Persona (1966)

 Ingmar Bergman's "Persona"

After completing his trilogy on God's silence with "Through a Glass Darkly," "Winter's Light," and "The Silence," Ingmar Bergman reached a point of stagnation. While he was completing these pieces on existentialism, French filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais were making works of post-modernism. They were re-inventing the language of cinema and filmmakers all across the globe were following suite. With his next project, Bergman abandoned his more stoic, traditional, existential pieces and decided to post-modernize his work.

When Godard made "Breathless," he reinterpreted the relationship between the viewer and the subjects in the film. More specifically, he interjected himself, the director, into that relationship. In traditional cinema, the viewer observed the subjects interacting in a constructed context. What Godard did was remind the viewer of this constructed context and thereby introduced a metatextual layer to the film. The viewer was now able to both view the events unfolding in the story along with the director's interpretation of those events through his use of editing, framing, and fourth-wall breaking. 

Enter "Persona," which takes these metatextual constructions to a whole new level. With Godard, these postmodern intrusions by the director were completely referential to what was happening outward. In watching a Godard film, you could completely understand the artist's viewpoint on what was happening in the story, in politics, in social setups, and his musings on just about anything in life. With "Persona," Bergman pointed that postmodern, metatextual lens inward. 

The story of "Persona" is both simultaneously very simple and very complex. The film begins with a projector lighting up and a film reel filtering through it. From the very beginning, Bergman illustrates to the viewer that they are watching an artificial construction. When are then shown various images, including a crucifixion, a spider, the killing of a lamb, and a boy who wakes up in a morgue. The boy sees the blurred image of his mother on a wall-sized television screen. 

Then, we are shoved into the true 'story:' a famous actress, Elisabet Volger, enters a mental hospital after deciding to quit speaking, leaving behind her husband and young son. It has been determined that this woman is very healthy psychically and mentally. This means her sudden lack of voice is self-determinant. A nurse, Alma, is tasked with taking her to a small cottage by the sea where she can recover. Alma begins talking to Elisabet and the lack of response entices her to continue more and more. 

Eventually, Alma comes to the conclusion that Elisabet is studying her for an acting role after reading one of the letters she sends out. The two begin to feud, leading to a complete disillusionment of narrative thereafter. The reality of the film begins to break apart. It becomes unclear as to whether these two women are actually one in the same. For example, Elisabet's husband visits the hospital, only for him to confuse her with Alma. As the narrative becomes unstable, the psychology and sanity of the two women equal this instability.

As the narrative structure disintegrates, our understanding of the visual logic breaks apart and the 'construction' of the film becomes a consistent reminder. My interpretation of these unfolding events are as follows: the two women are psychologically one in the same. Either Alma is a construction created by Elisabet, or vice versa. The sublime cottage is a construction in the mind of these women. The mind of these women is a construction by the film itself. The film itself is a construction by the director Ingmar Bergman.

Because "Persona" is a reflection inward, it is an illustration of Bergman himself. One hypothesis I have is that the small boy at the beginning and the end of the film (as well as the son of Elisabet pictured in the story) is actually Bergman himself. He sees an unclear image of his mother on a television screen. The mother he sees is not his real mother, but a presentation of her, a construction, a persona. He doesn't truly know his mother for the real person she is, rather he knows her through the persona she grants to him. When I looked up Bergman's biography, I noticed that his mother is actually a nurse, just like Alma. I believe that one of the interpretations of "Persona" is Bergman attempting to understand who his mother really was.

Another nugget of interpretation from this masterpiece is the very notion of duality and identity. In one of the sequences, Alma sits down with Elisabet and confronts her on her relationship with her son and her unwillingness to be a mother. Bergman allows the camera to occupy the subjective view of Alma: we the viewer are watching Elisabet squirm in her seat by Alma's remarks. Bergman then starts the scene over again, this time occupying Elisabet's subjectivity. Alma makes the same exact address to Elisabeth, but now she is the one looking directly into camera. This is just one of many examples of Bergman switching the subjectivity onto the viewer. At first we were the observer: observing the subject. Then, we became the subject: the one being observed. 

Throughout "Persona," Bergman continuously confuses the boundary between observer and subject. If the subtext of the film is to be taken metaphysically, then everything happening in the film is centered around internality; around psychology. If the two women are both simultaneously independent of one another and yet somehow both one and the same, then within us, Berman is identifying a duality. There is a subjective observer within us all: that little voice in your head narrating and judging. There also exists the you that's behaving; acting with inhibitions and without consideration of the narrator. This is your 'persona.'

Likewise, this relationship exists between the film and the artist behind the film. As Bergman illustrates through his postmodern lens, the film is simply a construction, a persona, of Bergman himself. The film acts as a mechanism for Bergman, the observer, to present to us, the viewer. However, as Bergman posits, the construction, despite being a fabricated construction, somehow communicates truth. Are the emotions, philosophies, musings, pinings, and sufferings of the film any less real or felt simply because they're presented through a fabricated lens? Art and its mechanisms for commination are still connected to their creators and reveal their internality. Likewise, our 'personas' are still truthful communications of our own internality, despite the fabricated element of their existence. 

The revelations of "Persona" are endless. One can keep digging away the fabrication and find that there is no bottom. The well is endless. There is always another layer to pull away, a persona to unmask. The film becomes a prism of psyche, a viewpoint of the soul. One can derive themes of transference, psychosis, identity, duality, psychology, gender, sexuality, art, vampirism, ego, you name it. And whatever you uncover about the film, whatever themes or interpretations you derive can just as easily be considered as being the opposite case. That's the beauty of "Persona:" it both simultaneously both one thing and its opposite. 

 Because of this, the film has been considered to be one of the most dissected films ever. Professor Thomas Elaesser at the University of Amsterdam says the film "has been for film critics and scholars what climbing Everest is for mountaineers: the ultimate professional challenge." It is a film about film, about consciousness, about motherhood, modernity, and the soul. 

To achieve such an untethered metatextual and subjective lens, Bergman and his cinematographer Sven Nykvist staged sequences so as to derive the effect of metatextual language. The visual logic only contains directional instruction from the artist themselves. The gorgeous black and white photography aids in this psychological lens. the framing of hands, faces, and special relationships between the two women elevate the tangible experiences of the subjects to something far more metaphysical. 

With "Persona," Bergman broke the world of cinema in two. The language of film was never the same before and would never be the same again. It is an unyielding masterpiece full of mystery and yet reveals all. It is a window into the soul of Bergman. It is also a window into the soul of the viewer. Just as the two women psychologically meld, the viewer melds with the subject. As the film posits, the two are one in the same. The layers of the onion are infinite and art has the ability to pull away at those layers, both revealing and concealing continuously until who's who and what's what becomes utterly meaningless. The film is you, you are the film, you are Bergman, Bergman is these two women, the two women are Bergman, who is also you, and you are both you and someone else.