Persona | Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann

Persona | Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann | probably the most important movie of the last 50 years

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Persona

	Persona Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann MGM (Video & DVD), 2004 average customer review:based on 81 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Flying Into the Sun

The word "persona" stands for the roles people assume on stage or in the world. It relates back to the masks that actors wore in ancient Greek drama. What happens in art or life when we refuse to wear our masks? What if we can't keep them on? How then are we to live? Persona is perhaps the furthest flight ever made by a filmmaker in search of answers to these questions.

Bergman shot Persona in the mid sixties, a time when all the big constructs - personal identity, the nature of art, the role of the individual in society - were up for grabs. The opening of the movie seems to mirror the intellectual jumble of the times: shots of film stock, a camera, an arc lamp; several disturbing images dredged up from the swamp of the adult unconscious; finally, an adolescent boy in a hospital-like room. The boy gets out of bed and walks toward the blurry, blown-up photograph of a woman's face.

After this disconcerting beginning, Bergman drops us into the actual start of the story. Elisabeth (Liv Ullman) is a famous actress who suddenly refuses to speak. She's sent to a psychiatric institution where she's attended by Alma, a young, seemingly naïve nurse (Bibi Andersson in one of the bravura performances in world cinema). Elisabeth turns on the television in her hospital room and sees one of the sixties' most indelible images: a Vietnamese monk burning himself alive on a sidewalk as a war protest. Perhaps Elisabeth stays silent because she refuses to participate in such a horrific world.

Elisabeth's psychiatrist arranges for a rest cure in a summer cottage on a small island off the Swedish coast, and sends Alma along to care for her. Once on the island, Alma's nurse mask starts to slip. She drinks too much one night and tells Elisabeth about an odd sexual encounter she had several years back with another woman and two boys. We watch the silent Elisabeth drink in Alma's words like a vampire draining the life force from a victim. Elisabeth's voyeurism feels almost repulsive, but then we realize it's no different from our own.

Alma tells Elisabeth that the sexual experience she described led to an abortion, after which she can no longer bear children. Elisabeth then casually reveals Alma's sexual secrets in a letter that Alma peeks at on the way to the post office. This betrayal knocks Alma off center. The kind, deferential nurse deliberately leaves a piece of broken glass where Elisabeth will step on it. Alma doesn't know herself any more, which Bergman dramatizes by cutting to a shot of the film stock snapping in two.

Social conventions are abandoned. Alma gives over to primal emotions - anger, violence, lust, cruelty - to try and break through Elisabeth's wall of silence. Alma attacks Elisabeth for being a monstrous egotist, and accuses her of hating her son and wishing he was dead. Andersson does all the talking in this scene, but the camera is focused exclusively on Ullman's face. Then Andersson repeats the same monologue, word for word, only this time the camera stays fixed on her own face. Now we're not sure if Alma is talking about Elisabeth's son or describing the guilt she felt at aborting her own child. Alma denies that she's like Elisabeth; at the same time, on the screen their two faces merge into one.

From here, fantasy and reality blur even further. In one gruesome sequence, Elisabeth literally sucks the blood from Alma's arm. Alma briefly surrenders. A look of sexual pleasure flits across her face, but then she recoils and slaps Elisabeth viciously across the cheek. In another dreamlike scene, Alma, back in uniform at the hospital, wakes up Elisabeth and holds her. "It's all nothing," Alma says. Which is what all of Bergman's authorial intrusions into Alma and Elisabeth's story seem to be telling us: creative illusions are just that, no thing. Yet they signify everything, and great artists will surrender their social and psychological security in service to them.

The two women pack up and leave the cottage. The movie ends with a series of images that relate back to the opening. There's Elisabeth back on stage - is she cured, or has she succumbed to a worse illness than silence and withdrawal? We see a closeup of a mask sculpture that we saw before outside the cottage, then a cut to the film crew, including the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist behind his camera. Alma flags down a bus, presumably headed back to her "normal" life as a hospital nurse. We see the little boy from the opening sequence again, looking at images of Ullman's and Andersson's faces. The film unspools, and we're staring at a screen gone to black.

For movie that deals with such abstract ideas, Persona is surprising sensual. The camera caresses the faces of Ullman and Andersson; they caress each other; Sven Nykvist sculpts the light into pleasing, mysterious textures. Using only a black and white palette, Bergman turns morning into twilight, sun to shadow, beautiful faces into harpy masks. The rhythms of physical reality shift and morph like the psychological foundations of Alma's identity.

In a sense, Bergman has recast the Icarus myth. Elisabeth soars above accepted social constraints, but may not be able to return to normal life. Too much self-knowledge that she can't emotionally handle melts Alma down, as surely as solar heat melts wax wings. In this, as in his other movies, Bergman, despite his own bouts of incapacitating doubt and despair, simply refuses to stop flying right toward the sun.

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probably the most important movie of the last 50 years

Whoa, man. Take a deep breath. Here we have it: the cinematic equivalent of "Hamlet" -- meaning, the piece of work that re-writes all the rules on its own terms, and so creates a newer, bigger idea of the "Self" in art (and thus, in the world).

Nothing you can say about this thing can fully encompass what it IS. There's a whole universe in there. Do I know what this movie "really" means? Of course not! (or, only a little bit.)

Some movies are like a deep, clear well that people can drink from, and get refreshed by, again and again over time. But "Persona" is like the enormous underground aquifer that feeds all of those wells. Almost every really serious movie that's been made since 1966 has had to come to terms with it: either they are kinda-sorta attempted re-makes of "Persona" (everything from 'Two-Lane Blacktop' to 'Apocalypse Now'), or else they are struggling to avoid its immense gravitational pull -- the way that American novelists from the '70s until now had to either imitate "Gravity's Rainbow," or else pretend that it didn't exist. You can never really get to the bottom of this movie: it shows you something new and startling every time you watch it.

What's really astonishing is that it all unfolds on such a "small" scale: the whole thing is really just two women in a hospital and then a summer house, with no big sets, no effects, and almost no "story" to speak of. Kind of like splitting the atom: you had no idea so much energy was hidden inside that tiny speck.

One of the five or so films* that I would use to try and explain to space-aliens what "movies" are, and why they're so cool, and so important. And don't get me started on that opening sequence....

(* -- for those who care, the others are "Casablanca," "Young Frankenstein," Renoir's "Grand Illusion," Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," "Apocalypse Now," and a choice handful of Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck shorts.)

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C'est Magnifique!

I was blown away by Persona. There is really no words to truly describe the haunting, poetic, and erotic mood, feeling, and plot of this entire film and it's two exemplary female characters. This is truly a visual feast, at times cringing, beautiful, haunting, sad, erotic, and at the end, profound. This is a film that will truly make you think. For instance, the boy in the beginning can symbolize two things: Elisabeth's neglected child, or Alma's unborn child. And of course, the most haunting scene in cinema is when Alma, dressed in the same black clothing as Elisabeth, talks about Elisabeth's neglection of motherhood and marriage, while to some degree she's talking about her own naive view on both of these topics. Then, at the end, both of their faces emerge, exemplifying the exploration of a psychoanalysis breaking into subtle madness! That scene will always remain in my mind, it's so haunting in a deep and profound way. This film truly has the immense emotion and intensity that is highly rare in movies today. The end is even just as profound when we are back at the scene with the boy watching a screen of what appears to be the face of Elisabeth (or Alma? Both?), but then the reel breaks apart, and then the light that was lit in the beginning of the film suddenly fades into darkness. If you want to watch a film that is not cliche and predictable, watch PERSONA. But beware, a film like this should be watched with an OPEN MIND. If you look at it too seriously, or not seriously enough, you won't get the point and will lose the purpose and the meaning that this film has represented. Truly a masterpiece of cinema.

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Ghost Story...

Persona is probably my favorite Ingmar Bergman film. Watching it again, I now realize that it is a ghost story. Were ever characters more haunted than Bergman's? Everything about the film is eerie, especially the music. Everything has the feel of a horror film, even though nothing "scary" actually happens. The horror is of Being and Nothingness. Persona does what so much of horror literature attempts - undermine our conceptions of what is real. Bergman is not content to do only that - he undermines the conventions of moviemaking as well: half-way through the movie, the film breaks and needs to be re-started.

It is almost impossible to summarize the "plot." Liv Ullman's character decides to stop talking. She is sent to a summer home in care of a nurse - Bibi Anderson. Gradually, the two personalities begin to merge until we realize that there may have only been one person in the house to begin with.

Persona is an art film if ever there was one. It stands next to 2001: A Space Odyssey as one of the great experimental pictures of the 1960's. It contains one of the most erotic scenes in cinema, even though there is no nudity. It foreshadows a new era of filmmaking.

The DVD transfer is pristine, however it is NOT letterboxed. For some reason the subtitles remain white, instead of the more user-friendly yellow. There is also an invaluable featurette on the making of the film with interviews of all the principals, including Bergman. A must for any serious DVD collection.

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"My words mean nothing to you. People like you can't be reached."

Ingmar Bergman's "Persona" is a fascinating exploration of personal individualism. It is a troubling reminder that an identity that takes a lifetime to form can be lost instantly in a moment of weakness.

Actress Elisabeth Vogler (Liv Ullmann) mysteriously stops speaking in the middle of a performance and remains mute from that point on. Her psychiatrist assigns a young nurse named Alma (Bibi Andersson) to look after her and sends them both to a secluded house. The two women have a cordial relationship at the outset but tensions arise when Alma begins to feel psychologically overcome by Elisabeth.

"Persona" is Bergman's most experimental film. Ideas and questions on the subject of identity and cinema itself are symbolized by an intriguing opening montage and unexpected breaks in the narrative. Complementing the film's unique structure are the stunning performances turned in by Ullmann and Andersson. There is passion and emotion in all of their scenes and they are particularly impressive in the sequence where they discuss Elisabeth's child. "Persona" is one of those films that refuses to conform to filmmaking convention and the end result is a work of cinema that is not only memorable but special as well.

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