Kagonada, the video-essayist behind the cinematic supercuts of Kubrick’s “One-Point Perspective” and Ozu’s “Passageways” returns with a look at mirrors in the films of Ingmar Bergman, set to a plaintive Vivaldi work for two mandolins, and a reading of Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror.”
Mirrors and reflections turn up right in the beginning of Bergman’s films as a motif, when Jenny, the middle-aged protagonist of Crisis exclaims to her image, “You can’t see from the outside, but beneath this face … oh, my God!” Mirrors show their viewers a true face behind the mask in his films, mortality, failure, duplicity–everything fake stripped away. It’s a time to take stock and a time to break down.
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