Hi! I am Cecilia, a girl studying at university. I would like to share some ideas about music and movies with others on the blog, talking with them. In the first blog, I will analyze "Persona" which is a Modernist horror. And I choose a shot from 38:30:00-39:00:00 using this shot to illustrate my understanding.
In this shot, two women touched each other and finally integrated. They stood side by side, and Elizabeth stood in front of Alma. In the beginning (picture 1), Elisabet was clear, and she manipulates Alma who was dim like control a doll, with one hand on Alma's shoulder and lifted Alma's hair with the other. At this time, Alma without any expression, watching faintly straight ahead. In the second half of the clip (picture 2), Alma blinked and recovered her expression and eyes firmly looking ahead. However, at this time, Elisabet became blurry, and it looks like they change their identity. Elisabet allowed Alma to stroke her hair, and at last the two of them fell to one side and gradually merged.
"Persona" is a popular movie, straight-forward and esoteric, which describes a story between two women. One is Elisabet, and she is a patient and an actress who refuse to speak after one performance. The other one is Alma, and she is a nurse responsible for taking care of Elisabet. The clip I selected took place in the middle of the film and was also in the middle of the two climaxes. Earlier in the episode, nurse Alma and patient Elisabet arrive at a house by the sea. They live together. At this time, For Alma, Elisabet is a kind and dignified presence. She likes Elisabet, regards her as her closest person, and slowly tells Elisabet the secret of her heart. At the same time, she envy Elisabet: her calm mask, her firmness of will. She wants to be like Elisabet, as she says in the film: "we look alike" (picture 3), and her heart implies to her that they are the same. In the latter part of the scene, Alma peeks at Elisabet's letter to the doctor, from which she learns that her secret is told by Elisabet to the third person. She gradually realizes that Elisabet's silence is just a mask, and her sympathy during the silence and love seems to be false. From that moment forth, Alma's heart changed: she restrain herself from being jealous of Elisabet, try to force Elisabet to speak and uncover her silence of the persona. However, Alma still seems to be immersed in Elisabet's persona. She still wants to be her, and Elisabet was affecting her little by little.
In my opinion, this shot can prove Barr's idea: in "Persona", the boundaries between people are illusory, and the boundaries between reality and fantasy are illusory (Barr, 1987, p.129). The film is interspersed with facts and illusions. It's hard to tell which part is the truth and which part is the illusion because the director does not clearly divide it. However, I think the clip I chose is one of the fantasies because Alma asks Elisabet: "did you come to my room last night?" at the end of the clip and Elisabet's answer proved that she had not been to Alma's room the night before. It seems that there is no reason to doubt the truth of Elisabet's answer. From the audience's point of view, there is no evidence that Elisabet maliciously wanted to make Alma doubt her own reason, nor that Elisabet lost her memory or lost her mind. In this case, the film gives two important messages at the beginning: first, Alma has a hallucination and may continue to attack in the future; second, the scene of Alma's hallucination in the film will naturally alternate with the normal plot so that even Alma's subjective imagination looks the same as "true".
"Persona" is not a film that can be understood logically. It requires the audience to perceive with consciousness, to perceive the reality and fantasy in the film, and to perceive their different meanings. In this film, Elisabet and Alma are two different individuals. They all wear masks to survive. For Elisabet, her mask is silence, which she tries to show that she has no desire. For Alma, her disguise is a naive character and normal life. Elisabet's mask is like an ideal self, while Alma's mask is like an emotional self. Their real self in their heart is the others after wearing the mask. For example, I think the clip I selected reflects that Alma's real self is Elisabet's mask. It seems that there are two characters in this clip, but in fact, these two characters are Alma herself because this is the picture of Alma's fantasy. In the first half of the picture, Elisabet touching Alma is controlled by Alma's will. Alma subconsciously tells herself that she is very similar to Elisabet. In the second half of the clip, Alma, who is integrated with Elisabet, is her true self. She wants to be integrated with Elisabet. This fragment shows that Alma is Elisabet, and one is the surface used to show people, the other is the inner true self. At the same time, Barr (1987) also claims that it is very difficult to understand a person in a short time. Human beings may be deceiving themselves, believing that the known personal identity exists. His words show that human nature is difficult to understand; perhaps they are cheating themselves and hiding the most real self in their heart. However, the most real self in their heart will be revealed unconsciously in the end. Like the clip I picked, it's a fantasy of Alma, not real. But in this clip, Alma reveals her true self in her heart. She wants to be Elisabet, and her inner role is Elisabet, so she dreams of overlapping with Elisabet.
The characters in the movie have two sides, which like most people in society, they have two sides. They sometimes hide their true self in their heart and show others with masks. They will have conflicts with themselves because they don't know how to balance the two roles in human nature. And this film gives us the answer to this question: we should accept the two sides of ourselves at the same time, integrate them, rather than bury the ugly side. Just like Elisabet, through Alma (direct sensibility), she overcomes the escape created by rational self and finally finds her inner self; just like Alma, through Elisabet (indirect reflection), she overcomes the disguise of perceptual self and finally finds herself.
Reference list
Barr, A. (1987). The Unraveling of Character in Bergman’s Persona. Literature/Film quarterly, 15(2), pp. 123-136.
Bergman, I. (1996). Persona. Sweden: Svensk Filmindustri.