I will begin my take on this thread and with Kamran's I think greatly mistaken take on this film by noting that Persona is arguably in a category of one when it comes to films and film history. Even in relation to other Bergman films it stands apart (although it would seem to have the most to do with the film that most immediately preceded it, The Silence).
In assessing Persona, one should begin by approaching it, contrary to the baseless charge of some here that Bergman's work here is lazy, as a film where essentially every frame adds to its meaning and value.
Where Kamran is right, but does not take it far enough, is with the simple statement that it is a film and should be treated as such. This is true in part on a literal level, as Bergman's opening and closing scenes make explicit reference to film as such - light, how light shining through the film provides a vision, but of what?, that then goes on to show a variety of images, and at the end in a sort of reverse process shows the light finally going out as the film ends. Bergman here is "saying" (or showing) that as a film the examination of the themes within it will be proceeding by essentially unexplained images and actions as filmed, and implicitly asking why this exercise is embarked upon, rather than merely addressed through language. Is film superior to examine those themes? Or is it merely a different way to do so than talking about those themes, or writing about them?
The next aspect of the film i think is important to recognize is that film is not necessarily tied to the narration of stories, and yet is experienced by the viewer in time, in what feels like a linear exposition. Film itself, obviously, has a linear nature. But is "what happens in" a film necessarily following a narrative structure tied to plot and development? Certainly not necessarily so. Kamran in that regard tends to view the film as one that exposes that Alma and Elisabet are to put it crudely the same person, with that person's persona (Alma) changing over time. Since the persona is transitory, in Kamran's view the end shows the persona we have seen during the film, Alma, depart, leaving Elisabeth. But we do not see Elisabeth with the "changed persona" if you will as the film ends, so I find that argument woefully lacking on that level, as it is on others.
While the film obviously concerns the concept of persona, I think too many look at the film in a primarily pyschological context. In that connection I think we should largely take the doctor's speech to Elisabet at essentially its face value. The speech takes up the issue of her psychological state, but disposes of it, and is never contradicted later in the film. The doctor says that Elisabet's muteness is not some manifestation of a physical problem or malady, and neither is it one rooted in mental illness. She instead explicitly states that she recognizes Elisabet's muteness is the result of a conscious choice, a questioning of her "fake" persona as an actress that leads her to avoid "acting" in real life, specifically by not speaking. This choice, the film shows, is actually empowering (although it is also unsustainable), and we later see Alma become unmoored, even briefly unhinged, by the challenge of Elisabet's silence.
Alma represents people who feel and see themselves as very much "in the world" in the Heideggerian since of everydayness. And it is true, as both Heidegger and the doctor acknowledge, that such world is for better or worse the one we live in. Elisabet's attempts to find deeper meaning may succeed, at least up to a point, by the approach she has taken, but that approach can only be temporary. At some point the world must be returned to, or one is left with the sole remaining alternative, which is suicide, whether literally or figuratively.
Elisabet's condition and her attempt to go beyond or underneath her previous relation to her own persona then plays out as an examination of the doubling or duality between her character and Alma.
I previously mentioned Bergman's The Silence, and a brief word about it here deserves mention. While the structure of that film is decidedly different, it directly addresses the inadequacy of language, even the ways in which language can be violent and destructive. But it also shows that the alternative can be, and is?, terrifyingly empty. In Persona, Alma feels compelled to keep speaking, to keep language going between the two women, not only to "help" Elisabet (which is Alma's job) but we see also an increasing sense that Alma hopes to use language to defend her own persona from the challenges felt by Elisabet's silent, powerful presence.
I think the critical part of the film, its crescendo if you will, comes rather early for a crescendo in terms of the usual structure followed in films. That critical portion, explicitly invoking the doubling approach, is in the sequence where the two women are shown, first Elisabet listening, then Alma talking, as Alma "describes" Elisabet's relation to her son. I htink what is going on here is that Bergman is examining how the implicit voyeurism of the film viewing experience only takes one so far in understanding, both in the specific and general senses. We explicitly see how the approach of doubling can only take us so far. Which image, Alma speaking or Elisabet listening, is the more authentic? And if the answer is the two taken together, how do we actually know even they are "true"? (Remember here that Alma's narrative is at least of questionable accuracy, of course. Do Elisabet's reactive images show more truth than Alma's words? And what do we make of Alma's images of her speaking after having seen Elisabet's reactions?)
Directly addressing theories of the film such as Kamran's, the scene ends spectacularly with a composite image of the two women's faces. But of course it does not literally end with such composition, but instead as the image cracks, like a mirror?, and the film is shown to burn. Among other things I think this hardly supports the view that the women are in fact two sides of the same person. What it instead does, I think, is show the limits of attempting to understand others. Even a virtual sublimation of the distinctions between two people, with an attempt instead to identify another as one with one's self, cannot be sustained, and end with a serviceable understanding of any truth.
Bergman is showing that the process of doubling as shown here involved for Alma a process where her personality, her persona, is dissolving. Elisabet's conscious choice as described by the doctor takes on an increasing aspect of violence, in this sense a virtually violent challenge to Alma's personality, as for example her letter, the writing of which did not require her to abandon muteness, dissected Alma's personality. Alma demands Elisabet speak, at one point leaves cut glass to perhaps get her to yell out (but only getting a whimper of pain - at least, we feel, Alma did get Elisabet to make a sound), and later, when she does succeed in getting Elisabet to speak, by the violent act of threatening to toss boiling water on Elisabet.
I think in conclusion the meaning of the film is rather pessimistic. For all the thinking that Elisabet felt justified her decision to go mute, and the rejection of her persona, both as an actress and in her "real" life, leads through her encounters with Alma to a recognition that behind Elisabet's ongoing rejection of the offer by Alma to rejoin everyday life, that a dropping off of our personas, our masks, will lead to violence and the destruction of our personalities. I say pessimistic if one views the attempt by Elisabet as one designed to obtain or have an authentic relation to the world, again in Heidegger's terms, as not only a worthwhile endeavor, but really the only way to get a true understanding of life's meaning. Perhaps this view is too pessimistic, though, if one accepts that in fact the choices we all make everyday, to maintain our personas, even when we think directly of them as masks hiding something, that they also serve in effect a necessary purpose.
Left purposely ambiguous by the visuals as the film approaches its end, seeing Alma leave the house, does not specifically indicate what happens next to Elisabet. But again we have no reason to think that the doctor's assessment was wrong in some sense. Either Elisabet will follow Alma's departure with a literal return of her own to the real world, meaning her everyday life, which in turn will include a choice to no longer be mute in a search for the authentic behind her persona, or she will stay there, either literally or figuratively as a form of suicide.
In other words, Persona is a film that acknowledges the element of inauthenticity in our uses of our own personas, attempts to get behind or underneath our personas, and finds that such attempt does not lead to any perfect understanding, but instead leads to psychological violence. This leaves the only way to go forward as literally her return to her everyday life, with her confidence battered, but the knowledge that staying with the attempt to get beyond her persona had become self destructive and unproductive, and must be left behind. This will also be the only way forward for Elisabet, as the film ends.
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