night,
I will attempt to answer your post, but I find there is so much wrong with your post that I am not sure where to start.
You imply that you are as you say "not interested in the question of man's relationship with God..." due to being an atheist? At first I read that, that is what I thought you were saying. But perhaps not; a firm believer in God might find it pointless to watch a film by a director who struggles with the issue of faith. So that is problematic about your post.
Then as you just noticed I said the issue rather than the question. This I think is not some mere semantic, meaning technical and not really material, distinction. The problem with question is that there are different kinds of questions, and which one or ones are we talking about? IS there a relationship between man and God, meaning is there a God in the first place? Or is the "question" one of what kind of relationship there is having already "concluded" that God exists? Or perhaps what is man to seek from such relationship as exists, where and how to find meaning?
Next, I don't think it fair or accurate to say that Bergman's body of work as a whole "boils down to" a category so limited as the relationship between man and God. Yes, some of them do, but I think as part of the larger, and Existentialist, category of the search for meaning within the construct of man's being in the world. This is all of being towards death, and hence the theological implications of that, but also being with others, the search for authentic meaning and relationships rather than that imposed from what Heidegger called "the Other". So there's that, too.
Your last sentence is also troubling for the way it effectively assumes, or reflects a conclusion on your part, that what you refer to as a "vague theological query" does not, cannot?, proceed on the human level. Also in effect that one cannot explore on such human level such things as parents' grief while also engaging in a theological analysis. In other words you are saying that the two are categorically distinct and so much so that they cannot be undertaken at the same time. Needless to say this is hardly the case, despite your apparent conclusion that they are so distinct and separate.
But perhaps most bothersome is the notion you imply that what I would call the larger theme of man's search for meaning, yes in part in terms of the issue of man's relationship with God, is somehow below you. Not worthy of your time or attention. In fact if that is true, that literally the search for meaning is somehow of no interest to you, then I would have to conclude that yes, Bergman is not for you. But then what is for you? Well, that's a different and I think very difficult question, one that happily I do not have to answer.
WHile you have apparently seen both The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries in addition to this film, I think a film like Winter Light is one that perhaps better shows what I am driving at here. While it is certainly fair to say in that film a crisis of faith in God in not only the protagonist, Tomas, but also other characters, is a central theme, it is not the only one. The film's narrative ties in, I think as a comparator to that crisis of faith, a crisis of faith in Tomas's being with others. This is highlighted mostly in is troubled relationship with his lover, Marta, but also in respect of other characters. Comparator I fact is an inadequate word or concept to describe the relationship, the apparent connection between, the two crises if you will. A brilliant film in several respects, Winter Light can even be seen as such if the viewer comes nowhere close to sharing Tomas's crisis of faith in God, for whatever reason. What is also there, still there if you prefer, is the anguish of his search for meaning.
But of course you do not say that a search for meaning is uninteresting to you, and refer indirectly to an interest in that which "dealt with the parent's grief at a human level..." I don't see this film as failing to do so, but instead doing so within the larger context of a search for meaning on some more metaphysical level than just looking at the emotion of grief.
But again if a search for meaning is uninteresting to you, then yes I would have to say Bergman is not for you. I was going to add a brief mention of how other of his films do not have as their primary theme man's relationship with God, but they all involve a search for meaning, so that is the issue.
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