“I am dead, but I can’t leave you.”
David: Come over here Maria. Look at yourself in the mirror. You are beautiful. Perhaps more so than in our time. But you’ve changed. I want you to see that you’ve changed. These days you cast rapid, calculating, sidelong glances. Your gaze used to be direct, open, and without any disguise. Your mouth is an expression of discontent and hunger. It used only to be soft. Your complexion has become pallid, you use make-up. Your fine, broad forehead now has four creases above each eyebrow. You can’t tell in this light, though you can in daylight. Do you know how they get there? Indifference, Maria. And this fine contour from the ear to the chin, it’s no longer quite so evident. That’s where complacency and indolence reside. Look here, at the bridge of the nose, why do you sneer so often, Maria? Do you see, you sneer to often. Do you see, Maria? Beneath your eyes, those sharp, barely visible wrinkles of boredom and impatience.
Maria: Do you see all that in my face?
David: No, but I feel it when you kiss me.
Maria: You’re making fun of me. But I know where you see it.
David: And where would that be?
Maria: In yourself. Because we’re so alike, you and me.
David: You mean the selfishness, the coldness, the indifference?
(quotes from cries and whispers, ingmar bergman 1972).
goodnight ingmar.
