AKA Persona
Director:
Ingmar Bergman
Writer:
Ingmar Bergman
Prelude
Persona begins with images of camera equipment and projectors lighting up and projecting dozens of brief cinematic glimpses, including a crucifixion, an erect penis, children in Halloween costumes, and a lamb. The last, and longest, glimpse features an emaciated boy who wakes up in a hospital next to several sleeping women, walking up to a blurry image of a woman's face and touching it.
Act I
A young nurse, Alma (portrayed by Bibi Andersson), is summoned by the head doctor and charged with the care of stage actress Elisabet Vogler (portrayed by Liv Ullman), who has, despite the lack of any diagnosed impairment, become mute. The hospital administrator (portrayed by Margaretha Krook) offers her own seaside cottage as a place for Alma to nurse Elisabet back to health. Though Elisabet is nearly catatonic when the film begins, she does react with extreme panic upon seeing Thích Quảng Đức's suicide on television, and laughs mockingly at Alma's radio soap opera. As the two women leave the hospital together, Sister Alma reads aloud a letter Elisabet's husband has sent her, which includes a photograph of her thin son.
Together in the administrator's cottage, Elisabet begins to relax, though she remains completely silent and non-responsive. Alma speaks constantly to break the silence, at first about books she is reading and trivial matters, then increasingly about her own anxieties and relationship with her fiancé, Karl-Henrik, who scolds her for lacking ambition -- "though not with my career, I suppose in some greater way." Alma constantly compares herself to Elisabet and begins to grow attached to her. As the act closes, Alma confesses to cheating on her fiancé in a menage a quatre with underage boys. Later she has sex with her fiance and says she got pregnant and that they had a child aborted. She is not sure how to process the abortion mentally. Elisabet is heard to say "You ought to go to bed, or you'll fall asleep at the table", but Alma either ignores her or dismisses it as a dream. Alma later asks Elisabet if she had spoken and she denies it.
Act II
Alma drives into town, taking Elisabet's letters for the postbox, but parks by the roadside to read what she wrote. She discovers that Elisabet has been analyzing her and laughing behind her back in letters to her husband. Alma returns distraught, breaks a drinking bottle on the footpath, and leaves the shards there to cut Elisabet. When Elisabet's feet start to bleed, her gaze meets Alma's knowingly, and the film itself breaks apart: the screen flashes white, scratch marks appear up and down the image, the sound rises and screeches, and the film appears to unwind as brief flashes of the prelude reappear for fractions of a second each.
When the film resumes, it is following Elisabet through the house with a thick blur on the lens. The image clears up with a sharp snap when she walks outside to meet Alma, who is weepy and bitter. At lunch, she tells Elisabet she has been hurt her by talking about her behind her back, and begs her to speak. When Elisabet does not react, the nurse flies into a rage and tells Elisabet "You are inaccessible. They said you were mentally healthy, but your sickness is the worst: you act healthily. You act it so well everyone believes it, everyone except me, because I know how rotten you are inside." Alma lifts a pot of boiling water intending to pour it on Elisabet. She only stops after hearing Elisabet say "No, don't." Alma explains that Elisabet wouldn't have spoken had she not feared death. Elisabet flees, and Alma chases her begging for forgiveness.
Act III
That night, Alma watches Elisabet sleep, analyzing her face and the scars she covers with makeup. She hears a man yelling outside, and finds Elisabet's husband, Mr. Vogler, in the garden. Mr. Vogler mistakes Alma for his wife, and despite her repeatedly interjecting with "I'm not your wife", delivers a monologue about his love for her and the son they have together (repeating words he wrote to Elisabet in the opening act -- "We must see each other as two anxious children"). Elisabet stands quietly beside the two, holding Alma's hand, and Alma admits her love for Mr. Vogler and accepts her role as the mother of Elisabet's child. The two make love with Elisabet sitting quietly to the side in a look of panic, and afterward, Alma cries. The image of Elisabet becomes blurry.
The climax of the film comes the next morning: Alma catches Elisabet in the kitchen with a pained expression on her face, holding a picture of a small boy. Alma then narrates Elisabet's life story back to her, while the camera focuses tightly on Elisabet's anguished face: at a party one night, a man tells her "Elisabet, you have it virtually all in your armory as woman and artist. But you lack motherliness." She laughs, because it sounds silly, but the idea sticks in her mind, and she lets her husband impregnate her. As the pregnancy progresses, she grows increasing worried about her stretching and swelling body, her responsibility to her child, the pain of birth, and the idea of abandoning her career. Everyone Elisabet knows constantly says "Isn't she beautiful? She has never been so beautiful", but Elisabet makes repeated attempts to abort the fetus. After the child is born, she is repulsed by it, and prays for the death of her son. The child grows up tormented and desperate for affection. The camera turns to show Alma's face, and she repeats the same monologue again. At its conclusion, one half of the face of Alma and the moiety of Elisabet's visage are shown in split screen such that they appear to have become one face. Alma panics and cries "I'm not like you. I don't feel like you. I'm not Elisabet Vogler: you are Elisabet Vogler. I'm just here to help you!" Alma leaves, and later returns, to find that Elisabet has become completely catatonic. Alma falls into a strange mood and gashes her arm, forcing Elisabet's lips to the wound and subsequently beating her. Alma packs her things and leaves the cottage alone, as the camera turns away from the women to show the crew and director filming the scene.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060827/
