Remembering Max von Sydow

Aren: Sometimes it’s a person’s absence, not their presence, that clarifies how significant their contributions to art are. That’s the case with Max von Sydow, who died on Sunday, March 8, 2020 at the age of 90. Not that von Sydow was a minor film actor. He was nothing short of an arthouse legend. But he carried himself in such a way that his talent and skill never overwhelmed the works he starred in, most notably his collaborations with Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. This means that he was perpetually under-appreciated, even in cinephile circles. He had the gravitas of a movie star, but without the pomposity, meaning that no matter how towering his performance, he always disappeared into the role.

His work with Ingmar Bergman is an obvious starting point to outline his contributions to cinema. Few actor-director pairings have been more iconic. In Bergman’s most famous work, The Seventh Seal, von Sydow plays Antonius Block, the defiant knight who plays Death in a game of chess in a bid to stave off his doom. Von Sydow endows Block with a pride that seems to challenge even Death’s certainty; it personifies Bergman’s own examination of whether in a universe where God is silent, man must be strong and loud to hold fast against the world. Even in 1957, his confidence on screen was apparent; you need only look at the casual way he sits with his elbow resting on his knee while facing Death to see how his confidence is borne out physically in his performance.

But also central to this performance is the desperation beneath Block’s pride, which shows that his own projection of strength is compensating for a perceived spiritual void. During Block’s confession to a priest (revealed to be Death) early in the film, von Sydow lays bare all the existential angst that comes with this absence. Even in the role that made him a star in Sweden and in arthouses around the globe, von Sydow showed a range befitting a master.

Anders: Yes, von Sydow was a giant of cinema, but a quiet one, which is surprising considering his physical presence that you note. For me he will always be inseparable from his films made with Ingmar Bergman, able to embody that existential vulnerability that Bergman needed in his films. On the Monday evening after I heard of his death I watched his Bergman collaboration, The Magician, and it was a good reminder of many of von Sydow’s strengths as an actor: his piercing blue eyes, projecting his intensity even in black and white, his height, and his strikingly-angular, handsome features. Von Sydow also had a wonderful voice, deep in timbre and resonance. Interestingly, he spends the first bulk of The Magician silent, using only his eyes and his body to inhabit a character uncertain how to continue his charade. It’s a great performance in an amazing run of films.

Von Sydow managed to present both strength and tenderness. He could be believable as a villain, but also displayed a warmth that invited the viewer closer. I think this is probably why he was cast as Jesus in George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told, his first foray into international cinema outside of his native Sweden. While the notion of a blue-eyed, northern European Jesus is perhaps problematic in some aspects, it’s clear that it was as much for his character as his appearance that he was cast. 

Aren: Later in his career, von Sydow showed up in independent features and big blockbusters in Hollywood, playing a kind of elder statesman and adding gravitas to the proceedings. He starred in treacly dramas like Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (for which he garnered his second Oscar nomination) as well as popular franchises across movies and television, such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens and season six of Game of Thrones. There are memorable performances in these years, but none stand out like his work in Minority Report, which looms large over my own imagination.

Minority Report is my favourite science-fiction film, and von Sydow is a large part of the reason why. He plays Lamar Burgess, the director of Precrime, who is both the father-figure and antagonist to Tom Cruise’s Chief John Anderton. He’s great in the entire film, but I particularly love the scene when we discover that he framed John. It has one of my favourite line readings in all of cinema.

After Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) retraces John’s steps and realizes that John couldn’t have been guilty of killing Leo Crow (Mike Binder), he lays out his findings to Lamar in John’s apartment, which is now a crime scene. Lamar listens patiently and lets Danny think that he’s convincing him, but at the end of Danny’s big speal, he stops him and asks him, “You know what I hear, Danny? Nothing. No footsteps up the stairs, no hovercraft outside the window, no clickety-click of little spyders. Do you know why I can’t hear any of those things, Danny? Because right now, the precogs can’t see a thing.” He proceeds to shoot Danny with John’s gun, but it’s von Sydow’s line reading that registers the most here. He makes the hovercraft and spyders sound like commonplace items, instead of technolingo from the film’s futuristic setting, and his Swedish accent makes the “clickety-click of little spyders” sound like something of a nursery rhyme. But it’s the utter finality of the final line that makes this sequence so devastating. He knows that Danny has uncovered something and that he’s right and just, but that none of it matters because he has absolute control over the system; he exposes Danny’s futility and the fallacy of his free will in the process, which plays into the core themes of the film. 

Von Sydow played Christ and he played the Devil, he played a man playing chess against Death and a priest trying to combat a demon. No matter what role he played, there was a religious dimension to his performances. In Minority Report, he projects almost a divine authority, which is fitting as Lamar is a man playing God. Only von Sydow could command such a presence on screen.

Anton: Von Sydow is able to command utter believability in so many of his performances. You are horrified by the intensity, the cold burning, of his anger in The Virgin Spring. His deep, reassuring voice and wise face help ground The Exorcist in a sense of believability and realism. Can you imagine another actor repeating, “The power of Christ compels you!” so many times without it becoming farcical? Even the line reading from Minority Report that Aren praises above could easily have been one of those bad villain monologues found in so many thrillers. 

Anders: Two of my favourite non-Swedish performances for von Sydow have got to be as Father Merrin, the titular character in The Exorcist, and his role as the temperamental artist, Frederick, in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (still my favourite Woody film); in that film, he delivers the immortal phrase, in observation of the hucksterism of televangelists in the 1980s: "If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.” I think it’s interesting how faith played this interesting tangential role from his films with Bergman, to The Greatest Story Ever Told to The Exorcist and Hannah. And even his late period role in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, as Dr. Naehring, he intones very seriously to DiCaprio’s Teddy Daniels, “Do you believe in God, marshall?”

Anton: Von Sydow’s cameo at the start of The Force Awakens is a good summation of his overall career achievement. Simply the fact of casting von Sydow adds a sense of importance, depth of experience, and moral strength to the small part of Lor San Tekka. Not many actors are able to bring all that to a scene before they even speak. The impact of the part owes as much to the accumulation of von Sydow’s long career as it does to his actual performance. Even though von Sydow never played a role in the earlier Star Wars films, his imposing presence and his famous deep voice add so much to the delivery of the important first line in The Force Awakens: “This will begin to set things right.” Because it’s von Sydow, we feel like there’s an immense backstory to the character of Tekka. The casting also functions as a minor parallel to Lucas’s reliance on the famous veteran actor Alec Guinness to bring depth and gravitas to the world-building of the original Star Wars. I know it’s a minor part, but for me, it’s quite emblematic of what von Sydow brought as an actor to his later, often smaller roles.

Anders: Seeing von Sydow pop-up in those late career films was always a treat, even if it sometimes seemed below his capabilities. I think I’ll remember his late roles in Minority Report and Shutter Island most in the last 20 years, over what are essentially glorified cameos in The Force Awakens and Game of Thrones. That said, I think it spoke to von Sydow’s reputation that he was sought out to the end, lending his gravitas to cinema, irrespective of borders between genre, nation, or belief.

Rest in peace Max von Sydow (1929-2020)

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