Persona | Dir: Ingmar Bergman | ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The Swedish film Persona (1966) is ageless because of the psychological mysteries woven into the mesmerising images. This cinematic masterpiece explores the complexities of identity as it blurs the boundaries of reality and imagination.
The title comes from Carl Jung’s theory that we allow our outer face to show what we want the world to see, much like the masks worn by Greek actors. The persona is the mask of our personalities, while we hide our shadow sides.
Actress Elizabeth (Liv Ullmann) stops speaking in the middle of a performance of Electra and remains mute. A doctor diagnoses no physical evidence and suggests that spending summer at an isolated house overlooking a rocky sea shore with a nurse might be a way to recover.
Nurse Alma (Bibi Anderson) actually looks similar to her patient and Bergman plays with this similarity by combining and superimposing their two faces. Alma reveals all her secrets to her silent companion, with the intention of forming a friendship.
The characters seem to lose their sense of reality and merge with each other. This parallels the phenomenon where a viewer becomes the character in the film they are absorbed in. Bergman uses a montage of the early days of cinema (where the play of light and dark produced motion) to remind us of this.
When the hypnotic film merges the faces of the two women, it could it be that they complete each other, or that the women are transforming into the other. Alma has a lot of self-doubt and wants to be charismatic like Elizabeth, while Elizabeth wants an uncomplicated life.
Persona is an enchanting film that deserves to be seen in a dark cinema, on the big screen. It is the closing night film of the Nordic Film Festival on Sunday 16 August at Luna, Leederville.
The Nordic Film Festival runs from 9 July to 16 August, showcasing award-winning films from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden – at Luna Leederville, Luna on SX and Palace Raine Square.
Lezly Herbert
