There can be no denying that films categorized as ‘art cinema’ can to a great extent remain obtuse to most viewers. Those who limit themselves to the traditional narrative-based films of commercial cinema usually find the demands of art cinema to be far too great for either their understanding or enjoyment. It is in fact the demands of the genre that ultimately provide the most pleasure and stimulation for the intelligent critic. Decoding art cinema cannot be accomplished without the proper theoretical tools, however, as some form of critical theory – be it psychoanalysis, semiotics, or Marxist thought – should inform the analysis. Ingmar Bergman’s Persona very definitely exemplifies this conception of art cinema. Upon first screening the film, many viewers will remain undoubtedly confused as to the purpose and meaning of the film. Certainly, an easy understanding of Persona is hindered by Bergman’s use of unorthodox stylistic devices at several points in the film, notably during the opening and middle sequences. Several theoretical models for analysing the film allow the critic points of access to its meaning. While a psychoanalytical approach might initially seem obvious, a deconstructionist / existentialist analysis seems more fitting with the tone of the film. The philosophical backdrop of the film is most obviously existentialist in nature. Realization of the absurdity of life informs the actions of both protagonists; Elizabeth is the first to realize this, although by the middle of the film Alma has acknowledged it as well. The relationship between the two can be most easily understood in terms of the Derrida-Buber discourse of the Other. They are defined by each other and are therefore dependent on each other for identity. When each realizes this interdependency, not long into Persona, the Other loses its rigid boundaries and they become in effect one personality.
The title of the film itself refers to this concept of ‘slippery personality’, and indeed extends to signify the existential undertones of the entire picture. ‘Persona’ can be understood by the various Latin meanings for the word: personality, character, part in a play. Certainly Persona is an observation of, and even an extended meditation on, the two personalities of the protagonists. The camera lingers on their features, both physical and behavioural, and indeed the viewer is directed into an intimate relationship with them. Additionally, in several instances the characters recognize themselves as characters within the film, acknowledging the camera either verbally, as when Alma converses with an off-screen woman almost as though she were being interviewed by the camera / viewer, or visually, occurring most often when one of the characters stares straight at the camera and out toward the viewer. Such stylistic devices are not foreign to art cinema, and indeed self-recognition by films can be seen as part of the definition of the genre. A more significant and appropriate interpretation can be made using alternate meanings for ‘persona’ however. The term can also signify a mask, a fallacy, or a pretense, and in these contexts a deeper insight into the motivations of the characters is gained. By realizing that their personalities are masks and fallacies, and consequently that their lives are not in fact “real”, they begin to understand the ultimately absurd nature of existence. Elizabeth is the first to perceive the situation of her ridiculous existence, and indeed this consciousness is the catalyst for the narrative. During a stage performance she ceases speaking and turns away from the audience; thereafter she ceases to speak altogether. She turns away from all of these assumed personas, and this act is Elizabeth’s attempt at rejecting the falsity of modern existence. Her role in the play is no more or less real than any of the roles she enacts in her personal life; each is equally a mask. Consequently, her escape from domestic life – demonstrated most obviously when she destroys the picture of her son – can be explained as another false identity which must be abandoned.
Furthermore, the chaos and arbitrariness of life as internalized and rejected by Elizabeth are confirmed in several sequences. She is horrified by the Vietnamese scenes of war and the self-immolation of the Buddhist monk that she watches on television, and equally so by the photograph of Jewish persecution under the Nazis. A disbelief in a divine power is never blatantly expressed in Persona, yet such confrontations with reality-as-suffering confirm for Elizabeth the Nietzschian and existentialist maxim of “God is dead”. There is no ultimate truth around which Elizabeth can structure her life, there remain only the personality masks that she once assumed and now rejects. Her artistic life no longer represents anything of reality, as any harmony and order that it champions does not exist in such an arbitrarily violent and chaotic world, as depicted in the scenes from war. She can no longer function by taking on her personas, so consequently she rejects her artistic life and adopts what she believes as a ‘more real’ truth – that of non-functioning, or at least not displaying any vocal communication, the most obvious outward trapping of falsity. Alma similarly comes to realize the artifice of her own personality, most evidently when she relates her involvement in an orgy with another woman and two young boys. Furthermore, her relationship with her fiancé Karl-Henrik is ostentatiously a farce, a social convention to which she must adhere. Elizabeth more dramatically evidences her ‘existentialist’ convictions however, as she frequently rejects the pretense of truth that others have internalized. Early in the film she laughs at a radio broadcast, scoffing at the truths of love, mercy, and forgiveness which it attempts to convey. Ultimately she rejects Alma herself as an actor and a fiction: in her letter to the doctor she states that she enjoys observing Alma’s behaviours, which seem to her almost as a play. In a meaningless world, personas themselves are ultimately meaningless. The absence of God is not stressed in existentialist thought, nor in fact in the film itself, but rather it is the presence of the absence of God that exists. The characters, and especially Elizabeth feel this presence-of-absence quite viscerally; without God there is only the meaningless of an absurd existence. Bergman makes this quite obvious early in the film, when he displays scenes of barren, rocky coastlines while Alma reads from a book: “All the anxiety we carry with us – our blighted dreams, the inexplicable cruelty our anguish at the thought of death, the painful realization of our earthly state – have slowly crystalized our hope of salvation. The cries of our faith and doubt are one of the most terrible proofs of our desolation”. Throughout the film Bergman uses scenes of barren rocks to emphasize personal isolation within an existentialist world. At this point in the film however, only Elizabeth can agree with this statement; Alma remains unconvinced.
Insight into the relationship between the two women can be gained through the application of the discourse of the Other. Described by Derrida, Foucault, and other deconstruction philosophers, an entity is defined by its relation to the entities that it excludes, which become for it a symbolic Other. Despite using the Other as a means of differentiation, an object can not be defined without the existence of the other. Consequently both entities contain elements of the Other within themselves; the definition is both exclusionary and inclusionary. Both Alma and Elizabeth define themselves in relation to each other in this ontological manner. They are initially quite distinct from each other, and play explicit roles: Alma as Nurse and Elizabeth as Patient. Yet as Foucault elucidates, this specified power relationship is not exterior to the means of its own disintegration. By performing her authoritative role as nurse, Alma will cure Elizabeth of her status as patient and consequently disarm her own authority. The realization of this fact comes relatively swiftly to Alma, who soon blurs the distinctions of her authority and furthermore of her personality. During their initial meeting Alma remains methodic and distant, engaging with Elizabeth very formally. She introduces herself in a scientific manner, casually listing off her characteristics: name, marital status, and so forth. This clinical approach does not allow any true communication between the two however.
A greater intimacy is required, a familiarity which becomes manifest as the two women (unconsciously) realize themselves as the Other. Their intimate relationship is in fact an awareness of the importance of the Other and its consequent internalization. Alma initiates the process when she herself becomes patient to Elizabeth, relating her own problems and traumas. They begin to act and look alike: both humming while picking mushrooms; both wearing similar clothes, as Alma adopts Elizabeth’s black attire and smoking habit; Elizabeth becoming the “good listener” that Alma thinks she herself is. Perhaps the most vivid example of the unification of persona through the internalization of the Other occurs when Alma confronts Elizabeth about the rejection of her son. Bergman repeats this scene twice, in the first sequence focussing on Elizabeth’s face as she silently expresses her guilt for spurning the love of her son. Then the sequence is repeated, as Bergman confines the camera to Alma as she speaks. In the second sequence Alma seems to be alluding to her own life and its failed enactment of motherhood when she aborted a child. At several instances elsewhere, Alma implicitly challenges the distinction of their characters: “Can you be one and the same person? I mean... be two people?”, and “I looked into the mirror and thought, why we look alike ... I could change myself into you ... I mean inside ... You could change into me”. They seem to share personalities, or more accurately, share one dominant personality. Bergman himself noted this fact: “There’s something extremely fascinating to me about these people exchanging masks and suddenly sharing one between them.” His choice of framing his subjects strengthens this unification of character, as in several scenes their figures seem to merge into one form. Indeed the director had made their coupled personas clear long before, in the opening sequence and before the actual introduction of either character: in the sequence a youth reaches out toward their projected faces, which alternate and blend together. An extension of this relationship model can be forwarded using the theories of Martin Buber, who defines relationships in terms of the subjective (I-thou) and objective (I-it). The relationship between Alma and Elizabeth begins objectively with both characters acting strictly within their ordained roles. It quickly becomes subjective, at which point the two women “exchang[e] masks and ... [share] one between them”.
More correctly however, if several ambiguous sequences during the second half of Persona can be interpreted as dream-sequences, which is highly likely, it is in fact only Alma who truly internalizes the relationship as I-thou. She begins to incorporate Elizabeth into a fantasy relationship which for Elizabeth remains largely subjective. During one of these dreams, Elizabeth comes into her room at night and they embrace. Despite Elizabeth’s repeated denial that it occurred, this event becomes internalized in Alma as a symbol of the subjectivity of their relationship. Several times thereafter she refers (and simultaneously does Bergman) to this caress. As has been mentioned above, Elizabeth ultimately rejects Alma desire for an I-thou relationship as she began to view Alma herself as a pretense and an actor. This fact becomes apparent, to both the viewer and to Alma, when Alma reads Elizabeth’s letter to her psychiatrist. It is the failure of this intimate relationship which both enrages and anguishes Alma; her desperation is quite palpable when she asks Elizabeth, “Must it be like this?”. It is also at this point that she acknowledges the ontological meaning in the artifice and apparent meaningless of their relationship. After Alma says to Elizabeth, “You don’t need me anymore”, she comments that this statement sounds false; indeed, Alma seems to imply that in a chaotic and meaningless world the concept of “need” itself becomes largely irrelevant. She sets a quasi-trap for Elizabeth, not warning her of the broken glass on the back lawn. When Alma sees Elizabeth’s face upon cutting her foot – an expression establishing Elizabeth’s knowledge of Alma’s intentions – the film stock itself literally disintegrates. There have been numerous critical explanations for Bergman’s effect, yet perhaps the most obviously symbolic is also the most applicable. The film stock disintegrates at the moment when the relationship between Alma and Elizabeth has reverted from a subjective I-thou to an objective I-it. Thereafter their conversation loses its intimacy, first becoming idle talk and then quickly escalating into angry discourse. Alma begins to violently force Elizabeth to speak, which she had not previously attempted. Their confrontations escalate until Elizabeth is compelled to cry out when Alma threatens her with a pot of boiling water. After these instances of violent conflict, Alma appeals to Elizabeth to re-establish their I-thou relationship. This endeavour remains a failure, yet Alma begins to fantasize about a return to intimacy, and indeed these fantasies become effectual on her persona by the end of the film. The (dream) sequence involving Elizabeth’s husband demonstrates Alma’s continuing internalization of Elizabeth-as-Other. She claims Elizabeth’s position quite vividly as lover and as husband, even to the extreme of assuming her role as mother and accepting the child that Elizabeth had rejected.
Despite the deterioration of their relationship into the objective I-it, their previous I-thou relationship continues to inform their personas. By the end of the film each has come to realize Elizabeth’s initial precept of the falsity of role-playing personalities. Alma recognizes that her appropriation of Elizabeth’s character is a pretense, and finding shame in this appropriation she rejects the dream as “nothing but lies and cheating”. Elizabeth comes to the realization that her silence and rejection of false personas is itself a persona. Her psychiatrist had in fact made this quite clear early in the film:
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. ... No one asks if it’s true or false, if you’re genuine or just a
sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and barely 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. ... 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 ending to the film is quite sudden, yet it is not unsatisfactory. Both women resume their previous roles, they can in fact embrace their existence within these roles informed by their experiences with each (O)ther. Through their relationship they have come to re-assume their individual and separate personas. Elizabeth fixes the torn picture of her son and returns to acting; likewise, Alma again dons her nurse uniform. They share one truth that lets them return to functionality, a truth which is spoken by both Alma and Elizabeth: “nothing”. Indeed this word is the first utterance that can be positively ascribed to Elizabeth. “Nothing” is of course an ambiguous answer, yet most likely refers to the aforementioned existentialist maxim of “God is dead”. Bergman further obscures the meaning of the ending by showing the boy from the opening sequence reaching out towards the empty space which previously pictured the face of Alma / Elizabeth. The viewer is left to ponder whether the director intended this scene to counter the ‘narrative’ ending, implying that the reintegration of Alma and Elizabeth into their distinct personas by means of “nothing” is itself a false role.
Bergman chose a difficult subject to portray in Persona, yet the relative simplicity of the plot may confuse viewers not well informed by critical theory. It may well be argued however that most art films such as Persona were never intended for general consumption, but instead for critical study. Indeed, such elitist limitations are unavoidable, as critical discourse is itself largely the discourse of the intellectual elite. Persona can be enjoyed for more than ideological reasons, however, as it does present a fascinating and sensuous relationship between two women who themselves have thoughts and opinions. Any even moderately intelligent individual could not avoid the pleasure of voyeurism in this context.
Bibliography
Cowie, Peter. Ingmar Bergman: A critical biography. London: Secker & Warburg, 1982.
Livingston, Paisley. Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art. London: Cornell University
Press, 1982.
Manns, Torsten, and Stig Björkman and Jonas Sima. Bergman on Bergman. Trans. Paul
Britten Austin. London: Secker & Warburg, 1973.
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