Persona

'Persona' is one of the most enigmatic movies in the history of cinema. Those who read the chronicles written right after the 1966 release of the film or the articles dedicated to it in the books of cinema history will encounter as many interpretations as authors. The same happens if we read the opinions written by film lovers on sites like IMDB, or we discuss the film between us. Ingmar Bergman had the inspiration not only of not talking a lot about this film (even less than about his other films) but he also avoided sharing too much of his personal thoughts or ideas even with the actresses or the other members of the production team. The result is an enigma. Each of us who sees or sees again this movie has his own Persona'.

The ambitions are clear from the way the film is 'packaged' using the classic projection room effects. Short sequences from classical films emphasize the effect of declaring 'here we have a work of cinema'. The prelude sets up an atmosphere that could be defined as a dream, we are clearly in a world that resembles the real world but which exists only in the eyes and souls of the spectators, built with materials put together by the creator of the film from his own thoughts and dreams about the world. The 'story' could be told in few words, even if it is not a banal story. This is where the interpretations begin. What do we actually see on the screen? An ambiguous relationship between two women, evolving from a patient-care relationship to an attraction that starts to look as a melding of one into the other? Are the two characters the symbols of the two facets of the human personality - the soul and the character - as interpreted by some experts in the psychoanalysis theories? Is there a hint (or more) to a lesbian relationship? Maybe there is an element of class struggle, between the actress active on the intellectual level and the country girl whose strongest emotions are on the erotic plane? Are we dealing with a horror story, a thriller in which there is a physical threat and a struggle between the two women to gain control one over the other? Why did the actress stop talking - personal traumas, maternity failure? What is the connection between the horrors of the outside world (wars, the Holocaust) and the inner storms concealed by the Scandinavian calm? These are just a few of the questions that can be asked and of the possible interpretations.

Comprehensive and ambitious cinematographic constructions involve risks. More than 50 years after the film, the Vietnam War is no longer actuality but history, closer to the Holocaust which is also quoted by the famous photograph of the terrorized little boy in the Warsaw ghetto. The black and white image also gains aesthetic significance, not necessarily obvious and intentional at the time the film was made. Acting is gorgeous, Bergman's two preferred actresses (and lovers), Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann are building on the screen two versions of femininity that at some point merge one into the other, two variants of the director's fascination with women for which he created the most generous roles in his films. Seen for the first time or seen again today, 'Persona' is a cinematic art concentrate and an intellectual challenge that continues to attract and fascinate through its open character and enigmas.

This is one of the most studied and challenging films in history, inviting analysis from historians, critics and psychiatrists. I find it not dramatically different from other Ingmar Bergman films. The internal dialogue, frank discussions on sex, confusion about one's place in the universe, brutally harsh judgements of the artist - these were present before Persona, and after. When asked about the film, Bergman said he trusted audiences to form their own conclusions. An answer I found refreshing. I don't think Bergman, who also wrote the screenplay, was out to create a puzzle that must be "solved". There's no gamesmanship.

I admire the film's aesthetic, the impeccable chemistry between Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, and its humanity. There's warmth and comfort in the writing. I go back to the bedroom confessional: Liv Ullmann's Elisabet, the actress who mysteriously stopped speaking, sitting on the bed; Andersson's Alma, the nurse charged with Elisabet's care, at the other end of the room. Alma vividly recalls a sexual experience on the beach, with a couple of voyeurs, salaciously detailing everything, subverting the image Elisabet may have had of her, as a prude. In that scene, the patient, Elisabet, transforms to therapist, and Alma becomes the patient. A rich irony.

PERSONA may well be Ingmar Bergman's most complex film--yet, like many Bergman films, the story it tells is superficially simple. Actress Elizabeth Volger has suddenly stopped speaking in what appears to be an effort to cease all communication with the external world. She is taken to a hospital, where nurse Alma is assigned to care for her. After some time, Elisabeth's doctor feels the hospital is of little use to her; the doctor accordingly lends her seaside home to Elisabeth, who goes there with Alma in attendance. Although Elisabeth remains silent, the relationship between the women is a pleasant one--until a rainy day, too much alcohol, and Elisabeth's silence drives Alma into a series of highly charged personal revelations.

It is at this point that the film, which has already be super-saturated with complex visual imagery, begins to create an unnerving and deeply existential portrait of how we interpret others, how others interpret us, and the impact that these interpretations have upon both us and them. What at first seemed fond glances and friendly gestures from the silent Elisabeth are now suddenly open to different interpretations, and Alma--feeling increasingly trapped by the silence--enters into a series of confrontations with her patient... but these confrontations have a dreamlike quality, and it becomes impossible to know if they are real or imagined--and if imagined, in which of the women's minds the fantasy occurs.

Ultimately, Bergman seems to be creating a situation in which we are forced to acknowledge that a great deal of what we believe we know about others rests largely upon what we ourselves project upon them. Elisabeth's face and its expressions become akin to a blank screen on which we see our own hopes, dreams, torments, and tragedies projected--while the person behind the face constantly eludes our understanding. In this respect, the theme is remarkably well-suited to its medium: the blankness of the cinema screen with its flickering, endless shifting images that can be interpreted in infinite ways.

Bergman is exceptionally fortunate in his actresses here: both Liv Ullman as the silent Elisabeth and Bibi Anderson as the increasingly distraught Alma offer incredible performances that seem to encompass both what we know from the obvious surface and what we can never know that exists behind their individual masks. Ullman has been justly praised for the power of her silence in this film, and it is difficult to imagine another actress who could carry off a role that must be performed entirely by ambiguous implications. Anderson is likewise remarkable, her increasing levels of emotional distress resounding like the waves upon the rocks at their seaside retreat. And Bergman and his celebrated cinematographer Sven Nykvist fill the screen with a dreamlike quality that is constantly interrupted by unexpected images ranging from glimpses of silent films to a moment at which the celluloid appears to burn to images that merge Ullman and Anderson's faces into one.

As in many of his films, Bergman seems to be stating that we cannot know another person, and that our inability to do is our greatest tragedy. But however the film is interpreted, it is a stunning and powerful achievement, one that will resonate with the viewer long after the film ends.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

From its opening, seemingly random B&W images, Ingmar Bergman's "Persona" screams intellectualism. The film is cold, clinical, and abstract. It induces deep, philosophical questions that lack answers, or questions that provide for a multiplicity of emotionally unsatisfying answers.

About eight minutes into the film, the story begins. In a hospital, young Nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) is assigned to care for Elisabeth Vogler (Liv Ullmann), an actress who, for no apparent reason, has ceased speaking. Concluding that there is nothing physically or mentally wrong with Elisabeth, the hospital exports her to a seaside cottage, where she is to be cared for by Nurse Alma. Most of the rest of the film is set at the cottage, where the two women get to know each other. But throughout, Elisabeth does not speak. She communicates only with facial expressions and body gestures.

For all of Elisabeth's silence, the film's script is remarkably talky. Nurse Alma talks in long monologues: asking, probing, recalling. She tries to build a relationship with Elisabeth, by vocalizing her own memories and emotional pains in life. Certainly, the film's curious narrative has a lot to "say" about the art, or rather the artificiality, of human communication.

The best element of the film is the artistic, B&W cinematography by Sven Nykvist. Lighting trends toward high contrast, with stark boundaries between light and darkness, a feature that contributes to the film's cold, intellectual tone. There are lots of close-up shots, even extreme close-ups, of the two women. The film's production design is ascetic, unadorned, austere. And this, too, enhances the analytic, abstract feel of the film.

Bergman conceived "Persona" while he was confined to a hospital. And I am inclined to think that the film is a cinematic expression of his own inward psychological struggles during that period of his life.

In other words, "Persona" communicates to us as much about Bergman's mindset, and his ideas of suffering and reality, as it does about any deep, universal questions in a post-modern world, although to some extent, the two dimensions intersect and overlap. Bergman is telling us that, ultimately, the film is not real. It is "nothing". It is an artificial human construct. That is, it is art, a perception that approximates, but does not replace, what we experience as reality.

Ingmar Bergman's 'Persona (1966)' opens with a bewildering montage of sounds and images, a frenzied newsreel of sex, death, cinema and comedy. The sequence is so far removed from my previous experience with the director that its effect is jarring, shocking; I momentarily wondered if I'd hit a wrong button and started playing Buñuel's 'Un chien andalou (1929)' by mistake. I question Bergman's motives for including such an uncharacteristic opening, for it appears to have very little to do with the narrative that follows. Is this montage - an account of the sickening and concealed horrors and desires of society - a possible explanation for Elisabeth's continued silence? Even so, it all seems somewhat exploitative, as though Bergman was simply going for shock-value, obliterating any notions of subtlety with which I had begun to associate him {though I'll admit that the strength of 'The Seventh Seal (1957)' arose from its not-so-subtle representation of Death}. The opening scene concludes with a young boy awakening in the morgue, his hand outstretched towards the vague image of a woman's face. Elisabeth's unloved child? Alma's aborted fetus?

An endless line of critics, it seems, have celebrated 'Persona' as a masterpiece, and among the greatest films ever made. I'd hate to be the lone voice of dissent, but the film is certainly the lesser of the three Bergmans I've hitherto seen, if only due to the noticeable absence of the good-natured humour to be found in both 'The Seventh Seal (1957)' and 'Wild Strawberries (1957)'. If, indeed, I were to describe 'Persona' as a masterpiece, it would be in regards to the visuals, which, photographed by long-time Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist, are beyond description in their detail and intimacy. The film takes particular interest in the human face, and entire conversations of words and emotions are played out through the communication of the eyes, and the glimmering hint of a smile on the lips. There is one immortal moment in the film when Bergman juxtaposes the faces of each woman onto the screen, merging Elisabeth (Liv Ullmann) and Alma (Bibi Andersson) into a single entity.

Persona also includes one of the most vivid depictions of sex that I've ever seen. Though the film shows us nothing, Alma's whispered description of an intimate encounter on the beach is staggering in its effectiveness; her words allow the viewer to formulate their own visuals, every emotion and nuance perfectly incorporated from the rich story we are being told. Though I may exhaust hours spouting the merits of Ingmar Bergman's film, I can't escape the fact that watching 'Persona' felt very much like a chore. The film boasts a relatively short running time, but it never seems to attain any comfortable sense of rhythm, and, by the film's end, I was left wondering just what the film was trying to get at. Bergman includes various allusions to Bertolt Brecht's "Verfremdungseffekt" effect – highlighting the inherent artificiality of the cinematic medium – with the film at one point appearing to burn; but, unlike in Fellini's '8½ (1963),' these self-referential flourishes seem to serve little foreseeable purpose. Am I looking too far into this film for meaning? Or am I not looking far enough? Even just hours afterwards, another layer of meaning has unfurled itself. Maybe it'll get better.