I’ve said this before but what I admire most about Haneke is his confidence. He thrusts you into his cold realism immediately, trusting his audience to catch up. Some directors, thinking Aronofsky here, make violent and disturbing movies that are still palatable to general audiences because they aren’t hard to figure out. I’m not critiquing that path of filmmaking, there’s nothing wrong with it. That sort of filmmaking has its plot clear and themes hidden a bit beneath it, while…

Bergman has certain themes he loves to repeat and reframe in his work. The ones at the forefront being of course things like melancholy, longing, illness, romantic frustration, regret, despair, solace, and interpersonal relationships. In Through a Glass Darkly, he focuses on threads stemming from his major themes to work from. From illness we have Karin’s schizophrenia, from despair we have her father’s reaction to the severity of her illness, and from her brother we get frustration in many areas.…

I’ve got a lot to say about this but first and foremost I want to make clear that my problems with this movie seem to be the opposite of what I’ve seen of an early consensus. I have seen and heard reviews/tweets about how the movie is absolutely terrifying but has no clear message or purpose, but I couldn’t disagree more on both counts. The biggest strength of the movie is its examination of how parents, with both legitimate and…