Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Director Raises Questions on Reality

Watch enough movies and you’ll start to notice that many filmmakers share a fascination with the medium through which they create their art. Indeed, film is a relatively new phenomenon in the grand scheme of the human artistic endeavor, and it is one whose capacity to replicate reality supplies the more adventurous of directors with ample room for experimentation.

Ingmar Bergman, popular among young folk for his theological, philosophical, historical masterwork “The Seventh Seal,” was certainly up for the task of challenging moviegoers’ preconceived ideas about the cinema when he made “Persona” in 1966.

The film begins with a shot of the film projector starting up and launches into a montage of apparent non sequiturs carefully curated to make us confront the reality of the film’s unreality — the slaughter of a live animal, a hand getting nailed to a board and a morgue full of corpses are bound to make you uncomfortable even if you’re aware that what you’re watching is only a movie. The prologue of the film concludes with a boy rising from a hospital bed and reaching out to a projection of a woman who slowly comes into focus just as a xylophonic cacophony heralds the advent of the opening credits. If you aren’t confused yet, bear with me — things are about to get a lot stranger.

Alma (Bibi Andersson), a young nurse tasked with caring for Elizabet Vogler (Liv Ullman), an actress three-months mute by choice, is the ostensible protagonist of the film … if a movie like this can be said to have protagonists at all. Bergman spends only a short time setting up the film’s premise; he seems far more intent on challenging our relationship with the screen and events depicted there. Only 15 minutes into the film, Elizabet watches a news program showing real footage from the Vietnam War of civilians burning to death in the streets. Here as elsewhere throughout the film, the line separating the realm of fiction from the realm of nonfiction is unsettlingly blurred.

At the instruction of Elizabet’s doctor, Alma moves with the silent actress to a summer house by the ocean, where the remainder of the film unfolds. Despite her best efforts to get Elizabet to speak, Alma finds the tables unexpectedly turned on her one night when she spills her darkest memories to Elizabet while trying to elicit the same from her patient. Like the therapist from hell, Elizabet plays the passive, if somewhat bemused, onlooker as Alma gradually falls to pieces in recounting the most unsavory details of her life story. Suddenly, Elizabet speaks up — or does she? The viewer can clearly hear the actress’ voice, yet Alma seems to doubt that anything was said at all and even repeats Elizabet’s words verbatim as though they were her own. Though we never find whether Elizabet actually broke her vow of silence or not, we do know for certain that there is more to Alma’s patient than meets the eye.

There’s no question that “Persona” is a weird film by any standards, but it’s hard not to find yourself captivated by its bizarre contours and shapeless plot. Bergman must be credited with much of this bewitchment, as any other director would surely lack the technical panache to pull off a film of this nature. Up until the end of the film, Elizabet continues to exert a vampiric influence on her caretaker to the point where the boundary between Elizabet and Alma — just like the boundary between fiction and reality that Bergman toyed with earlier — all but dissolves. Bergman offers little in the way of resolution when all is said and done, leaving us with another shot of a film projector to parallel the movie’s opening and remind us of the inherently illusory nature not only of film itself but also of identity.

Just as Elizabet once donned fake identities for a living, so too do we all adopt false personas on a daily basis, whether we realize it or not. Bergman is intent on leading his audience to that conclusion on their own terms, and while the psychological toll of watching a Swedish nurse lose her mind — and possibly also her soul — may be high, the intellectual reward for making it through to the other side is one of the greatest to be found in film or any medium.

Tim Markatos is a senior in the College. The Cinema Files appears every other Friday.

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