Review of Persona (1966) by Martin T — 04 Jan 2010

I'm very conflicted about this one. I like it a little bit less each time, and yet at the end I'm always like "well, I'll have to watch that again". It's so impenetrable, so resistant to interpretation.

Sometimes you think you have a handle on it and then it slips away from you. And I believe that there really is no interpretation, at least not a complete one. It's Bergman's most experimental film from his most experimental period (though The Rite is pretty far out there, too), and I think a lot of it is a violent inability to express himself.

Or not knowing what he wants to express. The narrative and the meta-narrative are at odds with each other, although each is fascinating on its own. Nykvist's photography is some of his best work ever, and Bibi Andersson is in top form (it's a little trickier to evaluate Liv Ullmann's silent performance, but she handles it well).

To say that this film is flawed would be incorrect. It's kind of the perfect expression of... whatever it is. It's just so hard get a handle on that it can be frustrating. But that's exactly what keeps you coming back to it, deconstructing and reconstructing it, picking out scraps of meaning.