Through a Glass, Darkly 2008

The story unfolds over a single, tense 24-hour period on a remote island where four family members are on vacation, shortly after Karin is released from an asylum where she was treated for schizophrenia. The mood stays understated yet charged as old loyalties, unmet needs, and fragile trust collide under the strain of Karin’s condition and the past they share. The key players are Karin, her husband Martin, her father David, and Karin’s younger brother Minus, each carrying a piece of a family history that refuses to stay buried.

Karin’s husband Martin, Mads Ousdal, a respected doctor, tells Karin’s father David that Karin’s disease is almost incurable. This blunt assessment sets a cold tone for the day, laying bare worries about what lies ahead and who will bear the burden of Karin’s illness. David, a novelist with a stubborn writer’s block, has just returned from a long trip abroad and announces he plans to leave again in a month, even as the family tries to keep things together. The tension between art, responsibility, and care hums just beneath the surface as the family members attempt a fragile show of solidarity—an improvised play for David written by Minus, Karin’s 17-year-old brother. David applauds outwardly, but his reactions feel half-hearted, and his later explanations reveal a more guarded, defensive self, implying that his creative life has often overshadowed his relationships with those around him.

That night, after Karin rejects Martin’s erotic overtures, she wakes and follows the sound of a foghorn to the attic. She faints during a moment when she hears voices behind peeling wallpaper and then drifts into David’s room to read his diary, discovering his clinical description of her illness as incurable and his cool wish to document her deterioration. The morning brings a stark confrontation: Martin and David discuss Karin, with Martin accusing David of sacrificing his daughter for his art and of being self-absorbed, cowardly, and phony. David, evasive at first, finally admits that some of Martin’s criticisms hit home. He confesses a recent self-destructive impulse—an attempt to drive off a cliff that was thwarted by a faulty transmission—yet presses that, despite everything, he now loves Karin, Minus, and Martin, which he hopes can offer a reason to keep going.

Meanwhile, Karin shares more about her episodes with Minus, describing how she waits for God to appear behind the wallpaper in the attic. Minus, meanwhile, is caught between longing for a meaningful connection and the stirrings of adolescence; he is teased by Karin when she discovers he hides a pornographic magazine, a detail that adds to the day’s charged atmosphere. Later, on the beach, a coming storm pushes Karin toward a wrecked ship where fear overtakes reason, and an impulsive moment with Minus leads to an incestuous encounter that shocking and intimate all at once.

Minus tells the others about what happened in the ship, and Martin calls for an ambulance. Karin asks to speak with her father alone, confessing her misconduct toward Martin and Minus, and acknowledging that a voice urged her to act in these ways and to search David’s desk. She reveals a wish to stay at the hospital, explaining that she cannot live in two realities at once and must choose one. As they prepare to go, she runs to the attic again, where Martin and David watch, and she declares that God is about to walk out of the closet door. She fixates on a crack in the wall from which a spider emerges, and the noise of an ambulance and a helicopter outside shakes the room. She moves toward the door with a tremor of anticipation, then reels back in fear. Karin vanishes only to reappear in a frenzy, and she is sedated. When she stands again, she speaks of God—an evil-faced spider who tried to penetrate her—and says that she has indeed seen God: his eyes were “cold and calm,” and when he failed to penetrate her he retreated onto the wall. “I have seen God,” she declares.

Karin and Martin leave in a helicopter, while Minus confesses to his father that he fears losing touch with ordinary reality the moment Karin’s earlier experiences return. He asks whether he can survive that way, and David answers that he can—if he has something to hold on to. He offers a form of hope: love. The two fathers and son discuss the meaning of love in relation to God, and they find solace in the idea that their love might help sustain Karin through whatever comes next. Minus ends the day with a quiet, grateful acknowledgment that he finally had a real conversation with his father, uttering the simple, resonant line: Papa spoke to me.