Remembering Bergman

I have to admit I haven't looked into Ingmar Bergman's films all that extensively but I felt something should be said of the man some considered our greatest living film maker. I have only seen a handful of Bergman's films, I cannot say I understood everything I've seen which made me want to watch them again and again. At times I felt turned off in Bergman's films. When I first saw the great film "Fanny and Alexander" I didn't know how I was supposed to feel. I was frustrated but I knew I didn't know the world of film all that well and I was still learning. I intend to go back to "Fanny and Alexander" and hope to understand it better.
"The Seventh Seal" is the film that introduced me to Bergman, I knew of the famous image of playing chess with death and I wanted to see the film where the image came from. I still try to wrap my mind around it, it's a film where Bergman offers no answers only that death is inescapable.
As I grew out of my teens and into my mid-twenties I realized that a lot of the questions I was asking myself like what's the meaning of life and what happens when we die were what Bergman specialized in. For awhile it seemed like my life was getting more morbid asking these questions, but in another way it was becoming more clear. I knew there were some questions I would never get answered, and I stopped obsessing about it. "The Seventh Seal" in particular works as a catharsis. It's asking all those questions we sooner or later do think about. It shares our frustrations and our fears about death, but it makes it ok because we know we are not alone in our thoughts. In the end we might march along on the Grim Reaper's chain, but it's that inevitability of death that makes life worth living.
Bergman's final film "Saraband" which was released only two years ago is a film of an old divorced couple coming together for what will be the last time. It's not so much a film about regret but a film about acceptance. In the most poignant scene we see the man and woman looking at eachother naked, each one knowing the others strengths and weaknesses. There's a look of sympathy and of love for the other, it was as if all of their mistakes didn't matter anymore. I wish "Saraband" was more highly regarded and perhaps in years to come it will be, it was Bergman's final statement on life and on death. He makes no apologies for human nature because when we are all stripped to our bare essentials we're all the same just skin and bones.