Finished my second viewing of Bergman's The Hour of the Wolf today and decided to read it platonically. In the end, artist Johan Borg loses his battle with insanity, his demons steadfastly claiming his reason. Borg is living upon an island where his imagination has conjured up a band of puerile aristocrats with nothing better to do than torture one another and whomever they happen to encounter. In years past, Borg had a sultry affair with one Veronica Volger, within which the passionate participants had to keep things hushed up to avoid arousing public shock and condemnation. Borg's desire for this icon of pleasure, the-worst-possible-treatment for his sanity, the best for his art, fuels his artistic integrity while ruining his drive. Eventually, Borg murders the living creating child within (whose vibrant presence inspires his texts) and confronts his appetite for Veronica within his manufactured hallucination. The aristocrats, functioning as perverted reason, cheer him on, producing an abject audience, reveling in their abomination, utterly humiliating Johan (platonically, passion united with the appetites leads to the flaking of wisdom). Afterwards, defenseless, his reason having abandoned him, he travels to the woods to perish, amongst the flowers and the fauna, the streams and the breeze.
Listen closely and you'll hear them coming, if you have any talent, any off-beat goals that you know you can achieve while they continually attempt to break your confidence. Just try not to hear what they say, crush the headaches, persevere.
Through the hour of the wolf.
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