Review of Persona (2008) by Michael B — 06 Feb 2013

Persona has influenced the visuals in the closing sequence of "The Tree of Life" and the plot of Roger Altman's "3 Women," all almost direct re-make. The original hs inspired cultural critics like Camille Paglia and Susan Sontag, although both scholars abstain from sustended critiques of the film.

Sontag's opposition to artistic interpretation created an essay that eliminates all the psychological schools of film analysis but argues for an appreciation of form without delving for content, or form-as-content.

This non-critical approach to criticism prevents plot summary because what happens is not obvious and expository in experimental film. Paglia has only referred to Jungian archetypes as the origin of her thinking on female sexual personae and obliquely made allusions to 1960s foreign art films as sources of inspiration.

Visually striking Ingmar Bergman film that situates itself very much in the tradition of cinema that refers to the limitations of the genre. Opening with an impressionistic sequence of random overexposed images and at a point the film dissolves showing only the light of the projector.

The story it tells has to do an almost vampiric appropriation of other people's identities.