
Among other things, Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac (playing this week at the Siskel Center) is an extended tribute-cum-insult to Ingmar Bergman, with the meandering intellectual blather delivered by Stellan Skarsgard's character often coming off as a deadpan parody of the confessional monologues one finds in many Bergman chamber dramas. That the film runs four hours seems like part of the joke, a comment on the interminableness (for some viewers) of Bergman's soul-searching.…
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