Persona

 I had a very long journey with this film (even though it doesn't know about it) even before I saw it. At some point in time, I heard of this film and I wanted to look it up. I looked it up---I only found its trailer (the film wasn't available on any of the platforms I have subscription to). I was quite impressed by the trailer. So I decided: I want to watch this film. Everything seems normal until this point. This was the start of the journey I had with the film, but the adventurous(!) part is yet to begin. Since, as it turns out, I am a believer in borrowing where I can (rather than renting or purchasing digital copies), I tried to find Persona's DVD at the library of the university I work at (you may wonder "who uses DVDs anymore?"---you're right, I didn't either and I didn't even have anything to put the CD in, but more about that later). Now, since this film is a bit old (1966), it was in what's called a "High Density Library" part of the library. Okay, I understand. But the catch is that you can't just go and borrow stuff from the high density library. Okay, I understand---I will just be a good citizen and follow the rules, which is to fill out a form to request it. So I did. Then I received an email that said my request was rejected. After reading that email, you know, I was sad, and everything seemed grey and somber. It sounds like a joke but it really somehow was like that---my guess is that it just coincided with some cloudy-weather days. So the days went with my long lost hope. 

But then, one day, I received 5 (five) emails telling me that the Ingmar Bergman collection is ready for pick up. I was quite puzzled and actually ignored those emails for a while. Then, one day, which was before the last pick-up day, I decided to go to the library and ask if they actually had them ready for pick-up (because I found it hard to believe after the rejection). Now, some background info: when you search Persona on the library's website it only lists the collection as one item but the description tells you about which films are in the collection. So the receptionist at the library told me that I could indeed pick them up (this them has nothing to do with not assuming gender for the DVD). So I went to this pick-up vending machine (yes, it looks like a vending machine) only to find out that they gave me 5 out of 6 CDs in the collection, and, the one they didn't give me was Persona. Now, at this point, this is like a joke, an irony of fate---I had lost hope already, they gave me hope, and then they didn't give me Persona. So, there I was, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. More days passed by and, I don't even know from where I got the willpower, I decided to search it on the Public Library of the city I live in. So I went online, registered, and put a hold on the DVD which was listed as available. Then the website told me that I was the second on the waitlist. Yet another joke. Why would you show it as available if somebody else has a hold on the item? More awkwardly, what it the probability that another person wanted this 1966 black and white Swedish film right at the same time as I did? 

So I had nothing to do other than to wait. So I waited. One day, I received an email from the public library saying that it was ready for pick up. After receiving this email, the first time I was in downtown (that's where the central public library is) I had a suitcase, so I didn't want to walk to the library to pick it up. In the meantime, I had actually borrowed (from the university library) an external USB DVD drive so that I could play the film once I got it, but until I could get the DVD, of course the loan expired. Actually, I missed the deadline to return it by about 20 minutes but thankfully they didn't charge me. So I returned the drive and borrowed it back right away. A few days later, on a Saturday, I went to downtown, to a café. Then I thought well, before I go home I can go to the public library to pick this DVD up finally. Of course, it felt unreal that finally I was going to have it. Was the longing finally going to end? Then, I pulled up Google Maps to look for directions. Can you guess what happened? Apparently, the library is closed on Saturdays. So, there I was, let down by cosmic forces once again, thinking will I ever get my hands on this DVD? 

Now, dear reader, I had given up at that point, and started thinking is a DVD worth all of this effort and time? The money I had to spend to go to the public library twice for this already exceeded the amount I would pay for renting the film. Unfortunately, I am a person who really likes efficiency. So this was almost like offending myself still going after this DVD. So, there I was, once the one with a passion now surrendering---I decided I won't go to pick it up on another day either, I decided to leave the subject completely. Well, gentle reader, you might guess that the journey didn't end there because apparently I did watch this film since I am writing a post about it now. So a few days later, this time the university library emailed me and said the CD is ready. Of course, this was a move I didn't expect. But since I am a very nice person, I usually give out second chances. So I decided to give Persona another chance, which was not ignoring the email and deciding that I will indeed go to pick it up. The next day in the evening, there I was, who had been walking around with a guitar in a hard and heavy case for a total of about 25 minutes deciding to pass by the library on the way to finally pick this DVD up. So I went to the pick-up vending machine. Put down the guitar case. Scanned my card. Can you guess what happened? The DVD wasn't there! Why would anyone say it's ready for pick-up if it is not? So, there I was, looking around with my questioning eyes thinking are you kidding me? Since this was in the evening, I couldn't go ask at the front desk either. 

The next day, I wanted to go and ask, at least to complain. And, there it was, finally ready, waiting for me. At long last, I was able to touch it. After being committed to something for so long, I felt accomplished---finally getting done this task of "picking up the DVD from the library". After not being able to lay my hands on this DVD for so long, I finally could see our future together---I was going to put it in the USB drive and watch it. So just like a bride who was about to get married for the first time, I started preparing for the "wedding night" (I am joking, obviously). I put the film on and I didn't even start it right away---I waited for a bit listening to the music that plays on the main title screen as foreplay (as if we didn't have enough of it). 

The timing of when I acquired this DVD (and hence the seeing date) makes this film more special in my life than an ordinary film. If I was able to get this film the first time when I got the other 5 Ingmar Bergman DVDs, and watched it then, my perspective would have been a lot different and so my perception of the movie and my comments too. Well, I am a person who believes in Heraclitus' doctrine of flux anyways, so I claim that we are never the same person ever again, technically, but what I meant above is that the difference/change/flux was a bit greater than normal, I think. Not only I was a different person on the day I watched the film than the day I requested it from the library, but also this long wait had immensely increased my expectations about it. Now, with expectations that high, it would be very hard to satisfy me. Why am I saying all this? It is because the film succeeded in doing so, and by saying exactly this, now I may have increased your expectations---well, maybe now this is too much and your expectations might have crossed a hypothetical threshold so please do not blame me if you don't like this film, dear reader.

Now, dear reader, even if you made it this far in reading this post, it is possible you thought "why is this person talking so long about getting the DVD?" at some point. Well, I definitely wrote all that with a purpose and hopefully you won't be disappointed if you keep reading. I strongly believe that acquiring a film shouldn't have been that hard and what I experienced really was a story. A story I had which romanticized my relationship with this film through the little games of fate that I had to endure. What is the take away from this adventurous journey? I don't think I will ever try again to borrow a DVD so insistently and I definitely did not know I could be so persistent to pursue something like this for so long (maybe I was a more persistent person when I was younger but now my resilience is fading away). In my journey with the physical DVD, there was a duality---the two libraries, and it wasn't clear which copy of the DVD would be the one that I would finally be watching. In this film, Persona, there are two main characters and there is a duality there in the following sense. The two women (main characters) often will get mixed---not by the audience but---one of these two women will start confusing her own identity with the other. Moreover, there is this sexual tension between them---you can tell I romanticized my journey with the DVD through my storytelling and made sexual references through joking. There is indeed an eroticism in this film which received a lot of criticism---more about this later. 

Now, there are certain things I want to share about the film and I will try to do so without giving any important spoilers. One of the women is an actress and the other is her nurse. The actress' problem is that she stopped talking. Most of this information could be obtained by watching the trailer of the film, so all is good. The scene in the trailer happens quite early in the film and it is one of my favourite scenes. It made me admire Ingmar Bergman as a scenarist. The nurse says "I am interested in film and theatre but I don't go very often. I have a tremendous admiration for artists. I think that art is of enormous importance in people's lives, especially for those who have problems." I almost completely agree. Perhaps this is quite a simple thing to say but it felt like Ingmar Bergman put it in words really well. Art is of enormous importance indeed and I feel like this is not stated enough in general. Therefore, with the above line of the nurse, the film and/or Ingmar Bergman had already stolen my heart. 

In the film, we see a relationship, the relationship of the nurse with her patient. What was interesting about this was you witness two people getting to know each other (or becoming friends) but since one of them does not talk things are progressing quite one-sided. The actress who doesn't talk represents "the listener" in regular relationships---although she is definitely an exaggerated version of that. You observe how opening up to a person can get easier for the person who is talking/sharing if the other is a good listener. Listening only and not talking also brings nonjudgmentalism. Having someone who listens to you and who is not judging you could make you feel blessed---which is quite understandable. So at that point in the relationship of these two women things are going nice. Soon you see what could go wrong in such a one-sided relationship---having received no judgements at all she starts sharing a bit too much. 

When the nurse starts sharing too much you get to observe her other faces, the darkest parts in her soul, her hypocrisies and secrets. In the meantime, the actress doesn't exactly respond but she smiles at most things the nurse says to her and she does this even if the things that are said are bad (which probably makes her seem like a pretty understanding person and makes it even easier to talk to her). What I liked seeing was the following. The nurse said one night that she was faithful to her fiancé---this made me suspicious already because it's interesting someone would want to bring up the subject like that and feel the need to state being faithful, unless of course if they're talking about faithful functors (insider joke). Later, some other night the nurse told how she cheated on her fiancé---and she told her story with quite a lot of details. Her telling that story (she was describing an orgy) was what received a lot of criticism even though the film itself didn't have any of that story shown on screen. This is quite interesting---how powerful words can be. 

As I saw the nurse getting more mad everyday while living with this actress who did not talk, I realized, well, being a good listener might sound like a good thing but if you just listen you might indeed drive the other person crazy. Perhaps now is a good time to mention this Swedish term lagom which means "not too little, not too much, just right". So when you want to be a good listener, try to be a lagom good listener. I am actually not sure if I used the word grammatically correctly, but hopefully you get what I mean. 

This nurse is not only talking to someone all the time who doesn't talk back but also she doesn't seem to be talking to anyone else at all either. I believe it is expected one might go mad under these circumstances. At certain instances, while watching the film, I definitely questioned this actress (character)---what is she trying to achieve? It's still not completely clear to me but I don't think it matters so much.

What I liked the most about this film was, I think, the fact that the main focus was on women. Two main roles, both female. Lately, I have been complaining a lot about how the film industry is so male dominated these days. So it felt good to see such a film, although who made the film is still a man. The film really explores personal identity but every context is about women. I should also add that this film has an experimental style. For example, it has "random" images shown at the beginning and they do relate to the story as you go, which is something I like because I think there should be meaning to everything that's put in the film, whether it's a scene, or a word in a character's line, or just some object in the set up of a given scene. 

After watching this film, I learned that at some point while filming it Bergman decided to change the ending of the film. I think it was a good decision for the most part. I didn't like the inclusion of vampirism. 

As a closing remark, I want to mention again how much I liked Bergman's writing in this film. However, as I had the DVD, I watched a featurette---an interview with Bergman. Now, this person is Swedish, the film is in Swedish, and I watched it with English subtitles. Bergman spoke English in the interview and he said (and I quote) "I am conscious about myself and everything, and then suddenly or slowly, my conscious fades out, switches itself and it is not existing, and that is a marvellous feeling, that from existing, I may not existing and at that moment, nothing can happen to me". When he said "I may not existing", I thought that it is good that this man wrote the film in Swedish and not in English. It is also not clear to me what he was talking about here in the interview because it sounds to me like he is talking about a time he was getting high.

Now, before I finish, a fun fact. I mentioned already that at some point the nurse (Alma) would confuse her identity with the actress' (Elisabet). Now, the person who plays Alma actually has middle name Elisabet in real life. Perhaps this is not a fun fact for everyone but it is to me because she, as an actress, is kind of becoming "herself" (as Elisabet in real life) while playing someone else who is becoming Elisabet (the character), an actress in the film. 

The film has many good depictions of a lot of matters around what's personal identity. Overall, I found this film meaningful and I am happy with this film (and I am saying this even though my expectations were somewhat high already).

I give 8.5/10.

Note: I should also mention here that this film was the first art media (in film and television) with this title. What I did know of before hearing about this film though was a miniseries called Persona, which is actually a pretty good series whose story revolves around a man with Alzheimer's. Coincidentally, as I am writing about Persona (the 1966 film) today, they announced that Persona (the miniseries) which first aired in 2018 is having its second season soon---and that's great news.