Movies sometimes have a funny way of slipping profound context into your life, even if they echo their message from decades gone by. There is definitely a sense of happenstance to it, as the time in your life and the way you view a film vary greatly, but when the planets align just right and all the traffic lights are green, a revelatory experience waits to be unleashed in movies. It's the testament of great art in action - an audience the filmmakers never even dreamed about now enjoy their work on entirely new levels. These movies have become disembodied entities - always with the signatures of their creators - but now more of an ephemeral reincarnation, more of a personally refreshed experience.
I felt this way when I watched Ingmar Bergman's Persona for the second time in my life, just about a week ago. The film is primarily a disheartening free-fall into existential identity theft, but it carries with it many social observations on the cowardly, deceptive nature of how people interact with each other. Bergman highlights the moral dilemma of acting selfishly (and the act of never bothering to justify it), with the ultimate form of consequence - total theft of the self. Sure, a few of the technical stingers and awkward transitions don't quite hold up, but the hokey qualities of the film are vastly outweighed by a clear articulation of the pitfalls found in social complacency.
With brief, abstract bookends of flashing imagery (from spiders to old cartoons to dicks), Persona tells the story of an actress, Elisabet Volger, who chooses to be mute, and her small-minded but dedicated nurse, Sister Alma. Elisabet forces herself into silence after a stage performance, where she was unable to speak, making her feel humiliated and lost. Tasked with watching over her, Alma finds Elisbet's silence to be unnerving. Despite her reservations, Alma forges ahead and the two are sent to a seaside summer retreat for Elisabet's recuperation. Alma quickly learns that her paitent is not actually looking to recover, but to appropriate her personality as if she were studying for a role in a play or film.
Persona is a film that slithers under the skin, right into the dark recesses of the subconscious. You can tell from the sheer animosity of Elisabet and Alma that Bergman desperately had a bone to pick with the hypocritical machinations of society. Elisabet is a kind of moral abyss, choosing to remove herself altogether from the masquerades that people put on daily. Liv Ullman plays the actress with an eerily satisfying glibness, her devilish smirks and glassy-eyed desperation speak volumes above Alma's incessant barrage of complaints, desires and admissions. Bibi Andersson casts Alma in numerous masks - politeness, compassion, devotion - but quickly devolves her into a toxic mass of deceit and resentment.
In my favorite scene of the film, Alma is compensating for Elisabet's lack of speaking, by telling the actress some of her deepest held secrets. As she reclines awkwardly in a chair, Alma discusses an infidelity she never acknowledged to her soon-to-be husband. She explains that she was at the beach with a friend, laying naked in the sun, when she noticed two teenage boys spying on them nearby. Alma describes all the intimate details of the encounter, how her friend beckons the boys over and they all engage in wild, frivolous sex. Alma admits to Elisabet that it was the most pleasure she had ever known, that she had never been truly satisfied by her fiancee.
Alma's admission of deceit is made all the more palpable by the heavy silence in the beach house - the hypnotic swish of the sea in the background driving it all straight to the gut. Her confession is a disturbing realization of human impulse and weakness. There is no entity there to chide her or wrap her back around to her morals, which gradually deteriorates her mental state. In a sense, this scene exemplifies the brutal dynamic of Persona. There's a presiding feeling in the film that nothing can be done to turn people into creatures of sincerity and truth, and so Bergman eagerly opens up the path to hell.
The way Bergman applies layers of light and shadow in such a simple space as a beach house is pretty astounding when you think about it. The brooding visual aesthetic expertly reflects the conflict between the two women, as well as Alma's gradual synthesis into Elisabet's repertoire. From the sun-bleached stones of the beach, to the dense darkness barely penetrated by lamps or sunlight within the house, the location is an abstract resemblance of each woman's state of mind.
There's a scene where Elisabet quietly emerges from a bright hallway into a dark room where Alma is sleeping, which is just so powerful to watch. Elisabet takes a moment to look over Alma, then moves on, but Alma wakes up and the two gaze at each other longingly. It's just one instance (aside from the blatant scenes of Elisabet necking Alma) that points to not only an emotional attraction, but a sexual attraction between the women. It's an interesting aspect considering the issues of women's liberation at the time, but I think the sexual energy points more to the vanity of Elisabet, she's more in love (and lust) with the idea of taking on the role of this damaged, struggling woman that looks after her.
Persona also plays with time and pacing, adding a hefty helping of disorientation to the film. It starts off as a fairly straight-forward narrative, but a little while after the two women reach the beach house, scenes begin to meld into each other and break off abruptly, as well as disintegrate into abstract transitions and rear-projection tricks. Bergman plays with the idea of fusing scenes with vastly different tones and lighting aesthetics - when Alma gets upset at Elisabet in the kitchen, runs off to her room, and then the actress later comforts her - to give off a bizarre progression of time. Then there are scenes, such as Alma's breaking point in the middle of film (before she tries to get Elisabet to cut her foot on the glass), which cut-off without warning. Such uneven pacing might have caused most films to fold in on themselves, but you can tell Bergman took his time in making sure the editing reflected the mood and message he was trying to convey.
I would say the doctor at the beginning of Persona sums the film up with such a severe articulation, indicative of Bergman's (usually) fantastic writing: "I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace...you can shut yourself in. Then you needn't play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn't watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you're forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you're genuine or just a sham".
Those sharp, painfully honest words expose the social conundrum of living selfishly, while desiring to appear altruistic, successful, stable, smart, appreciated, etc. It's a ripped band-aid off the pretense that so many people employ in their routine lives - the idea that even honesty and proactive self-awareness have been relegated to convenient social masks. It's an observation that is perhaps slightly too cynical, but it comes from a genuine place all the same. With Persona, I don't think Bergman is asking, "why are you so selfish?". I think he's really asking, "why bother pretending?".
