and then came virgin spring

It's probably counter-intuitive, but I credit Ingmar Bergman—a man who lost faith—with helping me find my way back to the Catholic Church.

Actually, when it finally came time to see some Bergman, we didn't just put The Seventh Seal in the Netflix queue . We added Virgin Spring... mainly because of the connection with Last House on the Left.

Last House on the Left, you may know, was Wes Craven's first movie, and he was partnering with Friday the 13th producer Sean Cunningham (yes, we do know our way around slasher films!). Anyway, we thought it would be fun to do a Virgin Spring / Last House double-feature. I hadn't seen either film, so we would see the old Swedish folk tale on which they're based done both Arthouse and Grindhouse.

In the Swedish tale, the daughter of the house is raped and murdered during a trip into town by a gang of brothers that inadvertently takes hospitality that night at the parents' house. The parents, on learning of their daughter's death at the hands of their guests, take revenge. (Ever notice that it's always called "a shocking revenge"... regardless of whether the film publicist is talking about the Arthouse version or the Grindhouse version?).

Let me say up front that I was not much impressed with Last House on the Left. It's crudely plotted and poorly shot... and I saw it the day after taking a trip into the sublime. Virgin Spring , though, changed my life.

Bergman's film is set in Medieval Sweden. The parents are devout Catholics, thought there are still remnants of the ancient pagan religion surrounding them. On the day on which the film is set, they send their teenage daughter several miles into town to deliver candles to the priest for a feast day to the Blessed Virgin. The girl is young, exuberant, loving, full of life. When she is raped and murdered, we feel the nausea alongside the youngest (innocent) brother—a mere boy.

When the devout father exacts his revenge, we are shocked (as he soon will be) because his vengeance takes even the life of the boy. Bergman does not let us bathe ourselves in vengeance—as a more exploitative filmmaker would. Instead, he undermines the vengeance by the destruction of the innocent along with the guilty... and then showing the father stare down at the hands that have done this thing.

It's the final scene, though, that did something to me. As the father repents by the body of his dead child, a virgin spring of water spontaneously gushes from the ground... pure miracle and pure grace.

The next day, I was in a daze. About a month later, I was again a Catholic. Don't ask me how exactly it happened, but Bergman unleashed something in me... or rather, the Holy Spirit somehow worked through Bergman. Sweet irony, that.

Here's the prelude to the rape and murder of the girl: