does a dying religion *says* to another dying religion?”
“say”. This keyboard is slippery today.
one of the most famous rape/revenge films is centered on the rape of a man (Deliverance.) Deliverance is also very important as a prototype and example in the rape/revenge genre as a whole; Carol Clover argues that I Spit On Your Grave is very indebted to Deliverance, and that male viewers of ISOYG are supposed to identify with the female victim, as they identify iwth the male victim in deliverance. So…I think rape/revenge films are actually very aware that men can identify with female rape victims, and also very aware that men can be rape victims.
Feminism may or may not be the one true religion—but their vacillating commitment to feminism does allow 70s rape/revenge films to see the victim’s story as central, rather than insisting that the most important thing happening is the dad’s relationship with God. To me, that seems less exploitive and more thoughtful than Virgin Spring, which ends up with the women in refrigerators problem. The daughter gets brutalized so that the guy can be motivated to kill and achieve personal growth.
The Last House on the Left is again an interesting contrast. It’s not particularly feminist…but it does care about the female protagonists in themselves. and it actually sort of ends up critiquing the parents for their investment in moral panic fantasies of rape and murder, I think.
“We’re having a productive dialog.”
I just realized that I’ve ended up talking about dying religions in a discussion of an Ingmar Bergman movie without even thinking about Lutheranism.
This is a criticism you could make of any martyrdom narrative. The difference with Bergman is that he shows the traditional resolutions the church foundation, the miracle of the spring as inadequate.
I don’t know that any martyrdom narrative would have the same problem. The narrative of Jesus certainly doesn’t present Jesus’ suffering as incidental or less important. And I think that it’s a real stretch to say that Bergman presents the miracle of the spring as inadequate. It’s not ironized; it’s the last thing that happens. God gets the last word, and proves his existence pretty directly.
Martyrs,the film, is an interesting contrast; it really does question the logic of martyrdom pretty directly. Virgin Spring not so much, I don’t think.
And of course just because you can question any martyrdom narrative doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do so. You can question any cop show, but the cop show is still a pretty wretched genre.
Well, it’s based on an actual legend… and God’s being given the last word doesn’t mean God is convincingly justified. I think the idea is that the miracle doesn’t balance the scales of suffering at the end. Are you familiar with Bergman’s work?
I think ‘exploitation movie’ is a misleading term. It implies that only movies within that genre contains exploitation.
To me, exploitaiton means that you steps beyound certain boundaries with your characters – let them unddress, be raped, murdered, etc. – without a solid foundation in your story to justify it.
In Rape-Revenge the explotative element is the rape scene itself. Part of the deal when watching the genre is that the viewer gets to see a drawn-out rape scene.
THE VIRGIN SPRINGs exploitative element is not the rape itselv, but the way it is exploited in the films deep, deep themes about God, mans place in the universe, forgiveness, etc. As Noah put it, the movie is “grandly distanced from the trauma”.
Whodunnit-genren exploits its obligatory murder victims by using them as a genre trope.
ZERO DARK THIRTY exploits torture victims, to sell the idea of a deep and edgy female torturer.
The novel PETER AND WENDY contains a classic exploration trope: The author lets a character commit murder, solely to show that this is the bad guy:
“Let us now kill a pirate, to show Hook’s method. Skylights will do. As they pass, Skylights lurches clumsily against him, ruffling his lace collar; the hook shoots forth, there is a tearing sound and one screech, then the body is kicked aside, and the pirates pass on. He has not even taken the cigars from his mouth.”
Yeah, Hook is a baddie. But here, the author clearly admit that he is the one orchestrating the murder, for the pleasure of the reader. The exploitation is 100% self-conscious, like in most exploitation movies.
Sam, I’ve seen other Bergman films. I’ve read some criticism of Virgin Spring too. I don’t see anything within the film that says the miracle is inadequate, and many people appear to have read it as a statement of faith. Why do you think the miracle is ironized or undermined?
Of course it’s a legend…but Last House on the Left is based on the same legend, and says something rather different.
I’d say Sam is correct about the ending – the tone is too downbeat for the spring to be understood as an unambiguously adequate compensation for what’s happened.
Of course, it’s still the father’s story, not the daughter’s.
Well, I guess it’s ambiguous. But that’s the Job story. Getting a new wife doesn’t make up for the old wife, but the existence of God suggests there’s an order in the universe…and the real restitution is that Karin is in heaven, right? (We know God exists, after all.)
I’d say the ending is solemn, not downbeat exactly.
It isn’t ironized, it’s senseless. It doesn’t answer Sydow’s questions. If people read it as a statement of faith they misunderstood Bergman very badly.
it may be senseless, but that doesn’t mean it’s some sort of atheist renunciation of faith. Faith isn’t reasonable. God doesn’t answer the question of why there’s evil in the world rationally, but his presence is an assertion that there is order and compassion. God acknowledges the suffering — and in Christianity that acknowledgement is underlined by the fact that God himself suffers.
I think Bergman is pretty up on all of this. Maybe the problem isn’t that I don’t understand Bergman, but that your grasp on theology is shaky?
Job’s wife, glory to her – “curse God and die” – never dies. He gets new kids, not a new wife.
Ack! Thanks for the correction.
Also, I’d say God’s explanation in Job – “Where were you when I made the world”? – is even more ambiguous than Bergman’s spring. (The framing story – everything bad that happens to Job is just because God made a bet with Satan, new kids to compensate for the old ones – may be a later addition that tries to smooth over the ambiguity of the poem itself, and, as usual with such attempts, just makes everything worse.)
“his presence is an assertion that there is order and compassion.”
I think this is where you and Bergman diverge. Because God exists in the universe of the film doesn’t mean his ways are justified. Sydow’s accusation “you saw it, you let it happen” isn’t resolved rationally, or emotionally, or transcendentally, and your ambivalence to the film acknowledges that.
Wait, what am I talking about – sorry, ignore that last comment. If God’s explanation in Job is ambitious, then probably in exactly the opposite way as Bergman’s seems to Sam and me – that is, an awkward attempt to smooth over ambiguity versus an attempt to underline it.
Sam, it’s certainly not resolved rationally. Not sure how you can say it’s not resolved transcendentally so certainly; the characters in the film seem to take comfort in the miracle, and there’s some suggestion at least that Karin too is comforted in heaven.
Theodicy is just a major part of Christian theology. I don’t know that I see Bergman’s effort to grapple with it as out of line with other Christian attempts. I mean, are you saying that Bergman is plumping for a kind of Manicheanism, where God is evil? I’m pretty sure that is not what is happening here.
Graham:
“We’re having a productive dialog.”
Yes we are. But about what?
Noah,
“one of the most famous rape/revenge films is centered on the rape of a man (Deliverance.) (…) So…I think rape/revenge films are actually very aware that men can identify with female rape victims, and also very aware that men can be rape victims.”
I still think you’re missing the point. I will not even acknowledge DELIVERANCE as a rape-and-revenge film, as it goes way beyond that. And the same is true about THE VIRGIN SPRING. What I said about the monopoly of victimhood was not a question of asserting if a man can or not be raped. Of course he can. The question is that to the VIRGIN SPRING, the rape is incidental, while to the rape-and-revenge films it is essential.
So, while there can be a valid comparison between, say, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and MS.45, the same is not true for THE VIRGIN SPRING. While the first two films are about rape and its effects on women in the role of victim/avenger, Bergman’s film is about faith and its loss and/or the eventual acceptance of the “problem of evil” (the teodissey). The human act (tolerated by God) happens to be rape followed by murder – because in the diegetic period of the film (the Middle Ages) it was both an attack on the concept of the innocent virgin (and please, don’t start with the cant about patriarchy – the innocent and pure virgin is an outdated archetype, but one in existence in the historical frame of the film. It was an attack on body and soul. An attack that throws Sydow against the perceived inate goodness of god and allows the consideration that if god tolerated the crime, must also tolerate the vengeance.
If the film were to be set in modern, contemporary times, the existential dilemma of Sydow’s character could possibly arise out of a terrorist attack on the vein of 9/11, and the family member lost could be a son, instead of a daughter. It would not change the essence or structure of the film.
Cheers,
Sherman
@A. Sherman Barros
We can’t possibly be having a productive dialogue, because I’m not professing a dying religion.
@Noah
I’d say Bergman is suggesting God may be, not exactly evil, but insufficient in his response to the needs of human beings.
I disagree with Mr. Barros about any number of things. However, I fully agree that Deliverance is not a rape/revenge narrative. The killings by Lewis and Ed (played, respectively, by Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight in the film version) are clearly shown to be justifiable homicide by any legal reckoning. Revenge is not the primary motive. Lewis is really given no choice but to kill Ed’s prospective racist in order to save Ed from the assault. All Lewis has for a weapon is a bow-and-arrow; the rapist’s accomplice has a gun. When Ed kills the rapist’s accomplice, it’s self-defense. The accomplice shoots one of Ed and Lewis’s group dead. Taking the accomplice out is the only way for Ed to save himself and his surviving friends. The killings are not about revenge; it’s about people trying to make their way out of a war zone with their hides intact.
@Graham Clark
Well, neither am I. I’m an atheist. What is yours: stillborn?
Well you also seem to dabble in not feminist.
I’m a left liberal nationalist. My religion isn’t dying, it’s [i]dead[/i].
Robert, the film makes it pretty clear that the killing of the rapist’s accomplice is not self defense…because it’s the wrong guy. Or very probably the wrong guy. The logic of revenge and violence messes them up—a very rape/revenge moral.
Also, rape/revenge isn’t about the intentions of the characters, or doesn’t have to be. It’s a fictional structure, which has variations. For instance, the rape/revenge is also that the city folks are destroying the land (raping it, the film says specifically) and the rural folks are taking revenge by raping them.
Deliverance is absolutely a rape/revenge. All genres are fuzzy, but Deliverance is just about always put into lists of the genre, and it’s a huge influence on following films (like I Spit On Your Grave.) It’s like saying Frankenstein isn’t sci-fi because it’s too mystical. Genres don’t work on that one to one logic.
Oh, and same to Barros. I agree that Virgin Spring is quite different from 70s exploitation films—that’s what the post is about! That doesn’t mean it’s not a rape/revenge film though. Genre’s are always ad hoc categories anyway. I mean, if you don’t want to consider it a rape/revenge, that’s fine. I still think it’s use of rape is thoughtless and the positioning of the dad at the center of the film stupid and irritating.
“I’d say Bergman is suggesting God may be, not exactly evil, but insufficient in his response to the needs of human beings.”
That’s really not what I get from the film…but part of the issue is that I don’t really think that Bergman cares much about Karin or what happens to her, except as it serves as a peg for his philosophical points. So I don’t really get an emotional sense that God is insufficient. How can he be insufficient when the film doesn’t care about the tragedy either?
Bergman cares about the father. (The father – the man whose faith in the Lutheran God is something between shaken and destroyed – basically is Bergman.) And I don’t think the father is entirely satisfied with the answer he gets from God.
Graham, yes I agree Bergman cares about the dad. But the reason that God is insufficient is supposed to be the death of Karin. Dad cares about the death of Karin, and Bergman cares about Dad…but since the film doesn’t care about the death of Karin, the theodicy questioning just seems hollow. “God how could you watch this!” Well, the answer in the film is something like, well, gee, as Bergman, the guy who gets to be god for the film, I can watch it because I’m interested in how you react, dad, and don’t really care much about the daughter in the first place.
For me, the questions about faith and evil seem like they resolve into answers about a filmmaker whose ability to identify with women is pretty limited.
I think Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man actually is a much more affecting attempt to struggle with these issues (not least because he engages the meta questions directly.)
Oh, and this cracks me up a little:
“while there can be a valid comparison between, say, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and MS.45, the same is not true for THE VIRGIN SPRING.”
There can be a “valid comparison” between any two things a critic wants to compare. If I wanted to compare Virgin Spring to You Can’t Take It With You (both ostensibly about daughters, but actually much more obsessed with fathers), who’s to stop me? If you disagree with a comparison, of course, that’s totally up to you, and you can talk about why you agree or don’t. But I reject the idea that Virgin Spring and Deliverance are somehow categorically different from Ms. 45 and I Spit On Your Grave (fwiw, in terms of quality, I would rate those I Spit on Your Grave (waaaay out in front), Deliverance, Ms. 45, and Virgin Spring some distance behind.)
But just because ISOYG is one of the best films ever made (IMO) while the Virgin Spring is lackluster art cinema, that’s no reason not to compare them…
“a filmmaker whose ability to identify with women is pretty limited.” Oh, I agree entirely. Don’t get me started on Bergman and women…
Maybe someone already mentioned it, but I think Bergman himself said he wasnt happy with the film and considered it a failure. I dont remember what exactly his issue was, probably the ‘happy end’?
I still think its much more rewarding than any of the exploitation films that followed though (only saw Ms.45, Last House On The Left and The House At The Edge Of The Park). But its weird that this genre often makes you sympathise with the rapists, whenever it is the upperclass taking revenge on the underclass (and in this case also christians taking revenge on heathens).
@Graham Clark
“I’m a left liberal nationalist. My religion isn’t dying, it’s [i]dead[/i].
Ok, fair enough.
Noah: “Theodicy is just a major part of Christian theology. I don’t know that I see Bergman’s effort to grapple with it as out of line with other Christian attempts. I mean, are you saying that Bergman is plumping for a kind of Manicheanism, where God is evil? I’m pretty sure that is not what is happening here.”
I don’t know where you’re getting Manichaeism, a cosmic war of good and evil. The characters’ acceptance of religious solutions doesn’t mean we’re encouraged to. You’re speaking as if Bergman was a Christian expressing his faith, and that makes me wonder how many you’ve seen.
Maybe seeing too many Bergman films has misled you? This film is definitely an expression of faith, and was widely received as such. Maybe he expressed other things in other films; maybe he was unhappy that he expressed faith in this one. Still, ending with “a miracle occurred” is an expression of faith.
I think we are in fact encouraged to accept the religious solution, in other words. Or at least, in the world of the film, God appears to exist and respond to prayers in a fairly direct manner.
@Noah
“But just because ISOYG is one of the best films ever made (IMO) while the Virgin Spring is lackluster art cinema, that’s no reason not to compare them…”
Independently of your personal evaluation of either film or filmaker, I never said that you couldn’t compare them. You can obviously compare anything you want with anything else. O just said that you cannot make a *valid* comparison, as in you cannot derive from such comparison a conclusion that in anyway approaches a modicum of insight. But I know that is a recurrent problem you must face in each of your posts that I have read.
You suddenly remind me of an (as much as I’m aware, apocryphal) anedocte about Hitler and Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics. Hitler is supposed to have said ‘It’s not fair. He is not human, he’s an animal and runs like a panther”. There you have a comparison you can make: both Owens and a Panther are mammals, they both achieved high speed, they both breath air, they both eat meat… and yet, there’s an essential difference that invalidates such a comparison.
And you cannot hide behind the fluidity of genre: even in the outermost frontier of genre, it still embodies a fixed set of elements that must satisfy the “pact” made between creator (writer, artist, film director) and consumer (viewr, reader, ertc). Frankesntein is not SF, not because it is too mystic (2001 is too mystic and yet it is great SF), but because it does not meet the essential teleological demands of SF(despite what Aldiss and Wingrove defend on Trillion Year Spree).
But hey, never let reality get in the way of what you think is a good idea.
Cheers,
Sherman
“its weird that this genre often makes you sympathise with the rapists”
Not weird I wouldn’t say. Rape/revenge capitalizes (often, not always) on social schisms to flip sympathies back and forth in multiple ways. So, in Deliverance, the film encourages you to loath the degraded hillbillies, but it also (slightly more surreptitiously) asks you to hate the decadent and powerful rich people.
Often gender is part of this back and forth, though not always. But yeah, you definitely are encouraged to sympathize with various marinalized groups as they are empowered and dismpowered, as they commit violence and as violence is committed against them.
I think Noah is right, theres no denying Virgin Spring is about the moral superiority of christians, it even confirms the existence of god. Pretty sure thats why the later Bergman wasnt happy with it any longer, and he went on to make other films to express his doubts.
Noah – i find it weird because it means if you want to empower the underclass, youre empowering animals, and if you want feminism you better count on the upperclass etc.
Noah: “ending with “a miracle occurred” is an expression of faith.”
Like I said, that’s the story he’s adapting. Doesn’t mean he can’t put his own spin on it. A miracle associated with a medieval church’s foundation isn’t so different from chess with Death or seeing God as a spider. Bergman was raised in a religious household but lost his faith as a child. His films are about what you do in a universe where God isn’t present, or is so indifferent and alien as to not resemble anyone’s idea of God. Also, I strongly disagree that Karin’s death is treated as incidental or important only as stage-setting for a religious revelation. That’s the sensibility he’s taking on. The miracle is too pat, and dissonant… and if God will intervene so directly, then why allow rape and murder? There’s also the subplot of suppressed paganism: how is Tore’s revenge different from a sacrifice to Odin?
Sam: “His films are about what you do in a universe where God isn’t present.”
Except this one’s about what to do in a universe in which god is present. Maybe he’s not as narrow as you want him to be? Possibly different films can be about different things? Why is it defending him to say that he has to do the same thing every time he picks up a camera?
Sherman, I don’t think you’re claim that it’s not a valid comparison is valid. So now what?
Just as a possible approach, maybe people could stop pretending that it’s some sort of terrible onslaught on Bergman’s honor to suggest that maybe there are problems in the film? This is Bergman, ffs. His reputation will survive my mild demurral on a blog no one reads. I promise.
Tim, I would say that rape/revenge’s commitment to some sort of social justice is pretty vacilating. I think the way it shows fissures between different empowerment agendas (class and gender for example) has some insight, though.
Noah–
Lewis (Reynolds) kills the attacker holding the rifle. Watch the end of the clip here.
With the killing Ed commits, his motive is that of eliminating a believed sniper. Unlike the protagonist in Ms. 45 (I haven’t seen I Spit on Your Grave or The Last House on the Left), he’s not in the grip of a vengeance-minded psychosis. All he wants is to get away from the river and return home as quickly as possible. His motive is self-defense. I couldn’t find the clip online, but my recollection is that when he kills the believed sniper, the guy is aiming a rifle at him and gets off a round. The question of whether the guy is the attacker who escaped is not raised until Ed inspects the corpse.
Who all is characterizing Deliverance as a rape-revenge narrative? I found one writer named Adam Lowenstein, whose lead you seem to be following with your arguments above, right down to the pairing of the film with The Last House on the Left. Anyone else?
Or maybe Bergman is not so bluntly literal as you want him to be.
I also said: “…or is so indifferent and alien as to not resemble anyone’s idea of God.” I mean… it’s right there in my sentence.
Having a miracle occur on film can mean different things. When Peter Sellers walks on water at the end of Being There, does that make that film an expression of religious faith?
Bergman didn’t do the same thing every time he picked up a camera. Let’s see, between The Seventh Seal in 1957 and Through A Glass Darkly in 1961, he made an unambiguous declaration of faith, and conviction that miracles wipe away all problems? OK, Noah.
OK, I overlooked Carol Clover, but judging from the excerpts of her book Men Women and Chainsaws at Google Books, the similarity she notes between Deliverance and I Spit on Your Grave is the portrayal of hillbillies as villains. (She also notes that Deliverance’s depiction is far more sophisticated.) If she claims that the vengeance motive of ISoYG’s protagonist is similar to the motives of the Reynolds and Voight characters in Deliverance, it’s not coming up.
I’ll be happy to proved wrong on this count, but I suspect she never makes that argument. To claim Deliverance is a rape-revenge narrative, one has to be looking at the material very superficially. A man is raped, and his friends kill the rapist and a believed accomplice. Ergo, rape-revenge narrative. It’s a overly simplistic interpretation that completely ignores the context of the killings.
Sure. Carol Clover talks about it extensively as a rape/revenge. Check for lists of best of rape/revenge online; it shows up all the time (I’ve been looking at many of them; it’s always there.) And it’s in here, the most up to date and extensive discussion of the genre:
https://books.google.com/books?id=gSbejiCmJ-UC&q=deliverance#v=snippet&q=deliverance&f=false
Clover’s point about Deliverance is that the similarity between it and ISOYG is *the rape.* Which positions the man in the role of rape victim, which is part of what ISOYG is doing.
I don’t agree with Clover that Deliverance is more sophisticated. On the contrary, it’s depiction of rural people is much, much more blunt; they’re physically deformed monstrosities, and alien. One of the things I like about ISOYG is that the guys are rural, but they’re really just guys. They seem like folks you could know. Which is sort of the point.
I just saw deliverance. The guy who is shot on the mountaintop doesn’t try to shoot anyone till he’s already been shot himself. The best thing about the film is that the city guys are completely paranoid; there’s no sign that they’re ever pursued by the rapists. They convince themselves they are, and then they kill this passerby for no reason. That means it’s not a urbanites-learn-about-true-grit story; it’s a urban idiots wander into the woods, are violently attacked, and then in recompense kill people at random.
Re: motive—it doesn’t matter. The title of the genre is throwing you. Self-preservation and revenge often get mixed together. Last House on the Left remake it’s not exactly clear whether they’re defending themselves or in it for revenge; Teeth (often discussed as a rape/revenge) involves mostly involuntary castration rather than a revenge motive per se. For that matter, Ms. 45 doesn’t really involve revenge. She kills her second rapist out of self preservation, and then goes on a misandrist killing spree. She’s not taking revenge on the person who murdered her; she’s (arguably) just traumatized and lashing out.
The revenge in Deliverance is structural. It’s set up as urban vs. rural. The city is raping the country (words from the script.) The country takes revenge by raping the city. The city takes revenge by killing the country. The exact motives are way less important than the symbolism; Deliverance is definitely a film trying to function on an archetypal level (in part to mock that level/undermine it.)
Anyway…the main point is lots and lots of folks consider it a rape revenge. google rape revenge and deliverance; john kenneth muir horror films of the 70s comes up, it’s in a bright lights film journal article about rape and revenge, and on and on. It’s like saying Batman isn’t a superhero because he’s got no superpowers; Deliverance is really one of the films that defines the rape/revenge genre. If you have a definition of rape/revenge that doesn’t include it, the problem is with your definition.
Hah; just saw that Heller-Nicholas has figured out that Death Proof is a rape revenge too; I need to read that book…
What’s at stake for you in Deliverance not being a rape/revenge, Robert? Is it that you like Deliverance and don’t like rape/revenge films?
Straw Dogs is also very frequently considered a rape/revenge, even though it’s technically a battle for survival too.If there’s a rape, and the rapist (or someone standing in for the rapist) gets violently slaughtered, that usually is enough to put it in the genre. I think because rape/revenge is so reviled, it often gets treated as if it’s all one story, but the truth is that it’s actually quite various. Last House on the Left and ISOYG for example are really very different in tone, intention, and theme, and neither is anything like Teeth.
Sam, ” is so indifferent and alien as to not resemble anyone’s idea of God.” is really not what’s happening in Virgin Spring. God grants a prayer. He’s not indifferent; he can be spoken to, and seems to offer forgiveness, mercy, and understanding.
The film’s just a reiteration of the theodicy problem. I don’t see why this God is any more alien than the one in Job. Obviously, Job’s a difficult text, and people have struggled with it. But retelling Job (or the passion) just isn’t the challenge to Christian faith that you keep insisting it is.
Does that mean Bergman believed in God? It doesn’t have to. But this particular film doesn’t seem to me to offer a sweeping challenge to Christian faith as it’s usually understood, and, again, the film seems to have been celebrated at the time partially because many people liked the Christian message.
(To be clear, I don’t dislike the film because of the Christian message. I like lot’s of Christian art. I dislike the film because it’s an elaborate women in refrigerators set up.)
Re: Job: Christians are pretty good at ignoring things that don’t suit them so I don’t think Job troubles them much. Being Job might.
Re: the film’s reception: many people took it as a Christian message, and that and the Oscar might be the reason Bergman rarely spoke of it. He takes on faith more directly in Glass Darkly and Winter Light.
Women in refrigerators: that was some issue of Green Lantern if it’s the key to understanding Bergman. I’d point out that even if you accept that simplistic model (that a woman’s grisly death exists to propel a male hero’s revenge) it also does so for her mother, who participates in the killing, and propels the conversion of her pagan sister. And her death might not be as gruesome as a 70s revenge flick but it’s very disturbing and it doesn’t drop the victim’s subjectivity. Bergman is up to a lot more than giving Max von Sydow a reason to look anguished. The revenge genre always requires an injustice, but it’s only as simplistic as an artist or an obstinate critic makes it.
With your other points, you’re just repeating yourself and not answering my points. I encourage anybody who’s still making up their minds about the movie and isn’t dug in to defend one position until they drop to read my previous comments.
Out of curiosity Noah have you seen Irreversible, the Noé film?
Also: “canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?” Best line in the bible
Noah–
You’re defaming the morality of the work with that description. It’s not pulp, and its values are not Manichean.
I’m not sure you know the stature of the book. It’s one of the key English-language novels of the last fifty years. (For example, Modern Library ranked it at #42 among 20th-century novels, and Time included it in their top 100 between 1925 and 2005.) The film isn’t as good, but that’s mainly because, like most adaptations of major novels, the richness of the novel doesn’t translate well. But the film is an honorable effort, and it’s faithful to the book’s story and moral viewpoint. When you characterize the film as a “rape-revenge narrative,” you’re describing the novel in those terms, too.
In other words, you’re saying that the novel’s view is that two wrongs make a right, and murder is justified when rape is involved. You’re also equating the novel’s values with those of cheesy grindhouse junk. That’s just so off-base it’s defamatory.
The story is not a revenge narrative. It’s a critique of adolescent notions of machismo. The overall point is that there is nothing romantic about life-or-death situations, and while trying to live up to the he-man ideal may prepare you in some respects, you’re still going to come out the other end traumatized. You may also come out either crippled or killed, which is what happens to two of the four protagonists. The protagonists are not vengeful, and they only kill to protect each other from rape and murder. It’s made clear that the decisions related to the killings are going to plague them with guilt and doubt for the rest of their lives. Deliverance is an extremely intelligent, thoughtful, and moral work. It should be respected as such. It could not be more different than the material you’re lumping it in with.
If you want an example, just consider it relative to Straw Dogs. That film’s protagonist doesn’t emerge from the life-or-death crucible physically or psychologically broken. He’s fulfilled by the experience. The film, although far more skillfully executed than most grindhouse crap, is ultimately as stupid as the worst. It embraces the bullshit that Deliverance so harshly rejects.
If certain critics are playing so fast and loose with their labels that they’re effectively smearing the work in question, they need to reconsider what they’re doing. Being more rigorous in their descriptions would be a good idea.
The book is a favorite of mine dating back to my high school days. As such, I may be particularly passionate in my defense of it. But I’d like to think that if any major work was being dragged through the mud like Deliverance has been here, I’d speak up.
Sam, if your position at this point is that hundreds of years of Christian theology needs to not exist in order for Virgin Spring to be brilliant…I don’t know. That seems kind of silly to me. “No one ever really thought about Job until Bergman!” Kierkegaard would like a word….
Von Sydow has the privileged position in the film, not least because he’s Von Sydow.
Robert: “defaming”? I like Deliverance! I think many of its virtues are those of rape/revenge, which is a genre I have a lot of interest an investment in.
“you’re saying that the novel’s view is that two wrongs make a right, and murder is justified when rape is involved.”
Not saying anything about the novel. I’m not saying this about the film, either. The film both criticizes the cycle of revenge and enjoys it. You seem to want to turn it into a sententious morality play. You’re missing its extensive investment in the gothic.
“Deliverance is an extremely intelligent, thoughtful, and moral work. It should be respected as such”
Art shouldn’t be respected, whether it’s superhero comics or literary fiction.
Critics aren’t playing “fast and loose” with the label. There’s not really any such thing as playing fast and loose with genre labels. Genre labels are always porous and ad hoc. Deliverance is one of the central films in rape/revenge (as is Virgin Spring.) Rape/revenge can be exploitation; it can also be higher brow. Deliverance rests somewhere between the two. But Dickey (from what I’ve read; mostly poetry) loves exploitation and gross gothic (there’s that ridiculous poem about the airline stewardess falling to her death.) You’re trying to take the disturbing, exploitive elements out of a work that’s most famous for one of the most unpleasant rape scenes in cinema, and which (in the film at least) uses vicious stereotypes of poor rural folk as one of its main emotional levers. It is a critique of machismo, but it’s also deeply invested in the machismo of telling it like it is. Anytime you’re point it that so and so isn’t manly, you’re insisting “I’m manly!” That’s the joy of masculinity.
I like Deliverance pretty well; it’s a little too pleased with its own cleverness and the depth of its themes and so forth. But I’d agree it’s better than Straw Dogs. It’s a fine rape/revenge film, and that’s better, in my view, than a fine work of contemporary literary fiction, in general. I’m really not attacking it; it’s good!
Jones, I haven’t seen Irreversible yet; probably soon!
Sam, what I’m not seeing from you is any evidence from the film that we’re supposed to feel the miracle is insufficient. The last scene, he prays, his prayer is answered, everyone falls to their knees, and they put water on Karin’s face. She looks peaceful, and they look comforted (and stunned.) There’s obviously tension there (it doesn’t negate von Sydow’s agony), but in a Christian context, suffering leading to faith and miracles is pretty thoroughly canonical. Existential doubt is completely reconcilable with Christian faith (again, see Kierkegaard.) I feel like you’ve decided what Bergman must believe, and then determined that that must be what’s happening on film.
I could be convinced that the film is more ambivalent than it seems, but you’d really need to point to something on film, not to your sense of what Bergman must have said, and not to your not especially informed take on what Christians have or have not said over the years.
Oh, and Robert, since you haven’t seen the film for a while, and I haven’t read the novel, we could just agree that the film is rape/revenge and the novel doesn’t have to be. It could be substantially more high minded than the film for all I know.
Didn’t Wes Craven specifically state that “Last House on the Left” derived from “Virgin Spring”?
Oh, and Robert Stanley Martin: Happy Birthday!
I don’t know if Craven said it, but he probably didn’t need to; it’s an obvious reworking…
Baldander–
Thanks.
“in a Christian context, suffering leading to faith and miracles is pretty thoroughly canonical.”
But is revenge killing canonical?
“Existential doubt is completely reconcilable with Christian faith (again, see Kierkegaard.)”
I don’t need to. The common understanding of faith is sufficient: it’s what you resort to when your intellect can’t solve a problem. How is that different from Kierkegaard?
Likewise, when I said that I doubt Job bothers Christians much, I was thinking of the majority of believers. But are you telling me theologians have conclusively solved the problems it raises? Of course it’s reconcilable with faith… because that’s the definition of faith.
I think the ending of Virgin Spring is a portrait of canonization. That is, it’s the kind of miracle often associated with the Christianization of Europe, the founding of churches, the conversion of heathens, the redemption of suffering, etc. What convinces me in the film alone that Bergman doesn’t accept that as a solution is the way Sydow goes directly, “and so…” from his questions and accusations to his resolution to build a church; God’s signing off on the idea with a miracle when his non-intervention was just questioned; and the revenge killing and subplot of suppressed paganism: how is that outcome different from a blood sacrifice of one’s enemies to consecrate a pagan temple? Is it?
Yes, it’s Bergman’s portrait of a thoroughly canonical and Christian phenomenon; no, if he endorsed it he wouldn’t have set it up that way.
Outside the film, its acceptance as a Christian message is not necessarily evidence of failure, but I think it’s telling that Bergman abandoned medieval settings and started explicitly attacking religion right after.
@Sam
“The common understanding of faith is sufficient: it’s what you resort to when your intellect can’t solve a problem.”
I’m an atheist, and I find this simplistic view pretty repulsive. I’ve read all of your comments, and if your analysis relies on this understanding of faith, or this understanding of how people conceive of faith, your whole argument looks pretty weak, even without reviewing your points.
Well, I didn’t come up with it…
Yeah…faith as what you resort to when reason doesn’t work seems like it misses a lot of the nuance in Kierkegaard, I think. It’s been a bit since I read it, but phrasing it like that suggests that you go on with reason as long as you can, and then there’s faith to finish up. That seems more like William Paley than Kierkegaard; faith and reason are each in their domain, complementary, easily separated and easily fit together. Whereas I think Kierkegaard sees faith as a much more thoroughgoing challenge to reason; the story of Job is about how reason is an inadequate paradigm. It’s not just that you resort to it when intellect is insufficient; it’s that it offers an alternate way of viewing the world, and a superior one. Your account of faith sounds contemptuous; that’s not kierkegaard’s stance.
This piece I wrote on Kierkegaard and Crumb seems maybe appropriate. I think Virgin Spring is better than Crumb’s Genesis—but not so much better as all that.
I see your reading, but I don’t find it all that convincing. There’s obviously a struggle between paganism and christianity, but that struggle seems resolved pretty firmly in favor of Christianity. Yes, Sydow commits a revenge killing, but he’s regretful immediately, and the film is careful to show the killing as excessive and wrong (especially with the killing of the boy). Sydow’s repentance, via the building of the Church, is validated by the miracle—but is the miracle just, build me a church, all is forgiven? Water is a purifying symbol, and the bystanders there seem to take it as such; the mother seems to take some peace in annointing her daughter’s head, which makes sense, since she’s just seen that god exists, which suggests her daughter is happy in the afterlife.
The building of the church is explicitly framed as repentance for violence, it seems like, and its following the repentance that the miracle occurs, not after the murder (of either Karin or the bandits.) So…there’s a certain amount of narrative work and care taken to show it’s *not* the same as a pagan dedication. If Bergman’d wanted to make it the same, it wouldn’t have been that hard, I don’t think (as Last House on the Left shows, a non-Christian version of the tale is quite possible.) Why not show pagan magic working as surely as Christian, if the point is to show they’re equivalent?
Again, your argument seems to rest on the idea that the existence of evil and violence in itself is a refutation of the existence of God. That’s just not convincing in a Christian context, inasmuch as Christian theology is centered on the existence of evil and violence (that’s what the crucifixion is about.) There’s just no reason Virgin Spring, exactly as it is, couldn’t have been made by a believer. (Which isn’t a flaw or evidence of failure, of course, unless you think that any Christian art has to be a failure.)
For what it’s worth, I think the film is more interesting if it’s Christian than if it’s not. A European art film, even in 1960, saying, “Christianity is dumb; there is no God!” seems liek preaching to the choir. A statement of faith, even an ambivalent one, seems at least a bit weird, and kind of ballsy.
I’d bet money that Bergman read Kierkegaard. Googling around the juxtaposition of the two seems fairly common…
In case anyone is interested, Gary Groth once wrote an attack on Quentin Tarantino in which he briefly contrasted Pulp Fiction with Deliverance (“the difference, of course, being that in Deliverance the rape created the film’s central moral dilemma whereas in Pulp Fiction it was merely ‘the single weirdest day of [Butch’s] life'”): http://thebaffler.com/salvos/a-dream-of-perfect-reception
Oh, yeah, I remember that. That’s a terrible and deeply blinkered account of Tarantino’s work—but he’s right that the deliverance lift in Pulp Fiction is stupid and poorly done (though in most other respects PF is much superior to Deliverance, not least in its take on violence.)
“It’s not just that you resort to it when intellect is insufficient; it’s that it offers an alternate way of viewing the world, and a superior one.”
In other words, reason is insufficient.
“Your account of faith sounds contemptuous; that’s not kierkegaard’s stance.”
No, I was just impatient with getting told to go read Kierkegaard when you don’t appear to have read my comments, i.e. claiming that I didn’t offer diegetic reasons for my interpretation when I did.
“Again, your argument seems to rest on the idea that the existence of evil and violence in itself is a refutation of the existence of God. That’s just not convincing in a Christian context…”
But has it conclusively solved those problems? I’m not the only person who’d say no.
“For what it’s worth, I think the film is more interesting if it’s Christian than if it’s not. A European art film, even in 1960, saying, “Christianity is dumb; there is no God!” seems liek preaching to the choir.”
Well, it has a Christian ending. We differ over whether the film constitutes an endorsement of that conclusion, and I think it’s more interesting if it doesn’t. And talk about oversimplifying. Theodicy is a big subject; it wasn’t settled by the Christian tradition, and coming down on the other side doesn’t reduce one’s statement to a toast at an atheists’ club.
I didn’t say you should read Kierkegaard. I said that the existence of Kierkegaard seemed to refute your take on the entirety of Christian theology. (And no, you still aren’t adequately engaging with Kierkegaard. You could read him! Or not. But the repeated attempts to summarize him without knowing what you’re talking about don’t make your arguments especially convincing.)
“But has it conclusively solved those problems? I’m not the only person who’d say no.”
Of course not. The problems aren’t solvable. But your argument seems to be that stating the problem in a Christian context is a rebuke to Christianity. It isn’t, unless the crucifixion is a rebuke to Christianity, which is an odd position to take. (Zizek sort of takes that position at points, admittedly…)
“We differ over whether the film constitutes an endorsement of that conclusion, and I think it’s more interesting if it doesn’t.”
But why is it more interesting if it doesn’t? Is there a reason other than that you don’t subscribe to Christianity and believe Bergman doesn’t either? Why is, “evil exists, there is no God” somehow more thoughtful or surprising than a statement of conflicted faith despite the existence of evil? I get that atheism doesn’t have to be stupid, but I’m not getting much intellectual content from your reading. “Christianity is no better than paganism!” Yeah, okay— I’ve gotten that memo.
This is why I think Last House on the Left is a lot more daring and interesting. The religion it’s sneering at is the cult of childhood, I think, which is a lot more universally and uncritically embraced than Christianity at this point. Craven suggests that vengeance is part of the ritual of that particular faith.
I love that God in Last House on the Left, the figure of authority, is the two worthless slapstick policemen. I don’t know; it just seems much wittier and more thoughtful and pointed than Bergman’s “look at my big solemn issues!” art cinema.
You’re both wrong. Bergman really, really wants to believe in Christianity, and he’s by no means sure that he can’t, but he’s not sure he can either. Which is to say, yes, shades of Kierkegaard, but Kierkegaard’s religion is a model of serene confidence compared to Bergman’s – which simply reflects how much further Christianity’s influence had receded by the time Bergman came along. But Bergman questioning Christianity is still different from a European or American of a later generation doing it.
Bergman represents the very last moment when enough of Western society was still sufficiently Christian that anxiety about the state of Christianity could feel like something relevant to the state of society as a whole, before the earthquake of the ’60s and ’70s finally turned religion into a subculture.
Well, your summary of Kierkegaard doesn’t substantively conflict with mine: that faith is the answer to the failure of reason. Bergman is approaching these issues from a position of nonbelief, but films like Seventh Seal, Virgin Spring and Glass Darkly aren’t saying “there’s no God!”, they’re posing the question of what it means that God acts the way he does. I don’t think Christianity is intrinsically better than paganism, but that wasn’t the question I asked you either. You’re interpreting a resolution as a blunt endorsement, and demanding equally blunt alterations like showing pagan magic working in order for you to modify your reading. Sorry, but everything I’ve heard about Last House on the Left suggests it’s really not for me. I don’t gravitate by default to grandiose art cinema, but Bergman does it so well. If you’re prosecuting a high/low cinema divide, that’s pretty much a dead issue these days…
Last post in response to Noah.
@Sam
It’s not clear to me that high/low is a dead issue. Low has become more respectable, but I don’t get the impression that the proportion of – I don’t know, Joss Whedon’s audience? Steven Moffat’s? J. J. Abrams’? – who watch Abbas Kiarostami is any greater than the proportion of Craven’s who watched Bergman.
Yeah, all those proposed analogues to Wes Craven were terrible choices. I don’t know, somebody who knows something about contemporary horror insert a better one.
Maybe Eli Roth, Graham? Torture porn has some of the same critical loathing that rape/revenge does. (And I like Hostel quite a bit.)
I think high brow/low brow still has some legs, given the anxiety around rape/revenge and highbrow cinema evidenced in this thread.
Graham’s reading of Virgin Spring’s take on faith seems reasonable (as it were).
Sam the problem with setting up faith as what you do when reason is a failure is that it privileges reason. That is, reason is seen as the default choice. That’s not Kierkegaard, exactly.
Last House on the Left is certainly not for everyone! It is a great movie though.
“Virgin Spring makes me wonder, though, whether a higher purpose can in its own way be more indecent than sensationalism. Better to suffer for no reason, than so that God and dad and the filmmaker can be profound, and reconciled.”
It’s kinda the same reason I have this strong aversion to the torture porn genre. There’s something profoundly anal about letting your characters suffer just in order to add an edge to some philosophical musings. A bit akin to the Shoot and Cry genre, where the victims only serves as a mirror in the offenders narcissistic examination of himself.
Compared to traditional exploitation, this high art exploitation feels screwed up on a entirely different scale. Dunno why. It just does.
Admittedly, I haven’t watched torture porn. Maybe I would have a change of heart if I actually watched the stuff? Still, I felt that both SEVEN, AB-NORMAL BEAUTY and SAW had something a bit conceived about their deepness, and my gut feeling is that I would have the same reaction if I gave the genre a chance.
Well, Hostel (which is usually thought of as torture porn) is pretty much just a slasher; there’s not much pretense to philosophical depth, I don’t think. (I quite like Hostel and Hostel II.)
Martyr has more pretensions maybe…it sort of is both exploitation and art cinema I think. It’s interesting, though not wholly successful; wrote about it a bit here.
Interesting! I’m always been curious about the way evil behavior is justified by refering to the victims supposedly greater evil. MARTYR is now on my must-watch-someday list, along with IRRÉVERSIBLE … I’m a bit chickenshit, so theres a lot of movies I have a hard time watching.
In SPY VS SPY, as you mentioned, the two spies are symmetrical, so reader has no way of justifying eithers behavior. Symmetrical evil is also seen in the movies ICHI, HARD CANDY, 2LDK and … that japanese movie about a guy with a mutant penis and that woman who abandons her mutant babies in the toilet … can’t recall its name. Maybe also in the book METHOD 15/33, haven’t read it yet.
DOBERMANN let the crook be slightly less nasty than the cop, which breaks the symmetry, making the viewer take his side.
TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL (2010) also deals with the perception of evil, and is quite funny.
Martyr and Irreversible are both interesting, but not great, imo (Martyrs maybe better?)
And I think (?) you may be talking about Tetsuo the Iron Man…?
No, not TETSUO, I had another mutant-penis themed movie in mind: BAD BIOLOGY (2008) about a guy with a mutant penis and a woman with seven clitoris who kills her lovers. The unspoken premise, of course, is that these two unconventional characters will have a confrontation.
But, what’s really strange is that I thought the movie was Japanese. Maybe my brain has decided that anything totally apeshit must come from Japan.
“I had another mutant-penis themed movie in mind”
How many ARE there?