Persona - Reaction

[Sweden]

Ingmar Bergman's existential film about an actress who decides to be silent and her nurse who talks to fill up the silences. The actress refuses to act, so to speak (pun unintentional), in the theater or in the real world. The film focuses on the doctor-patient relationship and psychological transference, a la Freud. Switching psyches. Maybe the doctor is really the patient and vice versa? A deep and deeply enigmatic film open to lots of interpretation. Deals with issues of love, silence, guilt, motherhood, loneliness / estrangement / inability to reach another, and the evils people can inflict on each another. I can imagine (and know there are) countless essays written about this film.

Visually, this black and white movie feels clinical and sterile. (This is apropos to the theme as well.) The cinematographer relies heavily and rightly on close-ups of the two main actresses.

Parts of the movie feel almost experimental, especially the inexplicable opening sequence containing a crucifixion, a boy waking up, a morgue, a weird movie projector, and a boy facing a large screen showing a woman's face. A few frames appear throughout the film reminding viewers the film is an artificial construct. Many labels may be appropriate to the film: experimental, post-modern (an odd label to apply to a 1960s film), surreal, bizarre, and abstract. Don't let these labels put you off too much; it does have a plot, even if the theme and, at times, the visuals are unconventional.

This movie includes some great lines:

But you can refuse to move and be silent. Then, at least, you're not lying. You can shut yourself in, shut out the world. Then you don't have to play any roles, show any faces, make false gestures. You'd think so... but reality is diabolical. Your hiding-place isn't watertight. Life trickles in everywhere. You're forced to react. Nobody asks if it's real or not, if you're honest or a liar. That's only important at the theater, perhaps not even there.

The anxiety we carry with us, all our broken dreams, the inexplicable cruelty, the fear of death, the painful insight into our earthly condition ... have worn out our hope of a divine salvation. The cries of our faith and doubt against the darkness and the silence are terrible proof of our loneliness and fear.

I'll conclude with a great remark by John Hardy, a reviewer posting his comments on IMDB:

How this pretentious movie manages to not be pretentious at all is one of the great accomplishments of `Persona.'