In Memoriam, Ingmar Bergman 236

Ingmar Bergman called me back after I left him a message about the flooded bathroom. I asked him to come over at about three o’clock.

“How much do you charge per hour?”

“£17.50,” came his answer. “And that’s not too bad for a genius . . . ”

“I don’t need a genius, I need a plumber.”

“Okay. Don’t you worry, I understand the realities of the situation better than most . . . ” came his slightly allusive answer.

I didn’t like employing Ingmar Bergmans for this kind of thing. But what the hell were you supposed to do? Normal plumbers cost a lot more.

And on top of everything else you got a bit of conversation out of it. Ingmar Bergmans liked to talk. I didn’t speak Polish or Czech and I liked to hear a bit of Swedish now and then. Was that a crime?

He didn’t arrive until twenty to four, but when he walked in he didn’t even have the decency to apologize. Instead I got a moronic smile and an embarrassed “You know how it is . . . ?”

“I’m sorry to say I don’t.”

“Well you wouldn’t, would you? You’re not an artist.”

Nonetheless he got started. It was an unpleasant job. A blocked exit pipe from the water closet. But he worked without complaint. I waited until he’d broken the hog’s back, then asked him in for a cup of coffee.

“I don’t really have time”, he said, “but I suppose you want a chat, don’t you . . . ?”

“Wash your hands please, Ingmar,” I said.

We sat in my late grandmother’s best parlour sofa; with one of her lace tablecloths on the table, and home-baked cinnamon buns baked according to her recipe.

Ingmar folded his hands in his lap.

“I guess you want to talk about film?” he said.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“People don’t understand, I don’t know anything about film. Just because I’m an Ingmar Bergman doesn’t mean I know about film. The fact is I’ve never accomplished anything in film. The Swedish film industry is too small.”

“But you’re a genius. Everyone knows that.”

“Listen to me now!” he said sharply. And then he went through everything I already knew.

In 2010 the Swedish Film Institute had held a meeting to discuss the international crisis in Swedish film. There was no lack of directors in Sweden, but the quality was simply not there. Trendy young video dwarfs . . . monstrosities with beer guts and model wives . . . self-glorifying mediocrity all over the place.

They all wanted to be Fellini. Or at least Steven Spielberg.

Their films had begun to lose that ubiquitous Scandinavian feeling. Winter light. Snow glistening under the fir trees. Or a shoreline in Gotland where big waves roll in, while a bearded man stands reflecting on his life. In flashback. Norwegian fjord ponies with bells, burning torches on the sleighs, packs of wolves with lolling tongues, a peasant deflowering a goat in a byre, a girl with a basket picking blueberries in a dark forest, an old pastor in the sacristy snatching a quick glass of rye before Christmas Mass.

All this was on the verge of being lost. Forever.

Meanwhile, the people in the streets were ingesting hamburgers and flocking to see second-rate American films full of guns, drugs and decadent sex.

Men would no longer say, “Miss Nyström looks very pretty today.” They’d say, “Lena, you’re looking horny, fancy a screw?”

Women would no longer respond, “Now Lennart, don’t be so forward.” They’d say, “Okay, I’ve got nothing better to do.”

And because of this the world had certainly become a worse place.

There was a stark realization at the Swedish Film Institute that radical measures were needed. The situation could hardly get any worse.

For that reason, Ingmar Bergman was called in — by that I mean they groveled and begged until they were given an audience at his home on Fårö.

Mr. Bergman was by then very advanced in years; he tottered about with a stick. His mysterious eyes twinkled at the Film Institute Committee, as he waited for them to speak. The Committee made a suggestion; Ingmar Bergman’s face flushed with pride when he realized the implications. This was the masterstroke. His vision would dominate the Scandinavian millennium.

Slowly the words came stumbling over his dried lips: “I am Sweden.”

And with this he allowed the doctors to take samples of his stem cells.

The committee later brought these cells to Stockholm, where two hundred and fifty Ingmar Bergman clones were produced. These were released like hungry lions among a herd of cud-chewing cattle.

Problems became evident almost from the very beginning.

The main problem, as the plumber had already suggested, was the diminutive size of the Swedish film industry. There was not room for two hundred and fifty geniuses on the playing field — or should I say badminton court?

A couple of Ingmar Bergmans ended up in California. One of them became a porn film director, but later shot himself. Another one set up a bakery, and made large sums of money selling Swedish sweet buns stuffed with whipped cream and marzipan to the discerning customers of Beverly Hills. Later he was arrested for poisoning a number of celebrated network stars.

In Sweden there was a bloodbath.

Twenty-six Ingmar Bergmans disappeared. Several were found floating in the Baltic, one was later located in an ashram in Madhya Pradesh, a few ended up working in the Russian oil industry as drill platform operators, one was found cut into small pieces in a bin-liner in Malmö.

About fifty Ingmar Bergmans were detained in psychiatric hospitals. This became very expensive for the government, which at once demanded compensation from the Swedish Film Institute.

One Ingmar Bergman became the Chief Executive of the Bohuslän Fishermen’s Federation, and disavowed himself from any further interest in filmmaking.

Among the Ingmar Bergman clones that ventured into the film industry, no punches were pulled.

Ingmar Bergman 1 raised the necessary finances to make a film about a man involved in an extramarital affair with his own cousin. The set-up of the story was this: the cousin had saved him from drowning when he was twelve years old. Hence he lived with a terrible, phobic terror of water which made it difficult for him even to take a shower. His wife — an evil, wart-speckled hag — hated him and refused to sleep in the same room. Only his cousin could bring him out of those deep wells of panic, into the light. This lovely, suffering woman spent hours soothing him before he would enter the bathroom. Meanwhile his wife, like some dysfunctional character in a Tennessee Williams play, was vociferous in her scorn. Only with his cousin could he maintain his bodily hygiene while at the same time enjoying the fruits of a sexual relationship — albeit one that was considered morally suspect in society. His wife felt ill-used, maybe even justifiably so; yet this did not excuse her argumentative, angst-ridden behaviour.

Suddenly, two days before the commencement of principal photography, Ingmar Bergman 1 was run over by a tram.

Ingmar Bergman 2 entered the fray. He wanted to make a film about a woman who heard voices. Her psychologist was convinced that she was suffering from paranoid delusions. But in the course of their therapeutic session it gradually dawned on him that she was communing with his forefathers. Specifically, she was in contact with his ascetic great-great-grandfather who in their sessions repeatedly ordered him to stop working as a therapist and take up his true vocation as a wandering lay preacher.

Ingmar Bergman 2 was also killed — a light plane flew into his house. The pilot was a film director whose career lay in ruins. He was not, it is worth adding, an Ingmar Bergman; just an ordinary person.

Ingmar Bergman 3 had a quality that the others lacked; he had leadership. Before long he was the king of the castle. He gathered a group of twenty Ingmar Bergman clones around him, controlled their creative drives with Proustian ferocity and forced them under oath and contract to work up his plot-lines into finished manuscripts. From time to time one of them disappeared, usually after creative differences or occasional brazen attempts to make a film of their own.

The national media blustered and heckled about murder and corruption at the heart of Sweden’s film industry. But the journalists were silenced with bribes or bullets.

Soon, the Swedish film miracle was once again up-and-running!

The world noted a new filmic genre, the so-called “death rattle genre.” This cinematic form is characterized by the presence of a dying person, usually a retired/semi-retired priest or schoolteacher reflecting on his life and reaching an insight that sparks a crisis. In many cases the resolution of this crisis hinges on the necessity of a final conversation/ reconciliation with a long-lost son/daughter or similar relation. This long-lost person is travelling as fast as he/she can, in order to speak to the dying central character before he/she expires. Frequently this journey takes the form of a frantic chase on horseback — occasionally a sleigh with burning torches, occasionally a pack of wolves/bears/lynxes in pursuit, occasionally a blunderbuss used to dispatch a number of these wolves/bears/lynxes, etc. — through deep, almost impassable snow. On a couple of occasions Ingmar Bergman 3 uses the device of an epic long-distance terrain-skating journey across a vast frozen lake inhabited by large, aggressive elk. In many cases this person, whether a friend/ex-lover/son/daughter, arrives too late to be enlightened by the last words muttered from the dying person’s lips. In other cases, when the loved one does finally arrive, there is a further misunderstanding prompting the loved one to storm out of the house — leaving the dying person to bitterly contemplate an eternity of antagonism and unfulfilled love.

Of course, it is an unspoken rule of the genre that cinema audiences must be fully informed about the spoken/unspoken/misunderstood conflicts. Audiences are thus obliged to endure the bitter-sweet reality of misinformed love; yet the truth is destined never to be known outside the reality of the film. The audience comes to an excruciating realization that, if only they could enter the world of the film, they would be able to dispel the tragedy and gloom hanging over this twilit universe.

An American film critic called this “the Orpheus and Eurydice dialectic” because there is always an insurmountable barrier between the world of the audience (i.e. Orpheus) and the fictitious characters (i.e. Eurydice) which may only by the magic of Art be surmounted for a few precious moments. Ultimately the audience must always turn around and look at the cinema fire exits glowing in the dark, and know they are destined never again to enter the codex, now irretrievably lost.

In fact, everywhere there were critics opining and pontificating on Swedish cinema — “An almost Oriental purity of style and vision . . . ” Or “Melodrama married through sparse visionary unity with the Japanese haiku form . . . ”

Cinema audiences grew knowledgeable about every obliquity from the rules of the genre — like chess aficionados admiring each variation in established strategic sequences. There were sighs and irritated coughs every time a lesser Bergman attempted in some minor way to innovate or depart from the established formats laid down by the greater Ingmar Bergmans — that is (in numerical order and without preference) 3, 7, 68, 87-95 (also known as “The Cluster”) and 201.

For instance, Ingmar Bergman 7 (see above), one of the members of the powerful “Script IB Group,” tried to introduce a new dramaturgy in which a dying priest suddenly revives and establishes a loving relationship with his long-lost child.

Having thus displayed his poor judgement, this individual suddenly broke his sternum and was forced to retire from the film business.

After delivering his long-winded explanation, all of which I already knew, Ingmar Bergman 236, my plumber, helped himself to a second cinnamon roll. Shaking with emotion, he chewed it with rage and intensity until it was a mere lump of dough in his throat suitable only for swallowing and disposing of in the nether heartlands of his stomach and ultimately, his greater intestine.

I leaned forward and whispered:

“Would you . . . if the chance presented itself . . . want to make a film of your own?”

Ingmar Bergman smiled coolly, and focused his icy, sad eyes on me. “My dear fellow, you must be utterly deranged! Do you really believe I would volunteer such information . . . to you . . . a mere pensioner?”

“No, I suppose not. I was just wondering.”

“To wonder . . . that is allowed,” he said mischievously.

Then it happened, that weird thing I am still sitting here wondering about. Should I have reported him to the Film Institute? For recidivist behaviour? After all, he did not have a license to indulge in creative activities.

Had I done so, I might have saved his life!

Suddenly he got out a little camera. And before I knew it, he had taken a photo of me.

Then he stood up and said:

“I always photograph my clients. I’m assembling an enormous photo-collage composed of all these portraits.”

“Whatever for?”

“If you stand at a good distance, you can see it’s a self-portrait . . . of me. I am using your identity to fashion a likeness of myself, because that is what we all do, my friend. Whatever role we are assigned in life, we stamp our identity, our meaning, onto the irrelevance of our many repetitive tasks.”

I was puzzled. Bergmans can be so diffuse. “So what’s the meaning of it, this self-portrait?”

He smiled patiently. “There is no meaning, my friend. If one has an ego, if one is a genius as I decidedly am, one has to do what one has to do. It has fallen to me to spend my life, indeed to waste my life, as a plumber. On the other hand I have no doubt that I would similarly feel I had squandered my years had I worked as a film director. All things are vain and meaningless except Art, and all attempts at making Art are doomed to fail. Yet only an Artist can know this.”

“It makes me glad I’m not an artist myself.”

“Indeed, that is so. Before I die I must have a finished portrait of myself, or my life will have been something worse than wasted. It will have been a lie!” He gestured dramatically in the air: “Ingmar Bergman, plumber! A simulacrum of my life . . . made up of its constituents, the clients whose lives I have played a part in . . . whose pipes I have cut and soldered. Do you understand?”

“I have to confess I don’t.”

“Ah well, how could you? You’re not an Ingmar Bergman, are you? No you’re not.”

With this, he stood up to leave. Quickly I paid him thirty-five pounds in cash.

Soon after, I read in the newspaper that “my” Bergman had been gored to death by an elk whilst picking blueberries in Gotland, where he had gone to visit a dying relative (Ingmar Bergman 124) and do a bit of skating. The police saw “no evidence of foul play” in the manner of his passing; of course, they did concede that the elk had misbehaved. The coroner passed a verdict of “accidental death.” The Swedish Film Institute issued a statement in which reference was made to his “honourable life spent faithfully serving as a member of the plumbing fraternity — with remarkable, visceral similarities in the manner of his passing to countless numbers of Swedish films made by his beloved relatives.”

I threw away the newspaper, and I am now waiting to die myself. I must confess, I am sickened by the corruption of the world. How many hours, how many days have I not sat here contemplating the meaning of Ingmar Bergman 236’s life? Slowly, the dim, mysterious words he imparted to me have lost their veil but I am still puzzled. I have stepped into the clear light of his artistic purpose. If only I could have seen his photo-collage, that might have made a difference to my happiness, rationally speaking! I might then have understood his need to express himself in sculpted light. Yet any half-sane person would surely ask himself why a photo-collage should be so important. Why does it really matter?

Three weeks after the news of his death, the toilet was blocked once again!

This time I paid for a proper plumber, who arrived on time. Unlike Bergman 236, he didn’t have time for coffee and, to be frank, I didn’t even offer.

As soon as he’d put the problem right he muttered a “goodbye” and left without another word.

I stood in the window and watched him walk away. It occurred to me that, in one sense, he was an even greater mystery than Bergman 236. There are people in this world who do not say very much, and have no avowed purpose other than putting bread on the table as efficiently as possible. This is enough to satisfy them.

If I had been born an Ingmar Bergman I would have made a film about them.

They get the job done.

© Henning Koch

Henning Koch set out as a performance poet reading with the Hell’s Gate Poets in London in the early 1990s. He spent the middle part of the 1990s working on a long (unpublished) historical novel (Unwitching the Lake) set in the 19th century iron foundries of Dalsland in the west of Sweden. In the same period he translated a novel by the Russian-Swedish writer Jascha Golowanjuk entitled My Golden Road from Samarkand, published by Quartet Books (UK) in 1993. Henning Koch’s first screenwriting credit was Deus Ex Machina (1995) which competed in 17 film festivals worldwide and won “Best Film Idea” at the Girona Film Festival, as well as being shown on television in Spain, Sweden and the UK. In 1999 he adapted the experimental Swedish feature script Straydogs (1999), shot in English in an abandoned factory in Uddevalla, Sweden. In the same period he also worked on another feature film shot in the remote Swedish western isles: he spent the summer sleeping along-side the cameras in a shed, taking care of a goat, emptying the latrines and writing Unborn, a feature film script optioned by Bravura Films (London) in 2001. In the same year he also structured a feature film dramatization of Marianne Fredrikson’s novel Hanna’s Daughters for Odeon Pictures in Germany. In 2004 he wrote the short film Here I Lie based on Thomas Anderberg’s novel Här ligger jag. It went on to compete in Cologne, Imola and Teheran as well as being theatrically distributed in Sweden. Since 2002 he has worked as a translator and dramaturge for Yellowbird Films, makers of Henning Mankell’s Wallander series made for television/cinema in Scandinavia and Germany.Early in 2005, he made the decision to concentrate on prose writing. He moved to Sardinia, off the coast of Italy, where he wrote the short story collection Love Doesn’t Work, to be published by Dzanc Books (www.dzancbooks.org) in 2010. Currently he is working on a fantasy thriller entitled The Maggot People.