Deep meaningful intellectual movie, makes you think on another level??

Melancholia

Sad Professor wrote: »

Another vote for Bergman. He pretty much single-handly introduced metaphysics to cinema. God, death, love, identity - he dealt with it all, and without ever seeming pretentious. This combined with his remarkable understanding of human emotions and relationships made him a truly unique yet totally accessible cinematic voice. Nobody ever imitates Bergman because they don't want to fail and look stupid. There's plenty of films about existential angst, but nobody does all-out existential crisis like Bergman did. This might make him sound depressing, but his films are actually incredibly cathartic and life-affirming. I remember seeing The Seventh Seal and Winter Light when I was about 19 or 20 and they had a profound effect on me, both emotionally and philosophically.

This ^. I couldn't have put it better myself, exactly what I was going to write.

Ingmar Bergman's films are great art.

Very little of the latter half of the 20th century qualifies as great art. All that comes to my mind now is (free form) jazz, Beckett and Ingmar Bergman.

He was simply an artist, a poet and a philosopher. He is the only director to have contributed on par with the great literary and artistic figures to the collective discipline of art. The greatest and most profound questions are explored in his films.

His films take Mortality, Love, the Human Psyche, the Female Psyche, Human Relationships, Meaning/Purpose and Existence and all the Professor referred to and he presents these concepts, difficult as it is, through the medium of cinema. He explores them so intimately you cannot help feel something profound. The slow zoom into a characters face, silence, stillness, colour saturation or a bleak sterile monochromatic representation of life that feels simultaneously numb and invigorating. Each shot is like a painting. The consistent intensity his films have have not been reproduced by any other director dealing with such concepts consistently.

You will also notice how his female characters are usually his most complete and most rounded which is very rare and something that would have been only possible in Sweden at the time. It is a luxury we are well afforded as he is the only director that comes to mind that dealt recurringly with the female psyche and female characters which is refreshing.

As an existentialist he is on par with Sartre and Dostoevsky.

He was one of the few directors to master the camera, though of course he was helped by his cinematographer Sven Nykvist.

If you're looking for some of his more profound work I'd try:

1. The Seventh Seal
   
2. Wild Strawberries
   
3. Persona
   
4. Cries and Whispers
   
5. Winter Light
   
6. Scenes From A Marriage

Here is his filmography.

From the Life of the Marionettes is very good as well.

It's one of his underrated works in my opinion.

Pi FTW.Awesome,mind bending stuff.

Not sure if its already been mentioned but i think this deserves a mention
a film i could only watch once but still has me thinking 10 years later..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB4xlYKAVCQ&feature=watch-now-button&wide=1

A wonderful, strange and hypnotic movie that sums up the early 90s so well and contains so much food for thought. Amazing too that it only cost 20,000 dollars and is more interesting and creative than most movies 100+ times that budget.