Ingmar Bergman’s classic Persona is one of the most important and discussed films ever. It throws multiple questions at the viewers without answering any of them. In the film, a famous stage actress named Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann) suddenly stops speaking. A doctor suggests her to relocate temporarily to a seaside cottage under the supervision and care of a young nurse named Alma (Bibi Andersson). During their stay in that cottage, they come closer and start feeling for each other. In the end, Elisabet returns to the stage and Alma boards a bus in her uniform to return to her duty. Bergman’s Persona raises multiple questions. Why does Elisabet suddenly stop speaking? Who is the young handsome boy about to touch the projector screen? Do the identities of Alma and Elisabet merge? Or, are they two different identities of the same person? Persona focuses on multiple important issues like abortion, homosexuality, vampirism, the merge of two distinct identities, and the human psyche.
Persona can be deemed as a cinematic poem in images. The film starts with multiple sensitive images – the starting of a projector, crucifixion, skeleton, coffin, spider, sacrificial lamb, and erect penis. Those images may seem to be unrelated, however, they portray human suffering and trauma that have always been captured on the silver screen since the birth of cinema. Ingmar Bergman was a master filmmaker whose films were always filled with human suffering and agony.
One of the most important questions about Persona is why Elisabet suddenly stops talking. Is it because of her failed motherhood? Or, boredom with stage and acting? Or, atrocities of the world like the Vietnam War and the Holocaust? Or, Is it one woman’s rebellion against the patriarchal world? The film only provokes the viewers to contemplate without providing any answers.
Another important question regarding Persona is – who is the handsome young boy in the mortuary about to touch the projector screen? Is he Elisabet’s abandoned boy? Or, Alma’s aborted fetus? Or, somebody else? Again, Bergman only makes the viewers contemplate without providing any direct answers. However, through this scene, he depicts the pain of an abandoned child. Nothing in this world can be as painful as a child without a mother.
The central theme of Persona is merging two identities or personalities. The crucial question is – are Alma and Elisabet two different personas of the same person? Or, does Ingmar Bergman merge two different identities into a single identity? Again, he only provokes the viewers to contemplate. It is up to the viewers to connect the dots. Alma looks at the mirror carefully and comments that she can easily be Elisabet if she tries a little. Throughout the film, both of them look quite similar. In a dream sequence, Elisabet and Alma come closer to each other and their identities merge into one. In the influence of other people or situations, our personalities change. Sometimes, we get influenced so much that we start behaving like that person or as per the situation. In Latin, “Persona” means mask. We wear multiple masks while dealing with people or situations in the everyday world. So, it is not always our true identities that we represent. Finally, Elisabet returns to the stage and Alma boards the bus in her uniform. So, they get back to their own identities.
Another major question regarding Persona is about homosexuality. Does Bergman portray lesbianism in the film? After meeting Alma, Elisabet enters her room, lights are slowly turned off, her room gets filled with shadows, and she remains absentminded contemplating something in a close-up. When she touches Alma’s hands, Alma says that comparing hands brings bad fortune. When Alma narrates her abortion story, Elisabet consoles her by rubbing her hand on Alma’s cheek. Throughout the film, she looks to be in love with Alma and vice versa. Alma even says she can easily be Elisabet if she tries a little. So, these two women have come so close to each other that one has a deep influence over the other.
In addition to homosexuality, Bergman also shows vampirism in Persona. In a dream sequence, Alma cuts her wrist and Elisabet sucks blood from the wound. Does Bergman show the human agony in this cruel world through this? Killing, violence, war, and torture have engulfed this world for ages, and there is no end to human miseries. Life, still, goes on.
Ingmar Bergman is widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers ever. He created a new language of cinema. In Persona, he fills almost the entire film with lights and shadows and captures the personal and intimate scenes of the two women in multiple close-ups. Throughout the film, either of them is always captured in profile. Bergman plays with lights and shadows and captures the most intimate, personal, and vulnerable moments of humans. He brings up the most crude emotions of humans onto the silver screen.
While multiple filmmakers follow an escapist route, Bergman makes it clear in Persona that the viewers are indeed watching a film. The film starts with a projector, ends with a projector, and shows that Bergman and the film crew are filming Elisabet when she returns to the stage. Bergman always portrayed human pains, sufferings, and vulnerabilities. So, quite naturally, his films were deeply rooted in this world.
Persona is also about troubled motherhood. Alma got her fetus aborted and Elisabet unsuccessfully tried to abort her baby. They appear to be irresponsible, heartless, and selfish mothers. However, not all the time women do such things. Multiple times, situations force them to take drastic steps. They make mistakes, however, they keep regretting their decisions and actions throughout their lives. Alma and Elisabet are two such vivid examples. Bergman does not vilify them but digs deeper into their psyche in Persona.
Before writing Persona, Bergman had an operation on his arm and did not feel the pain of that operation as if his body was detached from his soul. The same is reflected in Elisabet’s behavior. Suddenly, she stops speaking as if nothing in this world can impact her anymore. Human beings display such behavior only when pushed to the end and the future can’t be worse than the present situation. Elisabet might have been affected deeply by various troubles in her life like failed motherhood, complete boredom from the stage, atrocities like the Holocaust, and patriarchal society.
Persona is also about ‘the crisis of truth’, and being silent is the closest to the truth. Amid falsehood, it is meaningless to try to prove our point all the time. There is no doubt that Elisabet was intensely disturbed and might have regretted her actions. However, she chooses to be silent through her strong willpower, instead of showing a rebellion. She has already disconnected herself from this world.
The idea of Persona came to Bergman’s mind when he had a chance encounter with two actresses Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann on a street in Stockholm in 1964. Bibi Andersson already worked with him and she introduced her close friend Ullmann to Bergman. The uncanny resemblance of the two actresses struck his mind, and he immediately asked Ullmann if she could be a part of his next project. An image of the sunbathing of the two actresses inspired him to write Persona which he would complete in nine weeks in the hospital bed where he was undergoing treatment for pneumonia. Both Andersson and Ullmann delivered two of the greatest female acting performances of all time.