Persona (1966) | Film İncelemesi

Today I'll share a review about the mysterious masterpiece created by the Swedish descent director Ingmar Bergman, Persona. As i can see this movie kinda pioneer of the modern cinema and that's one of the things that makes this movie valuable. For me, this review gonna be kinda different, let me underline that again "for me", because this isn't like a movie it's like more psychological documentary. There's a lot of psychological phenomenon exist in the movie and all of this is fucking brilliant.

Let me explain the main subject superficially. Our movie taking up the two opposite character psychological status deeply. Alma and Elisabeth. Elisabeth is an actress, playing in theatre games. And one day in the middle of the game Elisabeth suddenly falls silent and begins laughing. From that day on, Elizabeth stopped speaking at all. With that weird situation, they hospitalization Elisabeth but after some psychological and physical test they see that all their results are normal. In the same time, elisabeth still remains silent. In a hospital setting Alma, takes care of Elisabeth. The hospital manager thinks that this suffocating hospital environment will harm both of them, and sends them both to herself unused summer house. But before that, the hospital manager makes perhaps one of the most impressive speeches in the history of cinema, the speech was incredible i don't know what to say about it. And everything starts in that summer house. Like Adam who was expelled from heaven after eating the apple, Like Alma, who gets expelled from the hospital and goes to the summer house after finding Elisabeth.

Since I'm done explaining the subject, now i can explain the movie from my own. These are all just my thoughts, they may all be wrong or be the touchstone of the movie. In fact, this is where the beauty of cinema and art lies, everything we see and interpret may be different. Until the middle of the movie, everything goes between silent Elisabeth and talkative Alma. With that Bergman actually gives us two opposite character, that's most effective way to express feelings and ideas. Let's look at these two character behaviors by considering the name of the movie, "Persona". With dominant Alma and nondominant Elisabeth, 2 persona. Alma is constantly talking about somethings as she finally finds someone to listen to herself. Over time, Alma begins to nurture love and admiration for Elisabeth, as she finds someone who listens so attentively and with pleasure. To me, Alma confesses her evil through Elisabeth. And the perfect side about it, there's no one to judge Alma, she's so free to tell every bad things she did. Especially there's a sex story and confession about children on beach. That scene proves the confession situation I said. Plus this sex story sequence it proves to us that Bergman has an extraordinary writing talent. It was really unique.

After watching the movie, I made lot of research about the subject human "Persona" psychology stuff. If I were to explain this in the most logical way, I think it would be like this. When a person is a baby, he/she does whatever he/she wants carefree and freely. Regardless of external influences. If she wants to cry, she will cry, if she wants to be angry, she will be angry. But over time, when that baby grows up, it starts to gain consciousness from the outside. So what is that? It is "Persona". Personality transfer. She can't cry when she wants to cry anymore, she can't laugh when she wants to laugh. She now begins to live in certain patterns created by society. She begins to live with masks and loses her original identity. Her original "Persona". Same way, let's think a man. The man treats people well and kind at work. But on the contrary, the man treats people very badly at home. What is this man's true personality? We will never know that but we can agree that there is a personality transfer, as I mentioned before. There are dozens of things that we do not know and cannot be sure about the movie. That's why I called it Bergman's "mysterious masterpiece" at first. Elisabeth's behavior is purely a reaction to these social patterns I mentioned. Even being silent. My favorite dialogue from the movie I will write in the next paragraph will explain most of things what I said..

"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. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don't have to lie. 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. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don't speak, why you don't move, why you've created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you've left your other parts one by one."

"The important thing is to try, not to succeed. Isn't it?" 

The dialogue I wrote in the previous paragraph actually explains everything to us. As a theater actress, Elisabeth wants to portray a person who, unlike her other plays, is not fake "person" and against the stereotypes created by society, reacting these stereotypes by being silent. As the hospital manager said, human cannot commit suicide it's disgusting, but human can keep silent. May be silent to avoid falsehoods. Elisabeth's purpose in this role is not to achieve, but to strive. She just wanna react to all these fakes human behaviours As we said before "The important thing is to try, not to succeed. Isn't it? Every speech, every dialogue in this movie is fucking brilliant. 

As time progresses, personality transfer begins to occur between Alma and Elisabeth. Elisabeth, which we labeled as reticent and non-dominant, is now beginning to become dominant with her silence. Alma starts to go crazy at Elisabeth's silence. I think the fact that the film is black and white is have very deepful meaning. Besides being atmospheric, the metaphor of "Alma"-"Elisabeth" is used in "black"-"white". I mean, 2 colour. 2 person(Persona). The two complement each other. One without the other is meaningless. We cannot see one without the other. Like Alma and Elizabeth's relationship. It's just incredible. Elisabeth's key is Alma, Alma's lock is Elisabeth. The two are intertwined. As often shown in the movie.

At the end of the movie, the personality transfer is totally happening. What we call it "Persona". The same scene is shown from both Alma's and Elisabeth's perspective and an interactive presentation is presented. Alma unlocks the lock, that we're talking about as before "key-lock" relationship. Alma sets free Elisabeth and ends the game which Elisabeth playing. I'm sure there are dozens of details that I missed in the movie. In my opinion, an extremely original cinematic example that should be watched more than once. 

We couldn't talk much about acting and cinematography, but surely a great example of acting was presented with mimics and other unique things. I think it was more difficult for the players to tell something without speaking, but we can see it was overcome. The black and white cinematography example was used quite well for its year. It is ingenious to both present an example of pioneering cinematography and present a metaphor with that cinematography. Really brilliant. As always, the biggest shortcoming I feel while watching Bergman movies is the insufficient use of music. But that's Bergman's style. Persona, which is an above average movie in most aspects, will not appeal to everyone, but it is a cinema masterpiece that will help people to open up to new horizons. Thank you for reading. See you in other my shitty reviews...

Favourite quote: "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. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don't have to lie. 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. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don't speak, why you don't move, why you've created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you've left your other parts one by one."

                                             IMDB : 8.1/10

                                            Yazar Puanı: 9/10