Persona
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Movie Reviews of Persona
Movie Review: one of the best ever made
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the best rated films of all time...and it's definetely justified. It might very well be Bergmans materpiece, and THAT says a lot. The story behind one of the greatest achievments in cinema history was (is); Liv Ullmann, Bibi Anderson, Sven Nykvisk and Ingmar Bergam....That's the whole movie !!! Only 4 people,but it doesn't get much better than this. It's perfect -Movie Review: The Greatest Film of the 20th Century
Summary: 5 Stars
This is Ingmar Bergman's greatest achievement as a film director (most of us have not seen his stupendous stage productions and only a few of his "made-for-TV" films). It is, quite simply, the greatest film of the 20th century by its greatest film director. All films should be judged against it---and found worthy or wanting.
Movie Review: Bergman Penetrates Into the Unconcious
Summary: 5 Stars
Persona is a great film with great images. Bergman expresses so much - with so much subtlety. Though nobody can give an absolute explanation to everything in the film - its ambiguity -
and its possibilities are what make it so intriguing - almost spiritual (which is a word with its own world of ambiguity)
Movie Review: Is Everything OK With This DVD Already?
Summary: 5 Stars
Wasn't this recently recalled for transfer rate problems ? Or does this mean everything's OK already?Anyway, a masterpiece.
Movie Review: SMOKE AND MIRRORS; A SWEDISH MIND GAME
Summary: 4 Stars
Often I've read people describe Bergman as essentially a crazy, unpleasant old man living in isolation on a remote island. Haven't you? Imagine: People visit him there, at their peril, it seems, for one has the impression that he lived as a kind of diffident hermit spider who survived on the psychic juice he squeezed out of his victims, which stress-derived juice he transmuted into the visions and insights that became, eventually, his neurasthenic screenplays. Seems plausible enough. And here, viewing-reading PERSONA, this cinematic ESSAY ON DEPRESSION projected as a relapse into apathy by a famous actress -- reading it backwards and forwards and looking at it from many angles -- as one should with most abstract art, one can fairly well make out how and out of what material he contrived this movie.
It is a period piece, remember, arising out of that era of Cold War anxiety and Existential nausea -- late 50s - mid 70s -- when nothing seemed either solid or valuable. It was a time when Psychoanalysis and Shrinks (like Sybils) of different stripes were thought weighty both as symbols and characters in stories (LADY IN THE DARK, EQUS, SPELLBOUND, ON A CLEAR DAY) about the struggles of individuals with and protests against society. And so Bergman, who was notorious for his psychic instability -- in common with other european auteurs like Almodovar, Passolini and Fassbinder -- dredged the muckbins of his unconscious memories, for themes and incidents he could use. And, he cannibalized material from others of his friends and colleagues. And he stole for effect when it s uited him; the most obvious example of it being the insertion in the screenplay of the most famous footage from the Viet Nam War, that of the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk, burning for a seeming eternity in the middle of a Saigon street. Horror (and outrage) by association. Which is to say, without cost. Or personal involvement.
We can reconstruct it this way: Probably at some point Bergman has a mini-breakdown; a fit of apathy like a dry patch of inspiration. Screenwriter's Block. He goes to a sympathetic and well-to-do Therapist who is sensitive to his position as ornament of Swedish Theatre and Film, and recommends a stay at his summer, beachfront home. (The location proves fortuitous for it is close where in future, Bergman will build a home for himself. There, later, several other of his meditations on mental illness will be written, and some will be filmed.)
Whether it actually true or not, through creative visualization, Bergman switches genders and envisions a situation where the silent, near catatonic patient (based on himself) and her care-taker will assume "roles." (Re-examine Genet's THE MAIDS.) The roles they assume in the film are that of the patient and Psychiatrist. (Not Male/Female but Dominant/Passive.) In typical Freudian theory and practice, the patient transfers his/her concerns on to the Therapist who remains not quite silent, but both distant and non-assertive.
This is very likely a situation familiar to Bergman who was himself cold and distant and non-communicative, often. And it known that as a womanizer, and charming, he often chose women who were younger and more open, or more suceptible to his crafty form of control and manipulation. (The Sadie/Mazie waltz.)
In PERSONA, the central confession of the Care-giver/now Patient, is of an intimate, sexual nature. (Again here, there is a touch of alcohol as the barrier-breaking medium of self-revelation. [AUTUMN SONATA.] Which makes me think Bergman probably liked to drink, and got some of his material from his drinking partners.) Unique in the film's writing, it has the character of an overheard or pilfered confession or recollection from some woman, and here, is used to provoke within the ambiguity of the mis-en-scene, a feeling of sexual ambiguity -- call it a lesbian tweak -- that allows Nyquist to suggest with his camera all kinds innuendos, visually, silently, without degenerating into smut, and this to such a degree that the screen has the look of a Fashion Magazine spread of the period with shots composed in the manner of the fashionable fashion photographers of the day; Penn, Avadon, etc. In this respect PERSONA is like a hard cover cocktail table book of Blonde-on-Blonde Lesbian Pornography, with the softest conceivable core, and the devine Liv Ulman as the eternal center spread.
Whether or not you think any of these musings even remotely plausible, you are likely to enjoy the film if you are attracted to abstract art, generally, and are entertained by the ambiguities of films of the period like Renais' LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, or Antonioni's L'AVENTURA. From the very first credits, both artsy, eccentric and disturbing, and that angular irritable music undernearth them, meaning: CAUTION, Montage (or pastiche) ahead, to the initial shot of Ulman heavily painted and in costume playing in a Greek Tragedy and having her fit of Stage Fright or spasm of psychic paralysis, you will know that you're in for a bumpy ride and may expect to be dragged with all deliberate speed over one of the cold beaches of polished rocks off the Swedish holiday coast. It's a very interesting ride on any number of levels.
When you think of its comparatively brief duration, of PERSONA's tiny cast, and of its black and white format, you may be prompted to realize, with astonishment, how tiny the production budget must have been, and to realize with dawning respect and amazement, with what economy of word and image Bergman and his cinematographer, Nyquist, managed to construct such a towering hour and a half of fascination. Like all movies, it's all smoke and mirrors, of course, a shadow play, but their effective articulation is a question of masterful dexterity. And in PERSONA, the display of the director's Skill in manipulating his ensemble is the star of the show.