#43 We just watched this on Netflix streaming: Persona

Contrast and dichotomy - has Aronofsky seen this movie before?

The Film: Persona

For years I’ve heard the hype surrounding Bergman – almost every filmmaker points to him as an inspiration, if not a great talent. I’d seen three of his films: Fanny and Alexander, Wild Strawberries, and Seventh Seal. All of them good, but they felt “from the past”. Talents such as Hitchcock, Godard, and Kurosawa are able to launch out across space and time and be just as interesting and, most importantly, fresh for a new generation.

Bergman always felt stale (if not kind of stale) to me. As if his films existed in the past as great works of art, but all the same were antiquated. If you watch Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin their movies still make us laugh and engage our minds as if they were still living and working today. Filmmaking is – if it is anything – a time capsule containing moments, images, and sounds that will move across time and be what it is today what it was a century ago. My point: Longevity and “freshness” matter.

Persona, made almost half a century ago, blew me away. I’ve never seen anything like it, and if I have (maybe Antichrist, Muholland Drive), it was likely inspired by Bergman’s audacious movie. What a film!

The audaciously academic word "mise-en-scene" - a word that makes my dick shrivel and blood boil - seems all too appropriate here.

Why to watch it: There aren’t many reasons not to.

For one thing, how can you turn down seeing a movie where Bergman splices in an image of an erect penis in the first few seconds? That would be unheard of , and censored, even now, I can’t imagine what sort of controversy it was at the time.

If you love movies, it is your duty to watch this movie on Netflix streaming. It takes the film camera and “the film” to the limits of what can be done artistically. Yes, Avatar might be a greater scientific achievement, but what other movie can question what movies are and what we are simultaneously. To call it pretentious is stupid if not ignorant of what pretentious means. Pretentious is attributing a value of culture and art into a work that lacks these elements. Bergman might be (he is) idiosyncratic and self-indulgent – never pretentious.

There are so many things to praise: The use of B/W photography, the audacity of the “film breaking”, the actresses performances, the imagery of duality, and the psychological depth – what sticks out for me most is how sexually charged the movie is. The famous monologue could get even a rigid man boned up. When she is discussing being banged out in an orgy and coming over and over, I was like, “Daaaaaaaaamn!”.

An image that can't be explained until you've seen the movie.

Pay attention to this: Bergman using “film breaks” and making the audience aware of something that is “faked” and something that is “real”.

I won’t be presumptuous and try to explain everything. After all, I’ve only seen the movie once, but what I can gather is that most of the imagery should be taken as literal as possible. Otherwise, god knows where people would end up. The start of film begins with the beginning and creation of filmmaking. Was Bergman saying that he was trying to make a second act - or did he want to create the “denouement” for films? I don’t know, but around the time when “actual” emotions are felt, the stepping on the glass for example, the film rips.

As in, the ability for films to fake our emotions breaks down when real emotion is felt and has to start over. There’s more: Why did Bergman show the camera crew briefly? Why did he make it so obvious that what he was showing is something that wasn’t real? I think because an artist cannot separate themselves from their work. Everyone’s faking – art, and people, have limitations.

-Collin