Persona (1966)

As with other prominent examples of 1960s European art-cinema narration, much of the critical discussion of Ingmar Bergman's Persona has portrayed it as obscure and beyond words. True, the director wants his film to be a visual poem, and he composed the famous opening credit sequence to underline this. However, even in this dense, associative montage, most of the images are recognizable as references to familiar Bergman motifs: The Spider-God (spider), the Christian legacy (crucifixion, lamb to slaughter), art/illusion as construction (the films' title, details of a film projector, the film-within-the-film), the cold womb (a morgue interior with the young boy reaching toward a cold and distant "mom"). This sequence functions as a prelude summing up Bergman's artistic profile, as if he wished to take stock and then clear the slate for a fresh artistic start. Indeed, the whole film can be seen as a journey to an existential and aesthetic dead end, one where identity, meaning, and language finally collapse, destroying Bergman's art itself as the film strip stops in its track, melts, and breaks before starting again.

Superficially the plot of Persona is constructed as a variation of a female power game. Initially, the stronger of the two women in the film appears to be psychiatric nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson), especially because she appears certain of herself and does all of the talking - thus taking control over her silent counterpart. But faded with this enigmatic patient, famous actress Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullman), in an isolated summer cottage on a remote island, Alma' own seemingly stable, down-to-earth world-view begins to crumble. Her therapeutic talks turn into confessions of her own hidden secrets and desires. Gradually she is stripped of her own persona, the mask of lies and self-deceptions that makes up her identity and provides her life with a sense of meaning.

Persona's climax comes in the famous scene when the two women sit opposite each other dressed in identical black clothes. Alma begins to talk about Elisabet's rejection of motherhood and marriage, but soon finds herself talking about her own doubts concerning family life she previously envisioned with naive enthusiasm. Realizing this, she struggles to regain control with new words of certainty, but even her construction of language breaks down and she can only utter incoherent phrases. It is at this point that Bergman uses optical effect of fusing the women's faces into one haunting image, a horrific vision of identity in a total state of decomposition.

The film logically ends with Alma doing the only thing she can to reconstruct her life and sense of self: She returns to to the ordinary world that defines her and rejects Elisabet as the Other. In their final scene together we are back at the hospital from the opening scenes of the drama. Alma, now back in her old uniform and persona, forces Elisabet to repeat the word "nothing." Cut back to the boy at the morgue - Elisabet's unwanted child? Alma's aborted fetus? - and then the projector stops. Darkness.

Deep, huh?

Quote of the Day - Mr. Vogler - "The important thing is the effort, not what we achieve."

Tomorrow: Cries and Whispers (1972)