The second of writer-director Ingmar Bergman's trilogy of faith, a suicidal fisherman goes to local priest Tomas Ericsson in search of guidance, but the pastor is equally absorbed in despair, overcome with anger, apathy and doubt. Ericsson's severe hopelessness fuels a growing divide between himself, his mistress, his parishioners -- and God -- in Bergman's stark, black-and-white depiction of one man's spiritual crisis.