The Virgin Spring

Overwrought and ineffective, The Virgin Spring follows a deeply-religious family as their entire existence is thrown into turmoil after one of their own experiences an act of extreme violence. Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman has infused The Virgin Spring with a typically glacial pace that grows more and more oppressive as time progresses, with the movie, which boasts a decidedly less-than-dense narrative, slowly-but-surely losing its extremely tenuous grip on the viewer as it lumbers into its padded-out midsection. There’s no denying the effectiveness of certain elements within the production, to be sure – Sven Nykvist’s cinematography, for example, is as striking and lush as one might’ve anticipated – but Bergman’s heavy-handed approach to his own screenplay negates the positives and generally prevents the viewer from embracing the material. The arms-length vibe ensures that certain sequences simply aren’t able to pack the emotional punch Bergman has obviously intended (eg the central character’s climactic breakdown), and it’s rather apparent, ultimately, that The Virgin Spring has lost most of the cache it may have once possessed.

** out of ****

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