Töre (Max von Sydow) is a pious man and master of a medieval farm. His wife Märeta delves into the fanatical, burning herself so she can feel Christ’s pain, but she dotes on their teenage daughter Karin (Birgitta Pettersson). The spoiled Karin is generally good natured, but thinks mainly of herself, and uses her beauty and charm to get what she wants from her parents as well as the local men. This has brought their pregnant and wild servant Ingeri to a boiling rage of jealousy. Karin, along with Ingeri, are sent on a journey through the woods to deliver candles to the church. What follows is rape, murder, more murder, and the intersession of two gods.
Based upon a folk ballad, The Virgin Spring is an art film, made by the ultimate art house director, Ingmar Bergman. Its legacy is the rape-&-revenge horror subgenre. Wes Craven updated it for The Last House on the Left, and several hundred films copied its barest outline, though none come close to it in quality. Is it a horror film? It was considered shocking when released, though considerably less so now. While its category is uncertain, much else about it is very clear: It is meticulously made, gorgeously shot, brilliantly edited, and perfectly acted. It is one of Bergman’s finest films, a simple story with a great deal to say.
Made to cash in on the success of The Seventh Seal, which also starred von Sydow, took place in the middle ages, and dealt with questions of religion, death, and meaning in life, The Virgin Spring is a calmer film. The Seventh Seal is filled with Bergman’s anger at finding no meaning in life supplied by a god. This film has that same message, but with greater acceptance. Some have focused on the film’s religious dichotomy, of Christianity vs. Paganism, with cruelty coming from the latter. But Bergman was an atheist by the time he made The Virgin Spring and was in no mood to celebrate Jesus. I guess you can’t make a film simple enough for some people. Our characters pray, but praying does no good. There’s no protection from God, nor from older gods. Good deeds do not lead toward good lives and bad ones are not necessarily punished. There’s no great meaning out there, no vast moral truth, and God has no plans for us, so it doesn’t matter if He exists or not. Things happen. Good things and bad things, and all we can do is muddle through, putting whatever significance makes us feel best to these events. Faith is a way of ordering our lives, perhaps a necessary way, but it is just something we make up.
And it’s in this theme that The Virgin Spring rises above its rape-&-revenge kindred. After the violation in those films, the revenge gives the viewer satisfaction, even when saying that the vengeance is wrong or self-destructive. But there’s no satisfaction in revenge here. Nor it is condemned. It is something that happens, something very human, and something with only the meaning we wish to give it.
After The Virgin Spring, Bergman moved away from period pieces and ethics, instead making meandering, modern, psychologically introspective films. For me, they never had the same power.