Autumn Sonata (1978)

Halvar Björk: Viktor

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Quotes 

• Viktor : [reading]  One must learn to live. I practice every day. My biggest obstacle is I don't know who I am. I grope blindly. If anyone loves me as I am I may dare at last to look at myself. For me, that possibility is fairly remote.

• Viktor : I'd like to tell her just for once that she is loved whole-heartedly but I can't say it in such a way that she'd believe me. I can't find the right words.

• Viktor : When Erik drowned, that gray film got even grayer. For Eva, it was different.

  Charlotte Andergast : Different?

  Viktor : Her feeling lives on, uncorroded. Or so it seems anyway. If she feels that her son is alive and near her... well, perhaps that's how it is. She seldom speaks of it. I guess she's afraid it might upset me, as indeed it would. But what she says sounds true enough. I believe her.

  Charlotte Andergast : Yes, you're a minister.

  Viktor : The little faith I have lives on her terms.

  Charlotte Andergast : I'm sorry if I hurt you.

  Viktor : It doesn't matter. Unlike you and Eva, I'm confused and uncertain. It's my own fault.

• Eva : Why on earth did she come here? What did she expect would happen after seven years? What did she expect?

  Viktor : I wonder.

  Eva : And what did I expect? We never give up hope, do we?

  Viktor : I don't think so.

  Eva : Don't we ever stop being mother and daughter?

• Eva : A writer whose name I've forgotten said, "It's like a ghost falling on top of you when you open the door to the nursery having long since forgotten it is the nursery." Do you think I'm an adult?

  Viktor : I guess being an adult is being able to handle your dreams and hopes, not longing for things.

  Eva : Do you think so?

  Viktor : Maybe you stop being surprised.

  Eva : You look so sensible with your old pipe. You're very adult.

  Viktor : I don't know. I'm surprised every day.

  Eva : At what?

  Viktor : At you.

• Charlotte Andergast : I think Eva is terribly unhappy. I'm appalled when I hear her rambling on. It's so neurotic.

  Viktor : Just a moment, Charlotte, and I'll try to explain how I see my wife. When I asked Eva to marry me, she said she didn't love me.

  Charlotte Andergast : What do you mean?

  Viktor : I asked if she loved someone else. She said she had never loved anyone, that she was incapable of loving. Eva and I lived here for several years. Then Erik was born. We'd given up hope of a child of our own and had talked about adopting one. With her pregnancy, Eva underwent a complete change. She became cheerful, gentle and outgoing. She got lazy. She lost interest in her parish work and her piano playing. She would sit by that window, gazing at the play of light over the mountains and fjords. We were suddenly very happy. I'm much older than Eva. I felt as if a gray film were settling over life. I felt as if I could look back and say, "Well, well, so that was my life. That's how it all turned out." But suddenly things were different.