SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 64 Discussion - Persona

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NOTE to NON-MEMBERS: Interested in joining the SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB? Shoot me a PM for more info.

Here's a quick list of all movies watched by the SMC. Or if you prefer, here's a more detailed examination.


@europe1 is doing his thing thing week and that means we'll be discussing Ingmar Bergman for the first time.


Persona_Rep.jpg



Our Director


ingmar_bergman_01.jpg


INGMAR BERGMAN was a Swedish director, writer, and producer who worked in film, television, theatre and radio. He is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential auteurs of all time, and is most famous for films such as The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers (1972) and Fanny and Alexander (1982). Also well-regarded are works such as Winter Light (1963), The Silence (1963), and Scenes from a Marriage (1973).

Bergman directed over sixty films and documentaries for cinematic release and for television, most of which he also wrote. He also directed over 170 plays. From 1953 he forged a powerful creative partnership with his full-time cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Among his company of actors were Harriet and Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow. Most of his films were set in Sweden, and numerous films from Through a Glass Darkly (1961) onward were filmed on the island of Fårö. His work often dealt with death, illness, faith, betrayal, bleakness and insanity.

Philip French referred to Bergman as "one of the greatest artists of the 20th century [...] he found in literature and the performing arts a way of both recreating and questioning the human condition." Mick LaSalle argued, "Like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce in literature, Ingmar Bergman strove to capture and illuminate the mystery, ecstasy and fullness of life, by concentrating on individual consciousness and essential moments. His achievement is unsurpassed."



Our Stars


Bibi Andersson: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000761/?ref_=tt_cl_t1


220px-Bibi_Andersson_%281961%29.jpg


Liv Ullmann: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0880521/?ref_=tt_cl_t2


220px-Liv_Ullmann_1966_2_%28cropped%29.jpg



Film Overview and YouTube Videos


Premise: A nurse is put in charge of a mute actress and finds that their personas are melding together.

Budget: ?
Box Office: $250,000






Trivia
(courtesy of IMDB)​


* "Persona" is considered a pictorial radical film. Both Bergman and his cinematographer Sven Nykvist felt that mid-shots was boring, therefore the film consists of a few wide shots, occasional mid-shots and many, long and intense close-ups.

* In the spring of 1965 Bergman was admitted to the Sophia Hospital, Stockholm, for double pneumonia and acute penicillin poisoning. While hospitalized, he created the basic script of "Persona". Inspired by August Strindberg's one-act play "The Stronger", an existence which consisted of dead people, brick walls and some dreary park trees and conceived as a sonata for two instruments.

* The name of Bibi Andersson's character "Alma" is Spanish and Portuguese for "soul".

* Was chosen by Premiere magazine as one of the "100 Movies That Shook the World" in the October 1998 issue. The list ranked the most "daring movies ever made."



7wGeEM5.jpg


Members: @europe1 @iThrillhouse @chickenluver @jeicex @MusterX @Coolthulu @TheRuthlessOne @Scott Parker 27 @the muntjac @Caveat @FierceRedBelt @RabidJesus @RhinoRush
 
I just got done watching this film.

How the hell do you write about a movie which is about that which can not be encapsulated in mere words?

I think we have some tough typing ahead of us...
 
I'm going to travel the cowards-path and speak about the easy and obvious stuff first.

I wonder if the cinemotography of this film inspired Mulholland's Drive. Both follow a similar template. They center around two females that are in some way reflections of one another, their persona's melting into one-another due to the dynaminism of what's going on in the film. Though the reasonings for this phenomena is different, in Mulholland Drive it's due to one of the females being a projection of the other, an idealized fantasy. While in Persona, (and I say this with great unease and hesitation) it seems like the melding between them is due to the closeness of their lives, they open themselves up for one-another body and soul, exposing their bare essense to one another for such a long and profound time that their very persona's seem to assimilate and grow-in into one-another.

This is underscored in the cinemotography of both films. Notice how often the two actresses are filmed togheter in some way, in profile with one-another, so to emphazise their commonality and closeness of being.

Though they do so in a bit different ways. In Persona there are many more shoots of the two in close-ups, and images like the one-below (where it seems like Alma is now an mental aspects of Elizabeth's psyche). While the filming-theme of Mulholland's Drive seems to be about making the two actresses mirror one-another, stand as if they were reflections to the other.

Immagine-tratta-dal-film-Persona-1966-di-Ingmar-Bergman.jpg


ingmar-bergman.jpg




Mulholland_0007_mulholland9.jpg_BXquUXM.jpg


mulholland-drive.jpg
 
I think we have some tough typing ahead of us...

You might.

Frankly, my experience can basically be summed up as: I didn't get it.

This one was another Synecdoche, New York for me. That is, I started it and felt like I was holding on, but then there was a moment where everything changed and I suddenly was lost. And I never really recovered from that moment.

Luckily this film was mercifully short, unlike Synecdoche, and I felt like I understood the narrative for more of the film. But the last . . . maybe 30 minutes? . . . really destroyed whatever narrative foundation I felt like I was standing on.

And that's the difference between a film like this and a film like, say, Primer. Primer fucks with your head too, but you never lose sight of what is actually happening and what the story is. With Persona, I felt like there was a definable story for a little while but then it dissolves into a third act that is little more than a montage of images and scenes that are no longer relating something comprehensible. At least, not to me.

And while with a film like Primer I'm willing to go back and watch it again and again and again to try to figure it all out, Persona doesn't inspire the same enthusiasm. Neither the characters nor the story (as I perceived it) were interesting enough for me to go back through it and try to puzzle it all out.

There is one thing I'm happy to give the film credit for though: The cinematography. The movie LOOKS excellent. I mean, just take this scene here with this ghostly bitch seemingly materializing out of the mist:


Persona101b5.gif



It's unimpeachable. I mean, that's good shit!

I am kind of both surprised but also not surprised that this film shows up on so many critics' lists. Having now seen it, I do not think it's worthy of all the acclaim, but it also strikes me as the kind of film that many critics would go for.

Considering the short runtime, maybe at some point I WILL go ahead and give it one more watch to make sure I'm justified in my opinion, but after seeing it once I'm not especially impressed.
 
This was my second viewing of the film. I originally saw it maybe 2005-2007 range so I didn't remember a whole lot about the film other than the overall idea. Funny thing about movies, especially if you have seen hundreds or thousands of them, after enough years they fade out somewhat unless they are one of your favorites. At the beginning when the guy was killing the lamb I was like wtf is this shit. Then the hammering of the nails in the hands like Christ and I was like alright, sacrifice. The images are about sacrifice of some kind.

The film focuses on close up shots and maintains its intensity through sound and imagery. In one shot Mrs. Vogler is going to sleep while listening to music but she just stares at the radio as light changes to dark and then she lets out a low moan. I don't know exactly what to make of that other than she was descending into darkness? I don't know but much is accomplished in this film not with dialogue but with well shot images.

The nurse Alma says toward the beginning of the film that she will get married, have a couple kids she will have to raise and there is no getting around it because its predestined. Then in the following scene the nurse reads a letter to Mrs. Vogler about her marriage and her son and Mrs. Vogler takes the photo of her son and tears it up. An indictment against traditional values? A marriage she hated? A marriage that the nurse Alma felt was predestined. The film proceeds in this manner throughout with images and sounds that tell a story about life.

There was also the constant feeling of sparseness, the locations and scenes felt desolate and secluded, isolated like Mrs. Vogler's mind. Time and again in a subtle way the film paints a picture of life being illusory and the things we do in life, like get married and have a family, are not even real, they are just constructs to make us feel as if life has meaning. Eventually you get a Dear Penthouse sex account and Alma basically acts like she is in love with Mrs. Vogler but Mrs. Vogler rejects her in a letter.

Lets get real, Alma got ether'ed by that letter which led to her splintering, or rather was a part of her splintering. From that point on the film goes down a different path, a strange and winding path. I'm not 100% sure of anything other than it looks like the nurse Alma was a personality of Mrs. Vogler because she suffered from postpartum depression and hated her own child. Alma was Mrs. Vogler and Mrs. Vogler was a figment of her own deranged mind?

I finally realized in the final sequence that the boy at the beginning on the gurney that was reading a book was the son she hated and didn't want.

That or someone explain it to me.
 
So I'm definitively taking baby-steps on this one. Prodding post.

About the persona-melding in Persona.

In the beginning of the narrative, Alma and Elisabet are very different from one-another. Elisabeth is an artist of the high-brow kind and Alma is a nurse whom comes off as sweet and a bit naive, and she's also engaged.

So through the film they live togheter for an unspecified amount of time. It's Alma that does all the talking. Unlike the upfront girl in the beginning we learn that she was doubts, philosophical ruminations that she considers silly, and past sexual escapades the moral of which she's deeply uncertain. Elisabeth studies Alma, takes in what she says, she really starts understanding her to the core.

However, as all of this is going on, Alma and Elisabeth grow more and more like each other. Even in the clothing they wear! They both have their existential woes. Or maybe we should say, Alma grows more like Elisabet.

This takes an striking twist in the ultimate meeting between the two when they sit opposite each other at the table. Think about this, through the narrative, it's Alma who has been telling Elisabet about herself. However, in this scene, Alma unearths Elisabeth's innermost thoughts and ruminations, her deepest psychological trauma. Despite the fact that Elisabet has communicated virtually nothing about herself, Alma still has complete psycholocial understanding of her. She understands Elisabet innately. Isn't that odd?


Much about this has to do with social artiface. Both woman are deeply troubled about what is expected of them in life. What men they are supposed to love and marry, Alma job as a nurse and Elisabet life as an artist, their quest of motherhood and their children. This is their artiface. Both of them play parts. Alma in the beginning is this sweet and naive nurse, cheerfully doing her tasks, but when self-examination through her therapudic monologues with Elisabet starts, she unveils a supreme existential anxiety about these things. Elisabet's breakdown, we're informed, comes when she starts feeling uncertainty in her position as an artist and a woman, when she's faced with the prospects of motherhood and the curelty of the world. We're informed that these worries lingered in her psyche for a long while until she experienced her breakdown. Like Alma, she was playing a part, keeping up appereances, wearing a societal mask, possessing a social artiface.

When these things are examened and stripped-from-them, the merger begins. As they are in the process of being scaled down to their essentials, the two women become more alike one another. The fact that Alma can innately understand Elisabet (despite having little factual knowlage of her) could be some message about how -- in our innermost self -- we are very much alike, all possessing the same raw human psychologial reactions. When two souls exposed to their bare-bones essance meet, their personas merge, understanding becomes innate, instinctual. The fears and desires are like an open book. That's how Alma can understand Elisabet's anxiety over motherhood and her appaling loathing of her own child.

This duality of artiface and essance is also explored in the "meta-segments" of the film. At several places the fact that we're watching a film is made evident. We see the film burn and such. Like Alma and Elisabet, we all carry a social artiface around with us, not exposing our essance. Film itself is also an artiface. Can it really expose the essance?


All this are just explorative ruminations.




I also find it pretty funny that Bergman thought of splicing in nudity in his film to mess with the audience long before Tyler Durden did:D






That is, I started it and felt like I was holding on, but then there was a moment where everything changed and I suddenly was lost. And I never really recovered from that moment.

Well... where did you think the movie was going? And at what point where you lost and why were you lost at that excact moment?

Neither the characters nor the story (as I perceived it) were interesting enough for me to go back through it and try to puzzle it all out.

I actually found this film to be profoundly emotional. Much of the film is shoot in close-ups and Bibi and Liv were emoting like hell, it's almost like a 90-minute study on the expression on their faces. Frankly, I find it hard to not sympathize with somone after such a long time of having to read their faces.

And for much of this film those girls are just pouring their hearts out. Bibi has a myriad of monolouges that does excactly this.

There is one thing I'm happy to give the film credit for though: The cinematography. The movie LOOKS excellent. I mean, just take this scene here with this ghostly bitch seemingly materializing out of the mist:

Like all superb cinematography, it's also in service of the theme of the film. Persona-wise, Bibi and Liv are begining to melt togheter (remember that this moment happened right after Liv told Bibi that she shouldn't sleep on the table, prompting Bibi -- and us the audience -- to question if it was a trick of her mind or actually Liv talking). Presenting Liv as a ghostly apperation underscores this uncertainty of identity. Is Liv a sepreate, definable, flesh-and-bone person or is she a commonality with Bibi?

I am kind of both surprised but also not surprised that this film shows up on so many critics' lists. Having now seen it, I do not think it's worthy of all the acclaim,

Well obviously they must have unearthed some meaning to the film that you've yet dug up.
 
Last edited:
NOTE to NON-MEMBERS: Interested in joining the SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB? Shoot me a PM for more info.

Here's a quick list of all movies watched by the SMC. Or if you prefer, here's a more detailed examination.


@europe1 is doing his thing thing week and that means we'll be discussing Ingmar Bergman for the first time.


Persona_Rep.jpg



Our Director


ingmar_bergman_01.jpg


INGMAR BERGMAN was a Swedish director, writer, and producer who worked in film, television, theatre and radio. He is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential auteurs of all time, and is most famous for films such as The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers (1972) and Fanny and Alexander (1982). Also well-regarded are works such as Winter Light (1963), The Silence (1963), and Scenes from a Marriage (1973).

Bergman directed over sixty films and documentaries for cinematic release and for television, most of which he also wrote. He also directed over 170 plays. From 1953 he forged a powerful creative partnership with his full-time cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Among his company of actors were Harriet and Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow. Most of his films were set in Sweden, and numerous films from Through a Glass Darkly (1961) onward were filmed on the island of Fårö. His work often dealt with death, illness, faith, betrayal, bleakness and insanity.

Philip French referred to Bergman as "one of the greatest artists of the 20th century [...] he found in literature and the performing arts a way of both recreating and questioning the human condition." Mick LaSalle argued, "Like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce in literature, Ingmar Bergman strove to capture and illuminate the mystery, ecstasy and fullness of life, by concentrating on individual consciousness and essential moments. His achievement is unsurpassed."



Our Stars


Bibi Andersson: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000761/?ref_=tt_cl_t1


220px-Bibi_Andersson_%281961%29.jpg


Liv Ullmann: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0880521/?ref_=tt_cl_t2


220px-Liv_Ullmann_1966_2_%28cropped%29.jpg



Film Overview and YouTube Videos


Premise: A nurse is put in charge of a mute actress and finds that their personas are melding together.

Budget: ?
Box Office: $250,000






Trivia
(courtesy of IMDB)​


* "Persona" is considered a pictorial radical film. Both Bergman and his cinematographer Sven Nykvist felt that mid-shots was boring, therefore the film consists of a few wide shots, occasional mid-shots and many, long and intense close-ups.

* In the spring of 1965 Bergman was admitted to the Sophia Hospital, Stockholm, for double pneumonia and acute penicillin poisoning. While hospitalized, he created the basic script of "Persona". Inspired by August Strindberg's one-act play "The Stronger", an existence which consisted of dead people, brick walls and some dreary park trees and conceived as a sonata for two instruments.

* The name of Bibi Andersson's character "Alma" is Spanish and Portuguese for "soul".

* Was chosen by Premiere magazine as one of the "100 Movies That Shook the World" in the October 1998 issue. The list ranked the most "daring movies ever made."



7wGeEM5.jpg


Members: @europe1 @iThrillhouse @chickenluver @jeicex @MusterX @Coolthulu @TheRuthlessOne @Scott Parker 27 @the muntjac @Caveat @FierceRedBelt @RabidJesus @RhinoRush

Meh, this film got wrapped up too much for me in its own artsy fartsy ness. I almsot turned it off during the beginning when I saw a spider, it reminded me of a bad student film trying to shock the audience. It just wasnt for me, it felt pieced together. The one positive is that the director knew what he was doing with lighting, it was beautiful. I used to be a pro photographer so I know lighting rations etc and how difficult it can me to maintain the contrast. Oh well, file that away in my brain of something I dont need to see again

3/10
 
So I'm definitively taking baby-steps on this one. Prodding post.

About the persona-melding in Persona.

In the beginning of the narrative, Alma and Elisabet are very different from one-another. Elisabeth is an artist of the high-brow kind and Alma is a nurse whom comes off as sweet and a bit naive, and she's also engaged.

So through the film they live togheter for an unspecified amount of time. It's Alma that does all the talking. Unlike the upfront girl in the beginning we learn that she was doubts, philosophical ruminations that she considers silly, and past sexual escapades the moral of which she's deeply uncertain. Elisabeth studies Alma, takes in what she says, she really starts understanding her to the core.

However, as all of this is going on, Alma and Elisabeth grow more and more like each other. Even in the clothing they wear! They both have their existential woes. Or maybe we should say, Alma grows more like Elisabet.

This takes an striking twist in the ultimate meeting between the two when they sit opposite each other at the table. Think about this, through the narrative, it's Alma who has been telling Elisabet about herself. However, in this scene, Alma unearths Elisabeth's innermost thoughts and ruminations, her deepest psychological trauma. Despite the fact that Elisabet has communicated virtually nothing about herself, Alma still has complete psycholocial understanding of her. She understands Elisabet innately. Isn't that odd?


Much about this has to do with social artiface. Both woman are deeply troubled about what is expected of them in life. What men they are supposed to love and marry, Alma job as a nurse and Elisabet life as an artist, their quest of motherhood and their children. This is their artiface. Both of them play parts. Alma in the beginning is this sweet and naive nurse, cheerfully doing her tasks, but when self-examination through her therapudic monologues with Elisabet starts, she unveils a supreme existential anxiety about these things. Elisabet's breakdown, we're informed, comes when she starts feeling uncertainty in her position as an artist and a woman, when she's faced with the prospects of motherhood and the curelty of the world. We're informed that these worries lingered in her psyche for a long while until she experienced her breakdown. Like Alma, she was playing a part, keeping up appereances, wearing a societal mask, possessing a social artiface.

When these things are examened and stripped-from-them, the merger begins. As they are in the process of being scaled down to their essentials, the two women become more alike one another. The fact that Alma can innately understand Elisabet (despite having little factual knowlage of her) could be some message about how -- in our innermost self -- we are very much alike, all possessing the same raw human psychologial reactions. When two souls exposed to their bare-bones essance meet, their personas merge, understanding becomes innate, instinctual. The fears and desires are like an open book. That's how Alma can understand Elisabet's anxiety over motherhood and her appaling loathing of her own child.

This duality of artiface and essance is also explored in the "meta-segments" of the film. At several places the fact that we're watching a film is made evident. We see the film burn and such. Like Alma and Elisabet, we all carry a social artiface around with us, not exposing our essance. Film itself is also an artiface. Can it really expose the essance?


All this are just explorative ruminations.




I also find it pretty funny that Bergman thought of splicing in nudity in his film to mess with the audience long before Tyler Durden did:D








Well... where did you think the movie was going? And at what point where you lost and why were you lost at that excact moment?



I actually found this film to be profoundly emotional. Much of the film is shoot in close-ups and Bibi and Liv were emoting like hell, it's almost like a 90-minute study on the expression on their faces. Frankly, I find it hard to not sympathize with somone after such a long time of having to read their faces.

And for much of this film those girls are just pouring their hearts out. Bibi has a myriad of monolouges that does excactly this.



Like all superb cinematography, it's also in service of the theme of the film. Persona-wise, Bibi and Liv are begining to melt togheter (remember that this moment happened right after Liv told Bibi that she shouldn't sleep on the table, prompting Bibi -- and us the audience -- to question if it was a trick of her mind or actually Liv talking). Presenting Liv as a ghostly apperation underscores this uncertainty of identity. Is Liv a sepreate, definable, flesh-and-bone person or is she a commonality with Bibi?



Well obviously they must have unearthed some meaning to the film that you've yet dug up.


Are you sure there is an Alma? It appeared to me as if this was a story about one woman with 2 personalities. The husband showed up at the end and addressed Alma as his wife Elizabet. Or was this really like Mulholland where Alma absolutely was real but her relationship to Elizabet was purely the fantasy of Elizabet? By the way, I found the style of filming here excellent. The close up shots and score worked together not only to meld the two of them together, but also to give it a bit of a claustrophobic feel.

What's this with the splicing of nudity. Did I miss it?
 
Are you sure there is an Alma? It appeared to me as if this was a story about one woman with 2 personalities. The husband showed up at the end and addressed Alma as his wife Elizabet. Or was this really like Mulholland where Alma absolutely was real but her relationship to Elizabet was purely the fantasy of Elizabet?

I thought about the split-personality bit while watching the film but rejected it on a more visceral level.

Frankly, most scenes seem like they can be interpreted either way. Just look at the framming of the scene where the blind husband arrives. This shoot makes it seem like the event is a projection of Elisabets mind. It might as well be that it's one personality observing the other but it might just as well be Elisabet's emotional experiences about how intimately Alma has become a part of her.

Immagine-tratta-dal-film-Persona-1966-di-Ingmar-Bergman.jpg



I'm not even close to be taking a definitive stance on this issue yet. However, I think there is a piece of the narrative that leads me towards the "two person" stance.

Take Mullholland Drive as a comparison (I'm now extremely curios as to how much Mulholland was influenced by Persona). The last third of Mulholland exposes the Camilla/Rita and Betty/Diane angle to us, making us question that some of them are not real, thus leading us to the conclusions we made.

I think it's the question of time and place that leads me to beliving that Alma and Elisabet are two people in Persona. We know that they have lived closely with each other in isolation for a long while -- with only themselves to interact with. Those circumstances sort of "guides" me towards beliving that we're watching two people whose psyche's have drifted togheter due to their intimate closeness, rather than two split personalities that are at odds with one-another and that one is a projection of the other.

The split personality angle also brings up a whole load of questions as to why one of them would be projecting excactly the other. Like, if Elisabet is the real one, then why would she project her alter-ego to be a nurse with all those precise issues?


By the way, I found the style of filming here excellent. The close up shots and score worked together not only to meld the two of them together, but also to give it a bit of a claustrophobic feel.

Absolutely. Paced masterfully too.

What's this with the splicing of nudity. Did I miss it?

Dick in the very beginning.
 
All right, I'm ready to get flack for this, but whatever. I found this to be kinda boring. For 1966, and heck, even for today's standards, this is a well shot and well acted film. I can appreciate shot composition, lighting, blocking, tracking, etc. as much as the next viewer, but I need more than just that. I need a story to hook me, and I need characters that interest me. I'm not saying Alma was downright dull, but she wasn't keeping me on the edge of me seat either. Her talking about her sex party on the beach got my attention more than anything else she said, which made me feel like the predictable guy who likes hearing frisky stuff. Bibi Andersson carried the film, and I think she did a great job. Regardless, there got to be a point where I could feel myself losing interest as the film lingered on.

So, about the story and idea behind the movie. We've got an actress who suddenly turned mute, and a nurse who has to treat her. The doctor says the actress is mentally and physically fine, so she's willingly choosing to be this way. Why? Well, we learn the actress tried being a mother, even though it seems she didn't actually want to be because she simply didn't have the heart to do so. But she gets pregnant anyway, and during pregnancy she has serious regrets, and tries to terminate it. She fails and gives birth to a child that she doesn't love and finds repulsive. She tries to reluctantly connect with the child because the kid loves her, but it's futile because she's unable to return that love.

In the other corner, we've got the nurse who's engaged to a man that she's tolerant of and doesn't seem too over-the-moon for him. She tells the actress that sex with him isn't too exciting, and she knows one day she'll have a few kids with him and fall in line with the expectations of motherhood, just as her mother before her. However, she once had an abortion because she got pregnant from a one-night stand orgy with strangers, something she holds remorse for.

So here we have these two women, both with stories of botched pregnancies, and both falling in line with the expectations of womanhood. The actress has a high-regarded career, fame, and money, but she doesn't have a family. Society expects her to also be a loving mother and wife because I mean, how weird of her to just enjoy life like she has it now and not have to worry about the burdens of motherhood, right? As for the nurse, she seems a little bored with her ordinary life living with an ordinary man as they follow the ordinary path of marriage and children. If only she could have some real passion in her life, some excitement...such as getting kinky on the beach with strangers. Nah, being tied down with one man she doesn't seem to fully love and one day raise his children as her youth slips by is how the system works.

Both are bound to societal expectations that they aren't ready for, or simply don't want. This bonds them closer with each other because only a woman could truly understand how they feel. It's almost as if they are one person. United in their struggles. They see something inside each other that the other wishes they had. The nurse would like to abandon her obligations as the actress has, and the actress would like to be as charming and loving as the nurse. The actress envisions herself as the nurse being in love with her own husband, but she has a mental breakdown (seen through Alma) during her fantasy, and she realizes she's only fooling herself because she doesn't want the life of loving wife and mother.

The nurse feels betrayed after reading the actress' letter. She poured her heart out to her and yearned to be loved by her. The nurse was most likely interested in a thrilling lesbian experience, but she got burned much like the actress' husband and son before her. She sees the actress is incapable of love as she learns she was just being used as kind of a prop, or a "study." A study in what though? For a film part? Or perhaps to learn how to function like a good little wife?

The nurse confronts the actress with the tale of the actress pushing her own child away. Her speech is seen twice from both points of view. The actress cowers and tries to hide from her shame, while the nurse confidently lays it out unflinching. They both hold remorse over a pregnancy. The actress gives birth to a child she emotionally abandons, and the nurse aborts her child who most likely was fathered by a stranger. They are both ashamed of their actions. Although, the nurse isn't going to try and hide from her errors as the actress has. We see the nurse go to the actress in the hospital bed and has her say the word "nothing." The nurse knows she won't be cured because the actress is choosing not to be. This is her way to evade her obligations in life by acting as a catatonic person. The cameraman we see filming her in the bed represents the act she is putting on, knowing that everybody's watching, as if her life is being filmed. So she must stay in character at all times. The nurse understands what she's doing, and the "nothing" is a way of telling her if she's unable to love or healthily deal with her problems, then she will have nothing and be nothing.

We see the nurse pack up and look in the mirror. Earlier we saw a ghostly scene of the actress rousing the nurse out of bed and seeming to have a hypnotic spell over her. Now as the nurse looks in the mirror, she's free of that "spell" because she knows she's not going to be weighed down by her guilt and end up like the actress. She gets on the bus back home, and perhaps she will tell her fiancé the truth of the encounter on the beach. Even if he leaves her, she's out of a relationship she didn't seem fully committed to, and perhaps she can enjoy herself living unhinged from the shackles of societal expectations for awhile until she's actually ready to settle down.

OR

She's willing to fall in line with the expectations of being the good little wife who will bear children for her future husband because it's at least better than "nothing." This scenario seems more plausible to me because it fits in more with the gloomy nature of the film. This story is a tragedy of sorts.

So, now I know you're thinking, "Hey, Muntjac. Why did you talk so much about a film you said you found kinda boring?" I don't like to be that guy that's critical of an acclaimed movie without actually discussing anything about the film. I wanted to show that I actually picked out a narrative from this bizarre little film. Maybe I'm not right in the way I took the film, but this is how I interpreted it.

As for the random scenes in the beginning, I took that as flavor to add to the psychosis of the film. Disturbing imagery makes you feel uncomfortable, and I think this film was trying to make you feel uncomfortable. The boy symbolizes the actress' thrown away son that she doesn't love, and also the nurse's thrown away son that she aborted. The boy stretches his arm to the image of his mother yearning for her love.

As I said, the film is pretty good in an artsy way, but the story didn't keep me on my toes. For me, story, characters, and dialogue take precedence over style any day. I can appreciate style, just as how fancy restaurants can serve your meal all dressed up and looking nice, but if it doesn't taste good, then what was the point?

Not saying it's a bad film by any means, and I'm sure the film's style greatly appeals to other people, and that's fine. But this was just a little slow for me and kinda dragged. I understand story wise why the actress was so dull, but it doesn't make it any more fun to watch. Same with the artistic choice to show the nurse's long speech entirely back to back from both points of view, but once again, it still doesn't make it any more fun to watch.

I don't know. Call me crazy, call me whatever you want, but this movie was something I didn't go nuts for.
 
The nurse Alma says toward the beginning of the film that she will get married, have a couple kids she will have to raise and there is no getting around it because its predestined. Then in the following scene the nurse reads a letter to Mrs. Vogler about her marriage and her son and Mrs. Vogler takes the photo of her son and tears it up. An indictment against traditional values? A marriage she hated? A marriage that the nurse Alma felt was predestined. The film proceeds in this manner throughout with images and sounds that tell a story about life.

There was also the constant feeling of sparseness, the locations and scenes felt desolate and secluded, isolated like Mrs. Vogler's mind. Time and again in a subtle way the film paints a picture of life being illusory and the things we do in life, like get married and have a family, are not even real, they are just constructs to make us feel as if life has meaning. Eventually you get a Dear Penthouse sex account and Alma basically acts like she is in love with Mrs. Vogler but Mrs. Vogler rejects her in a letter.

Much about this has to do with social artiface. Both woman are deeply troubled about what is expected of them in life. What men they are supposed to love and marry, Alma job as a nurse and Elisabet life as an artist, their quest of motherhood and their children. This is their artiface. Both of them play parts. Alma in the beginning is this sweet and naive nurse, cheerfully doing her tasks, but when self-examination through her therapudic monologues with Elisabet starts, she unveils a supreme existential anxiety about these things. Elisabet's breakdown, we're informed, comes when she starts feeling uncertainty in her position as an artist and a woman, when she's faced with the prospects of motherhood and the curelty of the world. We're informed that these worries lingered in her psyche for a long while until she experienced her breakdown. Like Alma, she was playing a part, keeping up appereances, wearing a societal mask, possessing a social artiface.

When these things are examened and stripped-from-them, the merger begins. As they are in the process of being scaled down to their essentials, the two women become more alike one another. The fact that Alma can innately understand Elisabet (despite having little factual knowlage of her) could be some message about how -- in our innermost self -- we are very much alike, all possessing the same raw human psychologial reactions. When two souls exposed to their bare-bones essance meet, their personas merge, understanding becomes innate, instinctual. The fears and desires are like an open book. That's how Alma can understand Elisabet's anxiety over motherhood and her appaling loathing of her own child.

It seems the three of us picked up on the theme of these women being held down by societal expectations of marriage and motherhood, and their bond over this stuggle and unwanted pregnancies. They mold together because only another woman could truly feel, understand, and share this internal angst all the way down to their souls. I feel this is what this movie is trying to convey. Having a child grow inside of you that one day will depend on you for several years, become the most important thing in your life, and cause you to sacrifice freedom and aspirations is probably pretty scary for a lot of women, especially for women who don't want children, or aren't ready to have one.

Perhaps that's why this movie tries to come off as unnerving because for these women, the thought of living out their days bearing kids for a man they don't love is unnerving. Or, just a one-time fun sex romp between strangers on the beach can turn into a lifelong commitment/disaster for the woman, but not for the man. The woman is the one who bears the responsibility of raising an unwanted bastard, or terminating it. It's a messy situation with no easy solution, much like trying to figure out this film.

I'm not even sure if I'm making sense anymore. I'm writing this while lying in bed ready to go to sleep. But this is my best guess about this movie. You's guys' thoughts?
 
I thought about the split-personality bit while watching the film but rejected it on a more visceral level.

Frankly, most scenes seem like they can be interpreted either way. Just look at the framming of the scene where the blind husband arrives. This shoot makes it seem like the event is a projection of Elisabets mind. It might as well be that it's one personality observing the other but it might just as well be Elisabet's emotional experiences about how intimately Alma has become a part of her.

Immagine-tratta-dal-film-Persona-1966-di-Ingmar-Bergman.jpg



I'm not even close to be taking a definitive stance on this issue yet. However, I think there is a piece of the narrative that leads me towards the "two person" stance.

Take Mullholland Drive as a comparison (I'm now extremely curios as to how much Mulholland was influenced by Persona). The last third of Mulholland exposes the Camilla/Rita and Betty/Diane angle to us, making us question that some of them are not real, thus leading us to the conclusions we made.

I think it's the question of time and place that leads me to beliving that Alma and Elisabet are two people in Persona. We know that they have lived closely with each other in isolation for a long while -- with only themselves to interact with. Those circumstances sort of "guides" me towards beliving that we're watching two people whose psyche's have drifted togheter due to their intimate closeness, rather than two split personalities that are at odds with one-another and that one is a projection of the other.

The split personality angle also brings up a whole load of questions as to why one of them would be projecting excactly the other. Like, if Elisabet is the real one, then why would she project her alter-ego to be a nurse with all those precise issues?




Absolutely. Paced masterfully too.



Dick in the very beginning.

Alright, basically this is the only conclusion I can draw that makes sense and it agrees with your thoughts on the matter.

1. The husband was blind so that complicates the scene. Maybe he didn't know it was Alma kissing him and thought it was Elisabet, but Alma told him, I'm not your wife, I'm not Elisabet. He seemed undeterred which seems to indicate that the scene takes place in one of the other characters mind, namely Alma.

2. If the husband was undeterred then maybe this was just a part of Alma's imagination, fantasizing that she were Elisabet. Maybe she didn't want to marry Heinz57. The problem with that theory is that she just really takes it too far, like mentally unbalanced too far. She was very sexualized and appeared to be in love with Elisabet.

3. Which leaves Elisabet. Was it Elisabet fantasizing? And for what reason? She didn't want to be the mother and maybe she didn't want to be the wife? She seemed quite content to watch Alma tongue her husband which doesn't seem to be a part of her character. Tongueing the blind husband seems like something Alma would do because as I said, she was sexualized. She told her Dear Penthouse story just a couple scenes before.

4. And finally, the director compounds the issue by showing only one of them pack up and leave the beach house at the end, Alma. They don't leave together.

Bonus Mindfuck: Elisabet is supposed to be on a mental breakdown and not even speaking. She then writes a letter to her husband saying how nice it is to be taken care of and she could just stay forever. wut? So she wasn't mentally cracked? You don't write lovely little letters about what a wonderful time you are having when you have cracked and aren't even speaking words. Am I to believe she was just fleeing her motherly duties and deep down appears to be a pretty shitty person lol? Was the letter even real?

Conclusion: This movie was not about Elisabet, it was about Alma. Of course it was about Alma, she had all the lines. What could I be thinking?

Evidence: Alma said to herself early in the film that it was inevitable she was going to marry Heinz57, pop out a couple kids, and then live out her life. Inevitable.

th


Alma didn't want to do that. She acted like she wanted to, oh I love Heinz57 so much, but deep down she didn't want to do it just like Elisabet didn't want to be a mother. Both of them in the workforce, one an actress, the other a nurse, I must assume they are the feminists of decades ago. We don't want men, we want lesbian love affairs and jobs. Alma fell in love with Elisabet and wanted to have a lesbian love affair with her. The one, shirking her responsibility as a mother, the other shirking her responsibility as a wife. Elisabet did not reciprocate just as Rita in Mulholland Drive did not reciprocate and now I too wonder how much Lynch was influenced by Persona.
 
In Mulholland Drive the pool boy was "kissing" the directors wife. The director ends up with Rita, who is the object of Diane's desire.
In Persona, Alma is kissing the husband of the object of her desire, Elisabet.

wut? Is Lynch's Mulholland Drive a remake of Persona?!
 
I watched Persona once years ago and it wasn't one of my favorite Bergman films. It mostly went over my head, and I thought it was slow even by Bergman standards. This is an odd film to be an introduction or reintroduction to Bergman due to being more abstract than much of his work, although for me it was a good place to start again since it was probably in most need of a re-watch.

So how about that opening? That sure was weird. I had remembered something like that but not the details. The nails going into the hands caught my eye. Faith and the questioning or lack of faith are some of the most commonly recurring themes in Bergman films. This film doesn't really have any of that, although later Alma read from what I guess was a philosophy book to Elisabet which was something about lack of absence of god IIRC.

When the boy in the beginning looks the images of the faces of Elisabet and Alma fading back and forth into one another I thought this meant that Elisabet and Alma are the same person, or one of them is a mental construct.

Did anyone notice that during the opening credits there was a very brief glimpse of the Vietnamese man burning himself which we later saw in much more detail? That was a pretty horrific thing to watch. Bergman even made sure to repeat the shot of the man finally falling over on the his side. Not really sure what it has to do with the rest of the film, but I guess it was something Bergman thought to include since it was a contemporary issue. He wrote this film while he was sick in the hospital, so I bet he saw news footage like that before or during the writing process.

One of the key scenes is after Alma has told her sex on the beach with strangers story and now is falling asleep/passing out at the dining table. We then hear Elisabet speak for the first of three times, although we can't really be certain she actually spoke this first time. We don't see her face, but hear her voice tell Alma she should go to sleep soon or she'll fall asleep at the table. Then Alma wakes up and says the exact same thing as if she thought of it herself. Did Alma hear Elisabet or imagine it? In the preceding scenes Alma had been talking about if it was possible for one person to really be two people, and that the two of them could easily become the other one. The next scene in when the apparition Elisabet appears to Alma in the night. This looks like the moment when their identities begin to meld together. The next morning Alma asks Elisabet if she spoke to her last night and if she was in her room and Elisabet shakes her head to both questions.

One of the most memorable scenes was the broken glass scene. Alma reads the letter Elisabet wrote to her doctor, and is shocked and upset to see that Elisabet has revived Alma infidelity story, says she enjoys studying Alma, and generally uses language that suggests she doesn't have much affection for Alma. When Alma reads that letter it's the start of something breaking in the relationship of the two women. We next see Alma break her glass by accident and sweep up the broken pieces, but as Elisabet walks out she notices she missed a large piece which Elisabet is walking dangerously close to in bare feet. Alma decides to leave the glass and go inside without telling Elisabet, and sure enough Elisabet soon steps on the glass. They look at each other through the window, which seems to suggest there was an understanding of what had just occurred. Elisabet doesn't know at this point that Alma read her letter, so she must have felt shocked and betrayed just as Alma had at the reading of the letter. The film itself then burns and goes into another trippy montage like the beginning. I think the film literally breaking and burning is symbolic of the now severely damaged relationship between the women.

So I guess the main point of contention for the film is were they two women who melded together/swapped identities or one woman who fractures into two identities? I just realized the very first image in the beginning is welding material. Make of that what you will. I went back and forth on this point throughout the movie, never really definitively landing on one conclusion. The scene with Elisabet's husband didn't do much to help me make up my mind either way. Is the film now saying that the women have always one and the same, or that Alma has now become Elisabet?

After the scene of Alma speaking to Elisabet about hating her child Alma suddenly says No I'm not Elisabet I'm Alma and the face melding happens, my immediate thought was that this was Alma realizing she was actually Elisabeth and that Alma had been a mental construct, but it could also mean their identities were fully conjoined.

In the very end we see Elisabet pack a suitcase then walk out of frame and seemingly disappear. Alma gets the house in order, takes a quick look in the mirror where she has a vision of Elisabet, then leaves taking what looks like the same suitcase. This part of the film made me convinced that Elisabet had now become Alma. There were shots of Elisabet on stage and being filmed by a camera crew edited into this sequence, which seems to suggest to me that Elisabet is now playing the part of Alma. The thing I'm less sure on is if they were two distinct people originally who became one, or if they were two parts of a fractured personality all along. If it was one woman all along, then which one is real and which was the mental construct?

9d1.gif


I liked this much better on this my second viewing. I like Bergman mostly due to the high level of craft on display, particularly in writing, editing, lighting, framing and acting. His regular company of actors were all outstanding. Bibi Andersson and Liv Ulmman were two them, and they shine here as in everything they did with him. This was the first collaboration between Bergman and Ullmann and they began a romantic relationship during or immediately after the making of the film, in fact their daughter was born a little over a year about production wrapped.

I'm glad we got to do a Bergman for The Club. I think this film is not a particularly good place to start for those not yet in the cult of Bergman, but it's open to a lot of interpretations and good for discussion, so I'd say it was a good pick. I was a bit surprised it won the poll. I've considered doing a Bergman week, but since I'm up next I don't think I'll do it this time around, maybe next cycle.
 
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In Mulholland Drive the pool boy was "kissing" the directors wife. The director ends up with Rita, who is the object of Diane's desire.
In Persona, Alma is kissing the husband of the object of her desire, Elisabet.

wut? Is Lynch's Mulholland Drive a remake of Persona?!
It's funny that we happened to already watch Mulholland Drive. There is certainly similarities with women melding or swapping identities. 3 Women by Robert Altman is another film with the same type of thing going on. Altman said he was inspired to make the film by a recurring dream, which is interesting considering the dreamlike quality of Persona, and of course we've already discussed the large part that dreams play in Mulholland Drive.
 
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Hoo boy, this one was a heavy hitter. I had the feeling we'd get into Bergman territory, I just didn't think we'd introduce the club to his work starting with Persona. I thought maybe we'd go with Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries or maybe the five hour version of Fanny and Alexander. Instead, we went right to the jugular.

To those that don't quite get it, I understand, this is a mess but to me it's a beautiful mess. But really, we've captured part of this film's essence in two films so far in this club - Mulholland Drive and Black Swan. You've also likely seen other films that have taken great inspiration from this including Fight Club and even to a small extent The Talented Mr. Ripley with a person becoming someone else. I never watched 3 Women, so I can't speak to its connection. Either way, the concept of this film isn't as daunting as it might seem, it's just the execution that likely throws people. It's experimental. It's odd. The cinematography is fascinating at times and at other times very jarring. The introduction and interlude of the fear/pain/death shots are unexpected and seemingly out of place. The boy at the beginning and the end in the morgue seemingly looking at a mother figure that keeps fading in and out is ridiculously heavy symbolism that simultaneously connects with the story and has no place in it. It's a weird flick, but that makes it endearing to me.

Before I keep going, I want to rant a little about subtitles once again. In this instance, the subtitles for me were dreadful. They were timed right, but they were littered with spelling errors and typos and missing words, so at times I had to piece together what someone was saying based on the context of the conversation. This made an already difficult film even tougher to hold on to. SPX is right on the money - you have to hold on tight to this one. If you miss something seemingly small, you'll have to either rewind to make sure you saw what was said/done, or you just have to guess. In a film like this, subtitles definitely take away from the nuance that the actors are trying to portray. I mean, one character (we'll call her Liz) said just a couple words in the whole picture, so her entire performance was based on nonverbal communication and expression. Therefore, it behooves the audience to keep their eyes on her at all times. That's tough when Tyler Durden AKA Nurse is speaking a mile a minute about something she's going through. Rapid fire monologues that you really want to make sure you gather the essence of what the person is saying are tough to work with when you're forced to read a moderately poorly translated subtitle set. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'll take a well dubbed version of a film anytime over a subtitled version, as long as the voice actors aren't just reading lines.

I kept wondering what exactly was real while watching this. There were several times when I wondered if these particular scenes were a dream or something else. For instance, when the two had the misty and ghostlike Freaky Friday-esque switch in the bedroom, I considered that everything after that could be a dream, and that we'd wake up a half hour later to what was reality. I mean, the whole beach house might not have been real. It could have been just the battle inside Nurse's head in the hospital, because we did get that scene where Nurse made Liz (the real Liz maybe) say the word "nothing." Nurse co-opted Liz's personality because of the trauma she was going through with her own son.

There was one set of scenes that bothered me, and I read a little bit of trivia about this film including this scene and wasn't totally convinced - the scene where Nurse said the whole abortion story, and then said it again from a different point of view. Saying the whole thing twice was almost painful to listen to again, even though the shots were different looking first at Liz and then again at Nurse, but I didn't get enough out of those two scenes to make it worth having to sit through that monologue again. It was a big reveal of sorts, and it led to the juxtaposition of the faces to let the audience know what they had likely suspected for a while, but I think it could have been more effective if they had instead cut between those shots to show Nurse and then Liz and Nurse again and so on. But I'll let Bergman be Bergman, far be it for me to say what's right in his film.

There were a lot of small things that came up briefly but had major emotional impact I felt. For instance, we ran into two short scenes (I think just those two) where Liz encountered a major traumatic historical event and we watched her try to process those events, being the man on fire and the Holocaust picture. As this film had a lot on its mind regarding loss and regret (and sacrifice, as it has been mentioned), it was a surprisingly poignant use of watching someone go through external trauma while trying to process their own grief. It showed me that life was still going on while Nurse was going through her own business, and that you can't forget what is around you.

One final thing I want to touch on, and it could have totally blown the whole story up - the brief glimpse of the film crew recording Nurse at the beach house. It cast doubt on everything I had thought up to that point, and made me have yet another track, that this was all part of one of Liz's theater/film performances. It made me wonder if this was a perverse play-within-a-play situations, where we get to see Liz at work. Maybe Liz was so obsessed with her role that she drove herself crazy, perhaps from her own guilt, or maybe she was playing the role of someone that drove themselves crazy from their own guilt. I don't know exactly how to process that, but it really made me think.

9/10. It's a monster, and you can see how so many directors and writers pulled ideas from Persona.
 
Before I keep going, I want to rant a little about subtitles once again. In this instance, the subtitles for me were dreadful. They were timed right, but they were littered with spelling errors and typos and missing words, so at times I had to piece together what someone was saying based on the context of the conversation.
Bro why didn't you pick up the criterion? Excellent subs.
I mean, the whole beach house might not have been real. It could have been just the battle inside Nurse's head in the hospital, because we did get that scene where Nurse made Liz (the real Liz maybe) say the word "nothing."
That "nothing" scene looked like they were back at the hospital right? But then the very end is Alma the nurse leaving the summer house.
There was one set of scenes that bothered me, and I read a little bit of trivia about this film including this scene and wasn't totally convinced - the scene where Nurse said the whole abortion story, and then said it again from a different point of view. Saying the whole thing twice was almost painful to listen to again, even though the shots were different looking first at Liz and then again at Nurse, but I didn't get enough out of those two scenes to make it worth having to sit through that monologue again. It was a big reveal of sorts, and it led to the juxtaposition of the faces to let the audience know what they had likely suspected for a while, but I think it could have been more effective if they had instead cut between those shots to show Nurse and then Liz and Nurse again and so on. But I'll let Bergman be Bergman, far be it for me to say what's right in his film.
I feel the same as you. I was paying really close attention to the speech while the camera was on Elisabet's face, then when I heard it again it felt really tedious and I spaced out a bit.
 
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Bro why didn't you pick up the criterion? Excellent subs.
Watched it on Youtube, things have been hectic lately so I didn't go out and buy it or grab it on amazon prime or comcast rental like the others. It was a disappointment.

That "nothing" scene looked like they were back at the hospital right? But then the very end is Alma the nurse leaving the summer house.
Yeah, that whole final sequence was very confusing, it was even harder to tell what was actually going on at the time and what was just imagined. The beach house could have been all fake, or the hospital "nothing" scene could have been the actual final scene of the movie and then we cut back to them leaving. I don't know.

I feel the same as you. I was paying really close attention to the speech while the camera was on Elisabet's face, then when I heard it again it felt really tedious and I spaced out a bit.
Yeah, it lost me. I was hoping they would change it, or we'd see it through a different character so the phrasing or presentation would be different, but no, it was the exact same thing (although my subtitles gave me several different words for each version, I kept track). They spelled ugly "ulgy" and it really irritated me, the spelling errors throughout the film were rough and grating for me. I'm a stickler for that kind of thing, so it bothered me more than it would most people. But I don't fault the film for bad captions, especially if you say the Criterion Collection (which was probably remastered and much cleaner so I'll have to take a look there) had better subs.
 
Great movie. The nurse is actually trying to become the actress. To take her persona. Great movie.
 
Hoo boy, this one was a heavy hitter. I had the feeling we'd get into Bergman territory, I just didn't think we'd introduce the club to his work starting with Persona. I thought maybe we'd go with Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries or maybe the five hour version of Fanny and Alexander. Instead, we went right to the jugular.

To those that don't quite get it, I understand, this is a mess but to me it's a beautiful mess. But really, we've captured part of this film's essence in two films so far in this club - Mulholland Drive and Black Swan. You've also likely seen other films that have taken great inspiration from this including Fight Club and even to a small extent The Talented Mr. Ripley with a person becoming someone else. I never watched 3 Women, so I can't speak to its connection. Either way, the concept of this film isn't as daunting as it might seem, it's just the execution that likely throws people. It's experimental. It's odd. The cinematography is fascinating at times and at other times very jarring. The introduction and interlude of the fear/pain/death shots are unexpected and seemingly out of place. The boy at the beginning and the end in the morgue seemingly looking at a mother figure that keeps fading in and out is ridiculously heavy symbolism that simultaneously connects with the story and has no place in it. It's a weird flick, but that makes it endearing to me.

Before I keep going, I want to rant a little about subtitles once again. In this instance, the subtitles for me were dreadful. They were timed right, but they were littered with spelling errors and typos and missing words, so at times I had to piece together what someone was saying based on the context of the conversation. This made an already difficult film even tougher to hold on to. SPX is right on the money - you have to hold on tight to this one. If you miss something seemingly small, you'll have to either rewind to make sure you saw what was said/done, or you just have to guess. In a film like this, subtitles definitely take away from the nuance that the actors are trying to portray. I mean, one character (we'll call her Liz) said just a couple words in the whole picture, so her entire performance was based on nonverbal communication and expression. Therefore, it behooves the audience to keep their eyes on her at all times. That's tough when Tyler Durden AKA Nurse is speaking a mile a minute about something she's going through. Rapid fire monologues that you really want to make sure you gather the essence of what the person is saying are tough to work with when you're forced to read a moderately poorly translated subtitle set. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'll take a well dubbed version of a film anytime over a subtitled version, as long as the voice actors aren't just reading lines.

I kept wondering what exactly was real while watching this. There were several times when I wondered if these particular scenes were a dream or something else. For instance, when the two had the misty and ghostlike Freaky Friday-esque switch in the bedroom, I considered that everything after that could be a dream, and that we'd wake up a half hour later to what was reality. I mean, the whole beach house might not have been real. It could have been just the battle inside Nurse's head in the hospital, because we did get that scene where Nurse made Liz (the real Liz maybe) say the word "nothing." Nurse co-opted Liz's personality because of the trauma she was going through with her own son.

There was one set of scenes that bothered me, and I read a little bit of trivia about this film including this scene and wasn't totally convinced - the scene where Nurse said the whole abortion story, and then said it again from a different point of view. Saying the whole thing twice was almost painful to listen to again, even though the shots were different looking first at Liz and then again at Nurse, but I didn't get enough out of those two scenes to make it worth having to sit through that monologue again. It was a big reveal of sorts, and it led to the juxtaposition of the faces to let the audience know what they had likely suspected for a while, but I think it could have been more effective if they had instead cut between those shots to show Nurse and then Liz and Nurse again and so on. But I'll let Bergman be Bergman, far be it for me to say what's right in his film.

There were a lot of small things that came up briefly but had major emotional impact I felt. For instance, we ran into two short scenes (I think just those two) where Liz encountered a major traumatic historical event and we watched her try to process those events, being the man on fire and the Holocaust picture. As this film had a lot on its mind regarding loss and regret (and sacrifice, as it has been mentioned), it was a surprisingly poignant use of watching someone go through external trauma while trying to process their own grief. It showed me that life was still going on while Nurse was going through her own business, and that you can't forget what is around you.

One final thing I want to touch on, and it could have totally blown the whole story up - the brief glimpse of the film crew recording Nurse at the beach house. It cast doubt on everything I had thought up to that point, and made me have yet another track, that this was all part of one of Liz's theater/film performances. It made me wonder if this was a perverse play-within-a-play situations, where we get to see Liz at work. Maybe Liz was so obsessed with her role that she drove herself crazy, perhaps from her own guilt, or maybe she was playing the role of someone that drove themselves crazy from their own guilt. I don't know exactly how to process that, but it really made me think.

9/10. It's a monster, and you can see how so many directors and writers pulled ideas from Persona.

The first re dredging.....

My feeling is that the films real intension is to reveal its own artifice, the opening I think gives clear hints towards that and as the film progresses it becomes clear again with elements like the film crew and the burn though. The intension I would say is really to focus attension on the message over the understanding of a mystery. What that message exactly is I'd imagine is probably the most discussed topic in art cinema as a whole? to me it does seem like the view of two sides of a modern female(or arguably any) persona, the divide between expectations of selfless empathy in Amla and self focused ego in Elisabet.

Interesting I would say the order in which the two sides are addressed as well, the film starts off much more focused on Alma highlighting the dispartity of her expectations of herself and the reality of her desires in the recounted sexual encounter. We see that as well that dispite her own focus she looks up to Elisabet greatly as an enpowered cultured modern woman yet the second half of the film that shifts to picking apart her as dismissive and selfish then ultimately haunted by her inability to form a motherly empathic connection. I did personally feel the story being recountered twice was worth it in order to see how differently it reads from both sides with the actresses faces and indeed that its as much a representation of an internal struggle, hence the two actresses faces merged as one potentially showing two sides of the same person.

Persona's influence actually seems to be growing not declining(at least in US cinema), perhaps you could argue partly as a result of the New Wave tended to focus quite heavily on a male perspective? Kubrick, Marty, Coppola, etc always seemed far more drawn in that direction, towards stories of male violence , control and social disconnection. Post millennium though I think you have seen artier more ambitious cinema in the US/UK shift its view much more towards female viewpoints(or less overtly mausline male viewpoints), arguably with Lynch's Mullholland Drive as really the fore runner.

You could I'd say maybe highlight that you have films that are more overtly influenced by Persona like Mullholland or Black Swan in the form of mind bending thrillers featuring two female leads but I would say perhaps also films drawing on the social issues, you are perhaps talking quite broad and I'd imagine influence go beyond Persona but still I suspect it might well have an influence in general focus? the marker a lot of the time tends to be cinema that's following Bergman is being quite visually focused wioth a strong sexual element and tragic drama, looking further back The Unbearable Lightness of Being(coincidence Sven Nykvist was hired?) was obviously a book adaptation but I felt the film naturally shifted things more towards the two female leads who basically play out the same kind of divide between empathy and ego(again a character who works in the arts) or heaviness and lightness. More recently the same in Blue is the Warmest Colour(again a director who previous stayed quite down to earth brings in a high level cinematographer), that ends up much less a film gay rights/coming out than in does highlighting how the differences in mindset along these lines coming from social class(again an artist character taking a more individualist role) ends a relationship. The Lobster seems like another one, the politics differ a little but the same divide between society as shown in the hotel being a relationship extremism and the loners being individualist extremism.
 
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