October 11, 2023
When watching Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light closely, one may notice that the main character, Pastor Tomas Ericsson, frequently exits the film frame during scenes. After he leaves the shot, the camera lingers for a moment on what remains. This is an escape from the frame, and it evokes a feeling of abandonment in the viewer.
In the early church sequence, this expressive device is used repeatedly and systematically. Jonas Persson, a fisherman who comes to ask Pastor Tomas for help, exits the frame when their conversation stalls. At that moment, Jonas Persson abandons the pastor left in the shot—but he also escapes the viewer’s gaze. A little later, at the church altar, when the pastor appears in the frame alongside his friend Märta, the situation parallels the earlier one. The scene ends with the pastor exiting the frame, thereby visually abandoning Märta. Even after that, there are several shots in which the pastor walks out of the frame. He is deliberately escaping.
In cinematic narration, when a character first establishes contact with the viewer in a close-up the edges of the frame become an element that expresses the intimacy of closeness. At that moment, the narrative points ou the character’s subjectivity, and the objective perspective recedes into the background. The more we sense that there is something invisible outside the frame, the more the narrative carries subjective tension. Close-ups are rich in subjective tension because of the intimacy of the face. When someone seen in close-up leaves the frame, that character not only escape the character remaining in the shot, but also leave the viewer with a feeling of abandonment by escaping the boundaries of the frame.
In Winter Light, the limitations of the frame are consistently used to express feelings of abandonment and solitude. A character’s escape from the frame breaks the connection with the viewer that close-up composition has built. The impression is that the pastor doesn’t want to be seen, that he wants to hide somewhere outside the visible world defined by the film frame. The visible world in a film is always limited. The film’s world exists only within the boundaries of the screen, though we are given an impression of a world beyond the screen. Thus, exiting the frame is also a flight from being seen. The pastor’s escape from the frame is symbolic as well—it is a flight into loneliness, away from interaction, away from existence, away from life itself.
People flee the anxiety created by global events, living conditions, marginalization, hopelessness, loneliness, and harmful interactions in various ways. In Winter Light, Jonas Persson is distressed by the fact that the Chinese are “raised to hate” and are acquiring nuclear weapons. The pastor doesn’t know how to help. How could he prevent the Chinese from acquiring nuclear bombs? A moment later, after Jonas has gone his own way, the pastor learns that Jonas Persson has taken his own life. Suicide is, of course, the ultimate and irreversible escape from the constraints that the world, circumstances, feeling of powerlessness and inner anxiety place on life. A final escape from life.
Tarkovsky wrote that cinema is “captured time”. But cinematic narration also captures more than time. Film characters are imprisoned within their own film, because framing and composition confine them to the reality presented by the movie. When Pastor Ericsson escapes from the frame by walking out of the shot, he is trying to escape the restrictions imposed by the film itself. He is trying to break free from the role he has been assigned. He is trying to step away from his pastoral duties, as he feels he can no longer fulfill them. Uncertainty, despair, anxiety, grief, inarticulateness, and the difficulties of giving and receiving help all find visual form in his escape from the frame.
Genre is also a form of framing. We need certain expectations when choosing which unfamiliar film to watch at a given moment. A genre is a label, and labeling carries the risk of discrimination. Some genres remain in the minority. If someone creates a narratively experimental film and labels it “experimental,” it is pushed to the margins and reaches only a small audience. But if the exact same film is labeled “drama,” it enters the mainstream and is watched and treated as a mainstream work. As a “drama,” with all its experimental storytelling techniques, the same film might become a huge success and even be recognized as a masterpiece. But if labeled “experimental,” it remains on the margins. Forever – or at least for a very long time. That is the power of categorization. That is the power of experimental storytelling.
Do we want cinematic art to remain confined, or do we want it to break boundaries and conventions?
I stand for escaping the frame to promote creativity!
There are degrees and varieties of realizing the escape. Filmmakers can limit the film’s subject, perspectives, locations, lens choices, camera movement, color palette, lighting, actors’ performances etc. By setting constraints, the artist may unleash creativity—but the constraints should not create a sealed-off space with no possibility of escape. Strict adherence to form and framing means imprisonment. And one should not remain imprisoned. Even in a formally perfect work, there must be a way out—a secondary exit.
Even the most perfect framing must allow a hint of imperfection, because without imperfection the work cannot breathe freely. If cinema is about making visible, then it must present the world it creates truthfully—including its flaws. Expressiveness is born from contrast. Breaking expectations created by defined categories increases expressive power. New forms of expression emerge by disrupting traditional structures and combining narrow labels into new configurations.
The filmmaker must also escape the frame. The artist must not remain trapped in a sealed space with no exit. The artist must rise up and rebel against the framing!
Each of us has only one life. Everyone is the protagonist of our shared life and world. For film characters, the life they live within the film’s images is the only life they have. It is a limited life, just as ours is. After the screening, does each viewer go their own way?
In Winter Light, escaping from the frame becomes a means of expressing loneliness. Yet loneliness should not be where we escape, even when we feel anxious. Therefore, the boundaries of loneliness must also be broken. If a character’s escape from the frame signifies abandonment of the viewer, then the character’s re-entry into the frame represents being seen and an effort for interaction. It is a pursuit of connection with the viewer. When a character first escapes from the frame but later returns, he comes alive again, because by returning to the image, he rejects the solitude that existed outside it.
At the end of Winter Light, Pastor Ericsson no longer escapes from the frame. In the final shot, he stands at the altar, at first with his back to the camera, then turns to face the audience. It is a variation of re-entering the frame and signifies the establishment of contact with the viewer. The pastor’s life in the world portrayed by the film appears to continue, even as the film ends. He is no longer escaping.
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