Lord, Please Let My Soul Come to Maturity Before It Is Reaped
Note: This is the hundred-and-eleventh in a series of historical/critical essays examining the best in film from each year. Essentially, I am watching films from the beginning of cinematic history that interest me and/or hold some critical or cultural impact. My personal, living list of favorites is being created at Mubi, showcasing five films per year. All this being explained, what follows is an examination of my favorite 1921 film, THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE, directed by Victor Sjöström.
Despair and depression swam in my mind the first time I watched THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE. They swam in my mind the time after that. And they were around for my third viewing as well. And every time, Victor Sjöström’s masterful ode to the depravity and power of the human soul was a beautiful kaleidoscope before my teary eyes. I find it difficult to exaggerate how much THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE means to me, but I also find it difficult to explain why. This dark fairy tale out of Sweden, made almost 100 years ago, psychically injects itself directly into my brain and taps my compassion like few other films do. The word is one of my favorites when describing the qualities that define my favorite movies, and therefore I probably use it too much, but THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is about as humane as you get. Sjöström understands people, and he especially understands his own character, David Holm.
Weaving a story with a then-complicated narrative structure, building flashbacks within flashbacks, Sjöström demonstrates the moral failings of a formerly upstanding family man. We know drink is his downfall, but exactly why isn’t thoroughly explained. Sjöström may have been working from his source material, the 1912 novel THY SHALL BEAR WITNESS!, or he may have been purposefully demonstrating the casual monstrosity of men with everything to lose. His quiet destruction and rebuilding of the man, who Sjöström plays with incredible nuance and haunting eyes, lends a brisk pace to THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE.
When David becomes the last soul to die on New Year’s Eve, he’s fated to be the driver of the titular phantom carriage, serving Death and collecting souls for a year until the next unfortunate victim takes his place. But before this is to pass, he experiences a CHRISTMAS CAROL-esque revisiting of key figures in his life. Much praise has been directed to the ghostly effects of the film, which is due. But any kind of technical accomplishment, such as this effect work and the previously mentioned narrative structure, is outshined by the sheer power of the performances. Of course, Sjöström’s direction and Julius Jaenzon’s cinematography serve the film incredibly well. But they are not dazzling. They are simply, and perfectly, crafting the appropriate way to tell the story of THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE.
And that story has a lot to say about, well, life in general. About marriage and friendship and love and mortality and vitality. About responsibility and cruelty and parenthood. About those sheer and inexplicable sonic screams within your chest that come with true despair, and the elation that comes with being saved from a truly terrible fate. THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE truly impacted my life. The capacity for my actions were always inside me. So I don’t mean to say that watching this silent movie, which I know people would scoff at and assume is not a truly affecting piece of media, superficially motivated me to make huge changes in my life. But the film reflected what was inside me, and it helped me realize that.
I saved a relationship, for a time, from a self-fulfilling spiral that led to actions I can only say I truly regret. I ended that relationship with the understanding that this self-destructive behavior was harming others. And I now feel that a truly terrible thing that I could have inflicted upon someone else (my ineffectual or distracted presence) has been avoided. These emotions are reflected in THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE, and I recognized each of them each time I watched it.
The best art elicits, almost universally, a strong emotional response. By that criteria, THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is of the highest kind. It’s my belief that anyone can watch it and come away thinking that some part of it spoke to their life, their experiences, their very soul. My greatest takeaway: David Holm begs for mercy at the feet of the woman he condemned to death, the woman who he didn’t realize loved him with all her being. And when he can help her no longer, he turns to those he should have been helping all along: his family. It’s not about a choice between the superficial and true familial responsibility; it’s about the light of a truly beautiful soul guiding his way to enlightenment.
But then, Sjöström is wise enough to subvert his own film’s happy ending. “Lord, please let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped” are David’s final words in THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE. He, and Sjöström, acknowledge that the journey is not yet over.
Human life is not so simple as that. And neither are my emotions for this film. I reside in its world with a comforting and tortuous familiarity; I hope for its resolution just as I identify with its struggle. There isn’t an easy way out. There will be a lot of tears. But given the chance, anyone can find the love they discarded once again. It’s just going to take a lot of work.
