THE HOUR OF THE WOLF

THE HOUR OF THE WOLF
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, and them.
Year: 1968

Bumper: Ryan Wilson




 For those of us whose idea of the horror, as Colonel Kurtz calls it, falls somewhere between “The Shining” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” I’d like to raise an outstretched arm and point a bony finger in the direction of Bergman’s “The Hour of the Wolf.”


An artist friend of mine—well, his predilections have grown so dark lately that I felt I had to dust this one off just to be able to talk to him about anything other than our respective, absurd jobs. In the way of darkness, there really isn’t much floating around in the ocean beyond “The Hour of the Wolf.” It’s a sort of end, really. A bath of fear. Instead of a towel to dry off with, you get a shower of broken glass. It’s an awful lot like being eaten, in courses, internally, beautifully, in black and white, and in Swedish (Sweden, it turns out, can be a hard place to leave).


“Some years ago the painter, Johan Borg, vanished without a trace from his home on the Frisian island of Baltrum. His wife Alma later gave me Johan’s diary, which she had found among his papers. This diary, together with what Alma herself told me, is the basis of this film.”


This chilling, no-nonsense message is delivered in titles by the pen of Bergman himself, of course. Behind the titles we hear a film crew setting up, laughing, hammering, scooting things around. This little meta-touch has a calming effect: a film crew is there. So nothing can really happen, I mean, they’re filming, so everything is okay, they’re just faking and funning… and though you know it’s a fiction, that fact doesn’t serve you when the awful, true, horrible details begin popping onto the screen, mercilessly slow.


Feeling anxious lately? Try enjoying an early scene in which everyone’s favorite good time Charlie, Max Von Sydow (wearing Johan Borg like a glove), subjects his wife to an entire sixty seconds hunched over his watch, eyeing the tiny hand tick by in mad agony. Great fucking cinema. Dynamite way to help yourself or a loved one throw up.


Now, I happen to be drowning in my job at the moment (in fact I was screamed at on the phone today for 51 minutes straight!), always a nice reminder how casually wonderful it feels not to be drowning far more often. I happen to be going a bit insane too, cagey like, but watching Wolf doesn’t serve the same reassuring purpose; that is, to poke you in the ribs and say, hey, at least you’re not losing it like this poor fella. It feels more like an admonition from beyond—should you choose the wrong fork in the road, you will be digested by cannibals, and this is what it will look like.


Bergman sketches Johan and his wife Alma (Liv Ullmann silently tears the part a new asshole) in such a way as to make sure everyone with creative leanings can see himself or herself in their love, the pushing and pulling, from warmth to creation to ego to self-loathing to detached horror, and back through each, repeated ad nauseam. And so, of course, while watching, I envision myself and Sarah, standing atop a hill on a blustery day, looking off to sea, an anguished yet stoic look on my face, Sarah forlorn and sleepless. I’ve been a terrible asshole, but worse, I’ve lost my grip on the point of it all, and I’m sliding, sliding, sliding away… to them, for good, disappeared.


I won’t talk of them, because any description of them kills it. The horror shouldn’t be sullied with description, but rather experienced in the shiny, fresh present moment. All you should really know going into this one is that the hour of the wolf is…. is… is… the hour before the dawn, the hour of the most deaths and births. No tricks, just darkness, no escape, real gone.