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Information
- Year
- 1966
- Runtime
- 85 min.
- Director
- Ingmar Bergman
- Genres
- Drama, Thriller
- Rating *
- 8.1
- Votes *
- 59,773
- Checks
- 14,912
- Favs
- 2,295
- Dislikes
- 149
- Favs/checks
- 15.4% (1:6)
- Favs/dislikes
- 15:1
Top comments
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NourNasreldin
The opinions on this particular film vary from “I didn’t get this at all” to “Stunning Cinematography” and so, just from those two comments, one can begin to understand that persona is not your average film with your typical plot, if anything it’s Anti plot, a kind of plot that resents structure and form and takes the viewer on a journey to a place where time and space do not rule anymore.
One can describe persona as very experimental, it is indeed one of those films that explore the psyche aka the conscience of a human being rather than focusing on what the eye sees. The story is of two women who end up in a beach house together, one is an actress and the other is a nurse and they both figuratively merge into each other right before your eyes.
Persona has a really intriguing script. On one hand we have a normal (not really) character that talks, on the other hand we have the other one that doesn’t, not because she’s mute but because, she just stopped. Bergman wrote the script while in the hospital where he was being treated. He himself states that his own psychological state was poor at the time. This is when he started questioning the role of art in general and his in particular and hence: persona was born.
Here are the very first notes of Persona that Bergman has written:
Dejection and sorrow and tears which change to powerful outburts of joy. Sensitivity in the hands. The broad forehead, severity, eyes survey the [unreadable] childishness.
What is it that I want from this, yes, to start from the beginning. Not to contrive not to incite not to cause a fuss but to start from the beginning with my new if I have one.
So she has been an actress – is that acceptable, perhaps And then she fell silent. Nothing unusual about that.
These notes generally serve as a broad explanation of the psychedelic film and also serve their purpose, as Persona eventually becomes a new start in Bergman’s own career. 10 years 2 months ago -
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Siskoid
Ingmar Bergman's Persona invites many competing and collaborating interpretations, but given his body of work, what most resonates with me is Elizabet Vogler as God, changing "roles" according to the era, or any given person's faith. In the literal story, she is an actress who one day stops speaking, and absent any real pathology, is sent home with a talkative nurse, Alma. The film is about Alma's personal relationship with God, and because this is Bergman, it's a silent, remote God, one that looks at her creation and finds it shocking and ugly, one that, by her silence, invites confession and introspection. The decoder ring, for me, was the art house intro created with images of the Divine's historical evolution. Even within the film, Elizabet's divinity transforms, especially after Alma comes to think she (and thus her faith) betrayed her. The abstract Christian God of modernity falls to psycho-analysis and the concept of the divine interior (i.e. when you pray, the answers come from some part of you), which in an existential universe, is the source of self-loathing. And so, osmosis between Alma and her God occurs in the third act. It's of course possible to read the film completely from a psychological point of view, or perhaps metatextually (because it sometimes breaks the fourth wall and manifests as film). My single viewing yielded what it did, but the film left a lot of doors open for next time. 5 years 4 months ago
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In 25 official lists
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This movie ranks #3 in FLM's Best Swedish Films of All Time
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This movie ranks #36 in IMDb's 1960s Top 50
IMDb's 1960s Top 50
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This movie ranks #848 in The Criterion Collection
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