Lambie Reviews Persona

Year: 1966
Accolades: One of 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die

This is going to be a tricky review, because Persona is a hard film to describe and discuss. A nurse takes on the care of an actress who is voluntarily mute and immobile. Very quickly they are both sent to a summer house, where the actress becomes much more active, but where a battle of the wills also begins to take place as she remains mute. It's a film that constantly confuses and raises questions in your mind. And it doesn't do that because it'd an Ingmar Bergman film. Okay, maybe the fact it's a Bergman film has quite a lot to do with it, but it's a film that lends itself to his style.

I'm not joking about the questions it raises. I was asking myself a hell of a lot of questions during its 80-odd minute runtime. Why is the actress suddenly like this? Does she develop sinister alternative motives during her care? Did she always feel this way and have some master plan? Was she in league with the doctor? Is the nurse really the actress, and the actress a nurse? Are they in love? Do they hate each other? Is there only one person taking on two personas battling each other? Who ultimately wins the psychological battle?

Despite no clear answers to any of these questions, the film doesn't feel unsatisfying. Rather, Bergman uses his famous abstract film-making techniques to portray the sense of madness that the nurse slowly develops. Apart from the opening sequence, the film progresses in a more or less conventional fashion until the final act, where it falls apart, in one sequence almost literally when the film supposedly falls of the reel and starts burning before righting itself.

We learn so much about the characters, even though one of them is effectively mute throughout almost all of the film. Yet at the same time, there is a sense of frustration as we try to figure out what's going on in their heads at any given moment. Normally, that sense of being unable to get on top of the film and engage with it in a conventional manner would be a disaster, but in the case of this film it's the entire point. If we knew what was going on then the film would not nearly be as thrilling, intense, and as engaging as it is.

It's certainly not for everyone, and there are undoubtedly a lot of people out there who would hate this sort of thing. If you figure out how to engage with the film, and accept that we are essentially experiencing a similar sort of doubt and madness that the nurse is experiencing, then it's a film well worth watching. I found it oddly compelling, even if I ultimately didn't understand what happened in the final act.