This suffering and longing that Bergman makes manifest is an effect of collective flight, an evasion of the Other that has been made worse by the post-modernism that the writer valorizes. Infected by the very Fear of the Other that is at the heart of the problem of alienation itself, post-modernism employs anti-essentialism, irony and the rejection of meaning to create an aesthetic that disallows affirmation of the truth of human presence, when it is only by re-encountering our Presence as a moral truth, an evocative call haunting our every encounter, that we can right ourselves and reawaken an authentic movement for social transformation. Far from being out of step with the times, that moral call is the prophetic and radical political meaning of Bergman’s art.

And far from being Frank’s political opposite, I would say Bergman takes Frank’s insight into America’s truth to a still more profound level. In this sense, what Kerouac said of Frank could also be said of Bergman’s portraits: “…he’s sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.”