Understanding Persona

In response to Persona (Ingmar Bergman):

The ambiguity of this movie has been perplexing me all week. What does it mean? I still don't know. But I think that is the point Ingmar is trying to make - the Persona someone shows off isn't to be taken literally and is not a clear representation of what is really happening within the person.

I watched the interview with Ingmar in the special features included with the DVD. He talks about how he doesn't like the idea of a God, becasue it makes him feel like an inferior snake in relation to someone that Perfect. This snipit of information about the writer of the movie was very helpful for me to draw a solid conclusion about the film and what Ingmar was trying to say, consciously or unknowingly.

Elisabet, in Alma's mind, is God. She is perfect. Through her lacking conversations and unwillingness to let her true personality come through, she has no faults that are known. Her persona is perfect. Alma sees her as a perfect figure and wishes so badly to become like her that she begins to fantasize about emulating Elizabet. Through dreamlike scenes in the film of events (that I don't believe actually occurred), Alma's true wishes comes to our attention (the scene where Elizabet strokes Alma's hair, and where Elizabet's husband comes and makes loves to Alma as if she were Elizabet). Throughout the movie, when more clues are given concerning the hidden identity of Elizabet, Alma begins to reject Elizabet as a Godly figure as she begins to see that Elzabet is no more perfect than herself. (the letter written to the doctor reveals that Elizabet is kind of mean and reveals secrets of Alma's, and the truth about her lack of love for her child.)

The suspicion I have about Alma believing Elizabet is God is furthered by my own Roman Catholic religion. As a catholic, we are supposed to confess our sins to God to gain forgiveness. I think that by telling Elizabet stories of her sinful past, she is getting some sort of relief, such as going to confession would bring a catholic. God is not supposed to judge sins, only forgive. Elizabet can't talk, and therefore is not passing judgement at the time of the confession. She holds a crying Alma after hearing her sins and seemingly forgives her (until she confides these secrets to the Dr in the letter - shaking Alma's confidence that Elizabet is Godly). "the one who talks, who spills out her soul, turns out to be weaker than the one who keeps silent" - Sontag

The scene in which Alma knocks Elizabet down in regards to her son, could be a way of really telling herself that Elizabet is no longer Godly and to stop imagining her as such. I don't know if the information was relevant to Elizabet's actual life, but I take the scene as a sinister goodbye to Alma's intentions of emulating Elizabet. Psychologically beaten and confused by meeting Elizabet, Alma no longer wishes to have this concern to deal with. She no longer wants to play the role of the snake. She wants to rise again to be a normal person going about her day. She either finds this information which degrades Elizabet in letters she secretly found and read in Elizabet's belongings (for example, the letter from Mr. Volger that she read to Elizabet in the beginning of the movie may have held this information about their son), or makes up a plausible story knowing the nature of celebrity life, to take herself out of an inferior role. She once again wishes to decide her own Persona.

The many interpretations of Persona that believe that there is a mixing of identities I do not agree fully with. For me, Elizabet is a static character. She does not change throughout the movie, even though she goes mute, and then returns to her life at the end. Alma is the dynamic character. She emulates many different personas throughout the movie and it is solely her that drifts in and out of different identities -  one being Elizabet. Elizabet is only made dynamic through Alma's thoughts and views of her. Elizabet's persona is made fluid by Alma.

In regards to discussing the plot line or story narrative conveyed in the movie (as the essay link discussed), I would not personally call it a story, or a plot line. I would sum it up to be an event which spanned a certain amount of time. Personal growth doesn't always make sense, and doesn't happen chronologically. The event in this case is the personal growth of Alma doubting, then realising her own worth as a woman, person and wife. It is her struggle to reject feelings of guilt and embrace feelings of love - possibly something that needed to happen so she could once again be happy with her husband. "Violence and the sense of horror and impotence are, more truly, the residual experiences of consciousness subjected to an ordeal" -Sontag. I think this relates directly to my point above, in that Alma's dynamic characted is the result of her unwillingness to forgive herself considering the ordeal of cheating on her husband.

This interpretation of the film is what I will base my photo response on. It doesn't fully explain the movie, but I have accepted the fact that there is no explanation that explains the whole movie. I am just taking scenes and events that in summation, I can draw a single conclusion from.