Autumn Sonata

Years ago, the wonderfully talented artist Kolyo Karamfilov shared with me that "the face is God's seal." Bergman is a poet of the human face – the "other face," the invisible one, withdrawn into the shadow of personality, trembling beneath the surface of apparent balance, driven out of patience, ecstatically losing equilibrium. In "Autumn Sonata," the hidden face, in the guises of mother and daughter, appears to shift the focus from the apparent, to destroy the apparent deceptive shell of the everyday, and to turn life into existence. This nocturnal face is born of dreams, filled with passions, wounded, furious, mad. Yet in this face shines a religious hope. In "Autumn Sonata," Bergman does not point to salvation, but reveals the thirst for it. The play consists in the feeling of mercy as an event, not as a result. The very human effort toward mercy turns "Autumn Sonata" into an existential event with the impact of an ancient tragedy – both Medea and Electra.