Horrorfest 2011: Hour of the Wolf

Here’s another weird one – HOUR OF THE WOLF, written and directed by Ingmar Bergman, stars Max Von Sydow as a tortured painter living with his pregnant wife (Liv Ullmann) in an isolated cabin on a mostly deserted island. As the painter seems to descend into insanity he’s helped along by nightmarish visions, memories, and encounters with a strange brood living in a nearby castle who may or may not be figments of his imagination. Meanwhile, the painter’s hapless wife tries to help, staying up sleepless nights with the crazed artist as the insanity possibly begins to rub off.

I’m not ashamed to say I didn’t understand exactly what was happening from one scene to the next, and I don’t think Bergman is particularly interested in spelling things out for the audience. The movie is more about what goes on in someone’s mind than any kind of literal plot. I read several interpretations of the movie after I was done watching it, and kept coming across the claim that this is Bergmans “only” horror film. I’d argue THE VIRGIN SPRING is at least as horrific, if not moreso. But I guess horror is in the eye of the beholder.

The movie starts off as a fairly dry and depressing drama, and the horror elements start to creep in around the edges later. My own interpretation of the movie is that Von Sydow’s character is having some kind of nervous breakdown – an identity crisis brought about by a creative block that is making painting very difficult for him. As he slips into old age, he becomes more and more obsessed with his past regrets – a woman he had an affair with (Ingrid Thulin), sexual and violent urges he either did or did not act on – and these present themselves to him in the form of dreams, visions and hallucinations. Bergman’s direction does not make it readily obvious what is real and what is imagined, and for all we know, some of it might be half real and half imagined.

What sets this film apart from some other “descents into madness” I’ve seen is the involvement of the painter’s wife – most of it is through her point of view, observing her husband’s despair, and the narrative explores the idea that by being so open and emotionally tied to her husband, the wife might be just as crazy, or end up just as crazy if she’s not careful.

The painter’s insanity reaches its apex when he’s invited by the local Baron (Erland Josephson) to attend a dinner party at the nearby castle. Here, Von Sydow completely unwinds as he is teased, taunted and made a fool of by the inhabitants of the castle who seem to represent Von Sydow’s darkest fears and desires. One nightmarish image follows another – an old woman (Naima Wifstrand) pulls off her own face, Von Sydow recounts a creepy, violent encounter he once had (or did he?) with a young boy (Mikael Rundquist). Throughout it all, as usual, Von Sydow is great.

This movie is a good rebuttal to the anarchic weirdness of HOUSE. Both are deliberately weird, but HOUR OF THE WOLF seems to be saying something.