Persona (1966) | Review

 19/June/2022. Watched. 

 My rating: 10 /10. 

 The Bada Imambara  is a good example of Mughal acrchitecture in Lucknow, the city 80kms to my home. Famous for its labyrinth with countless doors and turns, it amazes people to this day. The doorways are intentionally designed small enough so that one has to bow and enter. It feels the same to me before I watch a film made by a deity of the cinematic pantheon.

 I feel nervous. Not because of the possibility that I won't understand it. No. Not understanding is fine. But because I may not like it. Which is a far more scarier prospect because it then makes me question my own comprehension of the cinematic canon. Hence I find myself often in a bowed state prior to entering a respected film by a respected storyteller.

 Filmmakers like Tarantino, Linklater or Cameron, as great as they are, always feel touchable. They work at a level which is at least understandable to me, if not imitable. But filmmakers like Fellini, Bergman or Coppola work on a level which is so radical that it baffles me when I see their films. Like a labyrinth, their work unfolds. In ways which you don't expect. 

 And such is the case with this Swedish film, Persona (1966). Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman, it is my second film of his; The Seventh Seal (1957) being the first. TSS found it's place as the number sixth on my top 20 list of 2020. It has taken me more than a year to gather the courage and continue with his filmography. The benchmark was so set so high with TSS, yet Bergman matched it with Persona.

 The film features mainly 2 characters played by Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman; the latter of whom's character is silent for the most part of the film. Liv's character is an actress who decides to go mute and is accompanied by Bibi's character who becomes her nurse/companion. They move to a house near the sea and emotional turmoils take place as the two experience symbiotic relationship and incomparable sense of liberty.

 The film begins with a projector turning on, presenting the audience with a seemingly random set of clips, as if we're witnessing the birth of cinema itself. Followed by a boy caressing the large images of women's faces. 

 In Virginia Woolf's essay, A Room of One's Own (1929), she talks about how a woman needs money and independence to thrive as an artist. Allow me to quote her, "Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell and was the property of her husband." And Bergman is aware of men's idealization of women in a similar, as portrayed by the boy seeing huge, blurry, images of women and trying to touch them, to make them real, to make himself real. We put our mothers on a pedestal and try to reach them.

 Its a film about loneliness, duality and depression. To read it as a lesbian romance is a fair but surface level reading of the film. Its obvious that the two characters are the one and the same; and that character is Woman. One part of her has gone silent, has withdrawn herself from the world. The other part goes on and on with her monologues, about her worries and passions and sins. 

 Both parts are participating in an act, in which they pretend to be what the society expects them to be. Hence losing their own identity and happiness. Ullman's character hates her son, for she never wanted him in the first place. The only reason she had him was that the people around her convinced her that it was a required action to qualify as a woman. And the only qualification of the people who said that was that they were not a woman. Of course.

 Bibi's character struggles with her constant desire to not be tied down to a marriage. She tries to convince herself that she wants it, because that's what is expected of her, but when it comes to it, she acts contradictorily.

 Bergman wrote about depression very similarly to how I wrote about it last year. Describing it as being aware of one's mortality at all times. Being estranged with your surroundings and disassociation making you want to quit living. It is among the best portrayals of depression that I've seen since Hamlet.  

 From the score to the editing to the writing to the performances, I find this film to be utterly flawless. 

 I can't wait to start reading Tarkovsky's Time Within Time, and now I think I'll try to get my hands on some of Bergman's books as well.