A presentation of God's figure much darker than in Oresteia or Odyssey, as completely relentless and menacing, and of the paradoxical (therefore sexual) feeling human beings have towards their bacchic tendency: instinctively repelled by its potential destruction to reason and to profane orderliness, but also irresistibly enticed by the ecstasy it promises (or at least seems to promise). Bergman's staging arrangements and cinematic techniques contributed to the impressiveness of the presentation.

Having Dionysus and Tiresias played by women highlights the sexual aspects of the Bacchae in an interesting way, and Bergman seems to want to present religion as divided between a civic institution prone to authoritarianism and a contagious upsurge of affect aimed at a higher plane and prone to madness and mass violence, but also and especially of the interchangeability of these two faces. Viewing may benefit from Francesca Schironi's careful reading of the film from a classicist's perspective.