Kenny,
For reasons referenced earlier i will answer quoting each part of your post like last time.
1)"While you may acknowledge there are “many levels in this film”, probably intending to mean ways to understand the film, you clearly are suggesting that the psychological framework is the preferred way, even if just for you. One of the things everyone can agree with, should agree on, is that Persona clearly does take up a few different possible frameworks, by which I mean contextualizations. But I think it also contains elements that ultimately show them to be inadequate. This inadequacy is shown by Bergman’s moving on from each to another, but I think in the end choosing an overriding framework of the existential, specifically the metaphysical and epistemological. (I of course do not mean to say that this is a linear process; my prior post describes both the means by which Persona does not proceed in a linear fashion, but also how the possible contexts examined are referred to not in a linear fashion. Interestingly The Silence arguably does proceed in a linear fashion, but I think it is confusing that it does so to some since on the surface it seems to be not much more than a sequence of examined behaviors. I hope to return to The Silence later.)"
Did you find my interpretation linear? It consists multiple viewings to conceive it, because it is non linear! That's why it fits! That's the flow of the film!
2)"In other words I think Persona is a work that is primarily about the Existentialist search for the authentic in human relations and connections. The specific concept of persona becomes the starting point and overall framework of the film. While there certainly is a psychological element to it, the context in which the relation of persona to the search for the authentic proceeds in the social rather than the psychological. (here meaning psychological as an internal focus on the individual more than on the social relations of individuals to each other. Of course we all know there is such a thing as a social aspect of psychology. I suppose I am merely saying here that the emphasis is on social human interaction.)"
I do not read any arguments here, supporting this theory (that is primarily about the Existentialist search for the authentic in human relations and connections...)
3)"Why is my focus limiting? I don’t think it is. To my view Bergman clearly uses Persona to show that he has tried to proceed with his search by taking up a few different possible contexts, including the psychological, the erotic, the violent or competitive relations between and among people, and the role of dreams and fantasies, all present in the film, with this list not intended to be an exhaustive one. And each in Persona does add to the film and the point the film is making. But given that Bergman’s concerns are existential, and his frame of reference is Existentialist, such concerns are best understood in the same way as Heidegger or Sartre would present them. And that is in the context of man’s being toward death but searching for meaning by being with others, which in turn is based on “Care” and the search for authentic meaning in human relationships."
The reason that your focus is limiting: When I read about it I feel like I am reading a plot synopsis for the film. You describe exactly what you watch. Not less, but not more... Bergman plants 10 things so that a hundred will be born. Every minute of the film lasts 10 or 15 in your mind, thinking of it.
4)"I know you were focusing on shadow, not persona. Did you stop to consider the name of the film is Persona, not Shadow? I don’t want to be dismissive, but I was trying to alert you to why I think you are getting off the track. To put it simply, Persona has as its starting point the notion of Jung’s concept of persona, not of his related but subordinate discussion of the unconscious that is not central to the persona concept."
We see very differently this one. You' re saying that because the film is named persona "it has to talk to us about Yung's "persona", not "shadow", so my interpretation, which includes the "shadow" is a stretch. Well in my point of view, Bergman names the film as "persona" to imply that this film is the story of Elizabeth's condition, which has "a lot of connection" with what Jung thought as "persona". The reason that you see a lot of "shadow" in my interpretation is that the "shadow" part has to be explained more in this analysis, as it is the not straightforward part (easily comprehended). Don't forget that in my interpretation Alma is the "shadow" and still the film is not a story about her; it's about Elizabeth! Simply given, you cannot talk about "persona" without talking about the "shadow"!
5)"I am glad we have cleared up, even if only in my own understanding, that you do not equate soul with the unconscious. Alma is given the nurse’s name to suggest that she is a more soulful and caring person than the analytical, and we soon find manipulative, Elizabeth. She is in that sense an archetypal character, although of course one with what Jung would call her own individuation, without question!"
In my opinion this is a stretch (to suggest that "she is a more soulful and caring person" as the cause to name her Alma). Not to mention that a soul is a soul. Not necessarily good or bad. To state that "Alma" name was chosen to show that she is soulful, you have to make a linguistics jump; that is for sure a stretch. Specially if you intend to interpret the film so straightforwardly as you do.
6)"I also agree that Persona does take up the subject of the unconscious, specifically when one examines the meaning of Alma’s two dream sequences, those being the dreamed encounter with Elizabeth in the dimly lit room, the other when Elizabeth’s husband is dreamed of to appear and have sex with Alma. The unconscious is also present elsewhere, but I would not say throughout. And yes it is included for a reason, I would say as I did previously as part of the thematic grounding of the film, but not as an overall, overarching, context for the film. "
You state that persona is non linear and then you interpret in a linear way. In every spot that you cannot go linear you fit inside the unconscious. But the unconscious is present the whole time. You cannot "summon it" only in scenes like the one with the husband that a non psychological interpretation fails! These scenes are there for us, to doubt about what we watch, to think about what is the real context in which the house incidents happen. To indicate the role of the unconscious in this dynamic situation. Again, simply given, you cannot talk about "persona" without talking about the "shadow".
And as I happen to mention it, please explain to me the husband scene, according to your interpretation! Even if it is a dream, if you take that "house Alma" is all flesh and blood it makes no sense. And as long as it counts for me (and many others I think), being so largely vague (as your interpretation is in other elements too) would not be a good element for the film...
7)"I did not mean to suggest that Bergman was being derivative of the works of others. I merely mentioned that there was something of a vogue for using a cinematic exploration of doubling in that period. But of course where he chose to go with use of the technique, and what he wanted to “say” with it, very much were different than was what Antonioni was up to (although how similar and how different is a worthy subject for discussion itself!). The more important point here I think is that the use of this technique was not tied to a concept that pertains to psychological interiority, but instead to social interaction. "
Going with the flow means not changing the concept. Staying with just the social interaction would not had as result a "pioneer film". We had watched that before. A different kind of social interaction would produce a very good film. Not a "pioneer movie". We wouldn't put this beauty in the list with the best films ever made.
8)"Certainly I was correct in saying that use of doubling in films does not REQUIRE us to see doubling as a portrayal of two sides of the same person. My points about Persona’s Existentialist context I think are adequate to explain why it is superior to see Alma and Elizabeth as two people rather than one."
Sorry but as I wrote above: "I do not read any arguments here"
9)"But that is not all that serves to make that point. Seeing both as one would require too much of the film to be ignored. There is the doctor, who clearly “knows” that they are not the same person. There is the rather obvious way that Alma leaves as the film approaches its conclusion, by herself, this having been proceeded by no reconciliation between them. But the emphasis on the social is more than enough for me to reach that conclusion.
I should perhaps here take up the argument that everyone is entitled to their opinion. No doubt. But some opinions are better than others, and I do feel strongly that the overall point of the film is missed if the frame of reference is “too psychological”"
I didn't say that Alma does not exist generally in the film (in the hospital particularly)! Note what I wrote in previous post:
"The "shadow" is presented in the form of Alma. In Elizabeth's foggy mind it assumes the appearance of the person Elizabeth sees all day taking care of her, as she is stuck in bed."
Let's make it clear: what we see in the house is what Elizabeth is experiencing in her mind as she is receiving the doctor's treatment.
As for Alma leaving the house, I also explained it in the initial post:
"Her two parts are unified in the image we see. This is why we watch shortly after Alma leaving the house with her suitcase (all the burden that she carried). Elizabeth is now "in one piece"."
It's in total continuity with what we have watched until that point; that is if we watch the film from my interpretation's angle.
So NOTHING is ignored! In the contrary the non-psychological interpretation ignores scenes of the film (as the one with the husband etc., as I wrote earlier).
10)"You of course did not respond here to my query how something can both be unconscious and also a conscious representation. Of course the conscious and unconscious “mix” all the time, and particularly in dreams."
It's crystal clear and you said it yourself;
"the conscious and unconscious “mix” all the time, and particularly in dreams."
11)"I am here merely focusing on the contention that the boy in the opening scenes is her son. If her dreams of him as such establish that he is her son, that is not unconscious on her part. I merely intended to clarify this point; I appreciate it is not central to the discussion."
The scene showing him in the morgue doesn't fit to my point of view? Really? Come on, I think you have to reconsider!
12)-BEWARE SPOILERS ABOUT "THE HOUR OF THE WOLF" IN THE FOLLOWING 2 PARAGRAPHS-
"I like Hour of the Wolf very much. Obviously the psychological is a more overt context in that film. But even there the primary focus is on the relation of Johan to his wife, also named Alma, as well as the larger society represented by the von Merkens and their acquaintances."
"Hour of the wolf" was only an example to interpret persona with "regard to Bergman’s other films" as you correctly had pointed earlier. It is a matter to discuss if "the primary focus is on the relation of Johan to his wife". As it is not the subject here, it will be enough to point that, in any case we largely watch what's on Johan mind. I think that something like this happens in persona too, this time with Elizabeth.
13)-BEWARE SPOILERS ABOUT "THE SILENCE" IN THE FOLLOWING 2 PARAGRAPHS-
"Partly because this will be long enough as is, I am reluctant to get into an extended analysis of The Silence here. I did think it appropriate to refer to it to show its connection to Persona. I understand and accept that the title itself has a double meaning, also referring, to at least some extent, to the so-called silence of God. But the film is not overtly about God’s silence. More to the point yes, there are psychological elements in that film, but the title itself clearly indicates that the main theme and subject is communication and the absence thereof."
I agree with you, not to jump to silence (this posts are too too lengthy already for any third person with even a good will to read all these!) I will just point out that if you are making a trilogy about god's silence, in which the third movie (which is the "conclusion movie" in most cases) is called silence then I think that the most possible thing is that the title is referring to god's silence. To say it in other words (and analogically stands for "persona" and the "hour of the wolf" too). If a straightforward interpretation fits better this movie, what's the use of all the surreal elements, the post apocalyptic context, the paradoxes in the presented relationships?
In my opinion your way of thinking fits perfectly other Bergman's movies ("the virgin spring", etc.) but not this group!
14)-BEWARE SPOILERS ABOUT "THE SILENCE" IN THE FOLLOWING 2 PARAGRAPHS-
"Clearly The Silence shows there were issues in the relation between Anna and her son Johan. But it is too much to equate that relationship to what we know of the relation between Elizabeth and her son, and specifically use of the word “unwanted” is too much. We see Anna leave her son, both with his aunt Esther but also to wonder the halls of the hotel, unsupervised, while she goes about her various activities for lack of a better word. These episodic absences do not mean she literally does not want or love him. There are a number of indications in the film that she does love him, some of which are rather, uh, icky! And she does take him when she leaves at the end, with no indication she would have even considered not doing so. Unwanted is too great an overstatement of their issues."
Don't be so literate all the time! :-) Of course you are right that the relationships of a)Elizabeth and her son, b)Anna and her son are not the same. I just wrote that maybe it was used to imply a general parallel as a food for thought. Of course the two relationships are not the same. But in the other hand, if Bergman showed us on film how Elizabeth treated her son, wouldn't a scene like the one with Anna and her lover from "silence" fit? Don't forget that unwanted doesn't mean necessarily beaten or abused for a little kid. When a mother didn't want her kid, she will not spend time with it, that's enough to injure the fragile psychology of a child in that age... Those icky moments you refer to, show that see has a messed-up idea about the mother-son relationship- this will have an impact on the child. Anyway I will stick to that there is some analogy, but of course you are right it's not same thing, these two relationships.
15)"Of course she has issues. She is suffering from existential anxiety, that her persona as the actress Elizabeth Vogler is inauthentic. And of course the “treatment” is what? A chosen dynamic of social interaction with Alma, and not what would by any stretch constitute treatments for psychological problems. The doctor has tacitly said that it is this social interaction and not the doctor’s own care that will address Elizabeth’s “issues"
Stating that the doctor chose Alma, knowing her character, to cure Elizabeth through their interaction seems a big stretch to me! She knew so well-deeply the character of a nurse coworker? She gave them her house? Would a doctor be allowed to handle a patient like that? Was sure about the results? How would the hospital management allow Alma's absence? etc. etc. That's not how things work in real life! It's clear that something else is implied here beneath! (even its not the one I am pointing!)It's not so straightforward!
16)"Ultimately I find it interesting and, let me be frank, somewhat disturbing that there seems to be a tendency among some to prefer seeing an Existentialist film as a primarily psychological exercise. Understanding the human psyche in psychological terms is simply an inadequate substitute for what is, or perhaps I should say should be, a philosophical analysis and understanding. One could even argue such tendency is evidence of a perhaps subconscious avoidance of the terrifying conclusions one tends to make if one follows an Existentialist analysis into the realm of the pessimistic, even nihilistic. It is, in short, arguably an inauthentic avoidance of the kind of metaphysical considerations contained in Persona, and those that concern the fundamental nature of human existence."
This, that you call tendency to watch the film through a psychologically interpretation, in fact achieves the thing you are blaming it for lacking of! Viewing it psychologically you see clearly in the film how human nature (Elizabeth in this case) avoided (through psychological defenses) all the terrifying conclusions about her life (her son etc.) which now see comes to confront. You experience, as Elizabeth experiences, this tremendous reality check! You don't watch the movie; you live it! That's one reason this movie is "pioneer", it can be a life changing experience. It shows all that you have pointed, but goes one step further; into their roots. The social interaction is there, in my interpretation too; but you see what's moving it and that you can interfere. Knowing the cause of a behavior in an interaction doesn't "purify" it; it makes it comprehensible and further more changeable.
And just a quick thought in the end; Sartre and the metaphysical cannot go together... :-)
And a second one; whatever happens between people, in their social interactions, starts from what they have inside them. As the interaction continues everything that happens is deeply filtered in the insides of the participants, before it comes out as acts or words. A social interaction, no matter how intimate it is or not, looks like a tennis ball bouncing from one's inner self to the other's, then back and so on. The exact course that the ball will take each time depends a lot from the inner self it will bounce on...
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kenny-164
11 years ago
Erratic,
As I read your previous post and its point by point discussion, which we both have been using, it occurred on reaching the end that we have a fundamental point of divergence. Your final paragraph includes “whatever happens between people, in their social interactions, starts from what they have inside them.” Perhaps you here meant to say how it feels to us as individuals, acting in a social context, that we think or feel something inside, and then that “comes out as acts or words.”
I think this is precisely where your orientation to this film differs from the Existential, and why that is relevant I will return to after first explaining what the Existentialist view is. And here I mean specifically more the German school if you will, such as Martin Heidegger.
As Heidegger said, essence lies in existence. These heavily loaded even if simply stated words mean pretty much this – the search for meaning, the understanding of the framework of and knowledge about human existence, must start with a recognition that all we know and all we can understand about meaning begins with a recognition that we never exist other than as being in the world. There is no separate essence of man that can be found other than through existence.
The most significant part of the existential analytic for our purposes is that the nature of man’s existence is fundamentally being with others. We never exist wholly apart from others (and here I am not talking about physical separation, such as for a single person in a removed environment – but even such a person came into existence with others). And the nature of being with others is one of Care.
As I said above, it may feel to us that we “begin” with a thought or feeling, and then act with or toward other people. But this is not an accurate framework for understanding the fundamental nature of human existence. Heidegger is quite simply correct that we never exist wholly apart from the social. Even the hermit remembers where he came from, and that “place” (more accurately that period of existence) involved others. In terms of the psychological, ironically it is Jung himself in his discussions of the unconscious who posits a form of unconscious which is shared with the human race; another way of saying being with others.
How is this relevant to Persona, and to our discussion? In a couple of ways. Yesterday I spoke about how grounding one’s point of view in everydayness does not allow for a focus on the fundamental truths of human existence. Everydayness can in this regard be viewed in a metaphor, as moving through time, one day after another, as if one looks at a forest one tree and a time, missing completely that they make up a forest. In everyday life we do not focus on the existential.
A focus purely on the psychological, how humans work on the psychological level, and not moving beyond that level, does not permit a metaphysical examination of existential truths. Focusing on the psychological to the effective exclusion of the existential thus becomes an inauthentic basis for understanding of the human condition. Simply put we are not merely the sum total of what comprises our interiority, but must go on to understand how we exist with others. It is in being with others that we understand Care, and thereby begin to understand meaning, here amounting to the meaning of existence.
Bergman has long been recognized as an Existentialist filmmaker. It is not worth discussing. But if you want to see why the film Persona itself contains references that it is not to be understood primarily from a psychological point of view, you need not end he analysis with a recognition of the overall frame of reference of Bergman’s work. In the film we have several factors which show this.
For example a psychological framework would require us to understand Elizabeth’s muteness as a psychological condition. But interestingly her condition is taken as a given, except of course as I said the doctor described it in my post yesterday. But the causes of her condition are not examined. Even if one interprets the film as saying that she chose to be mute, there is no backstory as to specifically why. While it is possible that it had some connection to her playing the role of Electra, which may help understand the specific moment she commenced her muteness, the film does not refer back to that role as it proceeds. It importantly does not explain that which follows in terms of Elizabeth’s connection to her performing that role. It is in short brought up as a possible explanation, but the film goes on to focus on more important things.
The significance of the doctor’s description of Elizabeth’s condition is as I said yesterday helpful in understanding the context of what follows in the film. But it also is not referred back to; the purpose here seems quite clearly to dispose of the psychological as the frame of reference going forward as it pertains to Elizabeth and her search for meaning and authenticity. He muteness is described by the doctor as a reaction to playing a role while Elizabeth wants to be authentic, to in her persona authentically connect that which is inner and outer, meaning her inner self awareness and intention as it relates to the outside world and others. The doctor goes on to describe how this will likely play out in her house as she lives out her experience of being mute in a social context of existing with nurse Alma.
Bergman specifically raises the psychological in the film before Alma and Elizabeth went to the doctor’s house. But the film does not again mention it. This is a signal that the film has turned from the psychological as a frame of reference. Yes, there are of course psychological elements later in the film, but the film does not raise a psychological understanding as more important than the social and existential frame of reference at any point after the doctor ends her description.
Another element of the film coming from a very different quarter that disproves that the framework is psychological concerns the scene of Alma's departure. I find it a combination of amusing and frustrating that some see the scene of Alma leaving on the bus to be symbolic or representational of a melding, a joining into one, of Alma and Elizabeth. There has been no reconciliation, no magic process that precedes this scene by which such a fantastic result could have been achieved. This I recognize does not mean it could not, and Bergman merely chose to leave out how this resulted. But it does mean that the film is not about how Elizabeth might have achieved such a resolution, or even why she might have. Is there any indication in the film that other than the fact that Alma speaks that Elizabeth would want or need to combine herself with Alma? No. How about Alma’s motivation? The irony here is that as the film progresses Alma seems to have discarded any desire or interest to be more like Elizabeth.
It is instead only an insistence that this film must be about a psychological journey by Elizabeth that forces one without any context provided by the film itself to see the scene of Alma departing as “showing” some resolution consisting of a melding of the two. This leap is not based as you suggest on a willingness not shared by others who do not “get” this view that symbolism of some sort provides the connection. Nonsense.
Further undermining such a view is the recognition that the film does not end with Alma getting on the bus. We instead proceed through a series of images that mirror the film’s opening. How does this sequence reflect any resolution of Elizabeth’s “story”? How in differing from the opening (and in what specific ways?) does it show that a linear narrative has proceeded to some neat conclusion (not to mention what that conclusion is)? Instead we have reminders that we have just witnessed a purely cinematic examination or exercise. But no grand finale, epilogue, or neat conclusion.
The structure of the film, what it says and does not say, works against any view of the film as primarily about a narrative of Elizabeth told from a psychological perspective. This conclusion on my part does not rule out a rich examination of the film on a variety of levels. But I do think it rules out as unpersuasive the overall argument you presented in your OP.
By “rich examination” I would include the way that the doubling between Alma and Elizabeth can suggest that they can be looked at as if not actually two sides of the same personality two individual manifestations of competing archetypal personalities. This understanding I believe is of more transcendental value and meaning than a simple “story” about a Elizabeth herself.
Some other points…
In connection with the foregoing you also asked about Alma’s encounter with Elizabeth’s husband, which I am inclined to view as a fantasy of Alma’s. In addition to what might be called the contest element of the clash between Alma and Elizabeth, we also have a potential erotic element introduced here (again). Yet Alma is seen talking to Elizabeth and eventually responding to her husband while Elizabeth gazes into the camera, apparently either not hearing Alma or refusing to acknowledge the goings on. I think it means that Alma has here fantasized what on the most intimate terms it would be to be like Elizabeth, her having sex with her husband while her husband “confuses” her for Elizabeth, and finds this fantasy brings her no closer to Elizabeth, either. Both the erotic and the psychological fail to bridge the distance between the two.
You also questioned why the doctor would choose Alma to go with Elizabeth. I frankly think you lost sight of your argument here. As I said Alma is more intended as a companion for a social interaction than as a medical practitioner. Yes Alma is described as an experienced if young and competent nurse in the field. But she is given no directions for a course of treatment by the doctor other than to accompany Elizabeth to the house. If the film were instead introducing Alma as having a more definite role in Elizabeth’s treatment, it would not have been so casual about her involvement. Again, for the purpose the doctor intended, Alma was in fact quite suitable.
I frankly find the discussion of the shadow to be without value. You have failed to establish that you even know what you are talking about in comparing the shadow to Jung’s concept of persona, let alone show how you can persuasively use the concept to understand Persona.
The last part I will address today is this quote from your post under your point 9, as follows:
“As for Alma leaving the house, I also explained it in the initial post: "Her two parts are unified in the image we see. This is why we watch shortly after Alma leaving the house with her suitcase (all the burden that she carried). Elizabeth is now "in one piece"."
“It's in total continuity with what we have watched until that point; that is if we watch the film from my interpretation's angle.”
Hm. Shortly after the melding image, Alma is seen leaving the house, as if nothing had happened between the unified image and the leaving from the house. Really? Have you seen the film recently? That is an inaccurate representation of what is in the film. It leaves out among other things Alma saying I am Alma, you are Elizabeth Vogler, I am not Elizabeth Vogler.
It leaves out the scene right before when Alma says repeat after me, Nothing. Before that Alma says :
“You can do what you want.
“You won't get to me.”
One has to ignore all that happens between the melded image and Alma’s departure to reach your conclusion. Nice try, but you are totally unpersuasive.
Instead the real point of the film is that the attempts at authenticity by both Alma and Elizabeth have been left unresolved. I could say in failure if the object was in fact to come to some resolution of completed doubling and shared identity. But that was not the real “point”. Better to say unresolved, since among other things the film leaves a blank slate whether Elizabeth emerges from her muteness, again left a blank slate since the film is not Elizabeth’s story. Also left unresolved is what Alma takes away from the encounter.
But something should have been learned by them, and is available to us. That is that there is a limit to which we can explore personas, both ours and others, to pierce them to reveal some inner truth. Jung would say we must wear the mask, or at least some mask. Freud might have said we need the ego to mediate the desires of the id and the demands of the superego (and society). In other words there is no easy path for the search for authentic human connection. That is what the film ultimately is about.
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erratic1983
11 years ago
Kenny,
1)“As I read your previous post and its point by point discussion, which we both have been using, it occurred on reaching the end that we have a fundamental point of divergence. Your final paragraph includes “whatever happens between people, in their social interactions, starts from what they have inside them.” Perhaps you here meant to say how it feels to us as individuals, acting in a social context, that we think or feel something inside, and then that “comes out as acts or words.””
You abstract some sentences of mine to jump into conclusions that I never made. Also you jump into conclusions about my point of view without knowing it as a whole. Of course I haven’t stated the whole of it, because here we are discussing about the film. I state points of my opinion that have to do with the movie. As for you, you have turned this one into something like a philosophical debate rather than a discussion about the movie; which is pretty interesting actually and is strongly connected with the movie. So, that is no problem from me but we have to agree that this turns to another discussion. Let’s clear some things.
I didn’t mean of course that “everything that matters around is psychology and social context is irrelevant”. On the contrary I think that the real thing is pretty much synthetic of these two aspects. Meaning that they are both important. In my opinion the psychology of the individual is not inherited or something. It is “socially crafted”; its “structure”, its characteristics come from the social context of the individual. But let us not forget that the so called “social context of the individual” is consisted of the “psychologies” of the people that exist in that context (more important is the psychology of the people that are close to the individual; parents, lover etc.). Also let’s not forget that I wrote:
“whatever happens between people, in their social interactions, starts from what they have inside them. As the interaction continues everything that happens is deeply filtered in the insides of the participants, before it comes out as acts or words. A social interaction, no matter how intimate it is or not, looks like a tennis ball bouncing from one's inner self to the other's, then back and so on. The exact course that the ball will take each time depends a lot from the inner self it will bounce on...”
In the interaction as I described it here, the social part plays an important role. The individual’s acts or words differ in each case depending on what he/she will “receive” from other persons! For example, the “tennis ball” may be shot onto the individual’s heart or brain. The response from the individual may differ in each case. So I think it is clear that there is a synthesis and an interaction of these two aspects in this whole thing. In my posts I talked mostly about the psychological factor because in my opinion this connects more to the concept of the film. Simply given I agree with “we never exist wholly apart from the social”; sure, no question about it. Also my above writings agree with “Simply put we are not merely the sum total of what comprises our interiority, but must go on to understand how we exist with others.”
You, on the other hand, totally undermine the psychological factor. Sorry but I don’t think that “we just mirror our social context”. As our life goes on, something is built inside us (through social interactions too) that interacts with the social context.
But our conversation’s subject is what persona focuses on (not what erratic or Kenny focuses on). So let’s get back to it.
2)” For example a psychological framework would require us to understand Elizabeth’s muteness as a psychological condition. But interestingly her condition is taken as a given, except of course as I said the doctor described it in my post yesterday. But the causes of her condition are not examined. Even if one interprets the film as saying that she chose to be mute, there is no backstory as to specifically why. While it is possible that it had some connection to her playing the role of Electra, which may help understand the specific moment she commenced her muteness, the film does not refer back to that role as it proceeds. It importantly does not explain that which follows in terms of Elizabeth’s connection to her performing that role. It is in short brought up as a possible explanation, but the film goes on to focus on more important things.”
The causes of her condition is the big question of the film. It actually focuses on it. As the films goes on we learn more things about her life which answer this question in some point (her feelings about her son in comparison with the Elektra role etc.). You think that these things that we learn are irrelevant with her condition. Well you have all the right to do so, but I disagree 100%. You expect in a Bergman movie all the dots to be connected by themselves; it’s not gonna happen in most of them, and surely not in persona. The causes of her condition are clear to me (and for the majority of the viewers I think). There are facts (referenced in my previous posts) in the film that urge you to connect the dots in the way I do.
3)” The significance of the doctor’s description of Elizabeth’s condition is as I said yesterday helpful in understanding the context of what follows in the film. But it also is not referred back to; the purpose here seems quite clearly to dispose of the psychological as the frame of reference going forward as it pertains to Elizabeth and her search for meaning and authenticity. He muteness is described by the doctor as a reaction to playing a role while Elizabeth wants to be authentic, to in her persona authentically connect that which is inner and outer, meaning her inner self awareness and intention as it relates to the outside world and others. The doctor goes on to describe how this will likely play out in her house as she lives out her experience of being mute in a social context of existing with nurse Alma.”
I have already explained in previous posts that her condition is not all about her muteness. We learn that she has other issues. Muteness is a choice of her as the doctor says. But what caused her to make the decision to stay mute is what counts. The other issues she’s coping with (that we learn about in some extent later in the movie). That’s the whole point.
4)You write:
“Bergman specifically raises the psychological in the film before Alma and Elizabeth went to the doctor’s house. But the film does not again mention it.”
And then you totally contradict yourself:
“Yes, there are of course psychological elements later in the film”
And then:
“but the film does not raise a psychological understanding as more important than the social and existential frame of reference at any point after the doctor ends her description.”
What is important is clearly subjective in a non linear film like persona. Note that even you dogmatically support a non psychological interpretation, you are obliged to acknowledge that there are psychological aspects in the film! I think that this shows clearly the importance of the psychological aspect in the movie!
5)” Another element of the film coming from a very different quarter that disproves that the framework is psychological concerns the scene of Alma's departure. I find it a combination of amusing and frustrating that some see the scene of Alma leaving on the bus to be symbolic or representational of a melding, a joining into one, of Alma and Elizabeth. There has been no reconciliation, no magic process that precedes this scene by which such a fantastic result could have been achieved.”
Magic process? In the initial post I describe the whole route that the two aspects of Elizabeth go through to end up to “unification”. More importantly, remember the scene with the Alma’s monologue that we watch twice? It is crystal clear that some serious issues are settled over there! And then the scenes where the two faces becoming one; crystal clear!
6)” Is there any indication in the film that other than the fact that Alma speaks that Elizabeth would want or need to combine herself with Alma? No.”
Sucking her blood maybe? “Visiting” her during night maybe? Hugging her in front of the mirror? Etc. etc. Come on! Read again my initial post!
7)” How about Alma’s motivation? The irony here is that as the film progresses Alma seems to have discarded any desire or interest to be more like Elizabeth.”
I insist. Read my initial post. I have answered all these:
“Alma reads the letter Elizabeth was sending to the doctor (about Alma's personal stuff, that Elizabeth feels that it is interesting to "study" Alma= through treatment the conscious ego has made a contact with the "shadow", "sees" that there is this "shadow side" and Elizabeth states that to the doctor) She wants to know more about that side of herself. This makes Alma angry. She feels exploited and threatened. That is because when the unconscious comes to light there is no unconscious left, her existence is in danger. She becomes violent against Elizabeth, trying to stop the connection between them (between the conscious and the shadow).”
Again crystal clear!
8)” Further undermining such a view is the recognition that the film does not end with Alma getting on the bus. We instead proceed through a series of images that mirror the film’s opening. How does this sequence reflect any resolution of Elizabeth’s “story”? How in differing from the opening (and in what specific ways?) does it show that a linear narrative has proceeded to some neat conclusion (not to mention what that conclusion is)? Instead we have reminders that we have just witnessed a purely cinematic examination or exercise. But no grand finale, epilogue, or neat conclusion.”
With the repetition of the series of the images we are reminded that we have watched a “psychological trip”. Here it comes to an end. This works in the same way as the scene with the viewable movie-crew works (not meaning that the two state the same things to us).
9) “In connection with the foregoing you also asked about Alma’s encounter with Elizabeth’s husband, which I am inclined to view as a fantasy of Alma’s.”
You write again and again that there is nothing in the film that indicates the psychological factor. In the same time you acknowledge psychological aspects in the film! And in the same time here you interpret this scene as a “fantasy of Alma’s”! Which thing in the movie implies that it’s an Alma’s fantasy? First you miss obvious points in the movie and then you see things that do no exist in it!
10)“I think it means that Alma has here fantasized what on the most intimate terms it would be to be like Elizabeth, her having sex with her husband while her husband “confuses” her for Elizabeth, and finds this fantasy brings her no closer to Elizabeth, either. Both the erotic and the psychological fail to bridge the distance between the two.”
Sorry but this doesn’t make sense at all! Not to mention that Alma admits her love for Mr. Vogler, accepts her role as the mother of Elisabet's child and then the two make love!
11)”You also questioned why the doctor would choose Alma to go with Elizabeth. I frankly think you lost sight of your argument here. As I said Alma is more intended as a companion for a social interaction than as a medical practitioner. Yes Alma is described as an experienced if young and competent nurse in the field. But she is given no directions for a course of treatment by the doctor other than to accompany Elizabeth to the house. If the film were instead introducing Alma as having a more definite role in Elizabeth’s treatment, it would not have been so casual about her involvement. Again, for the purpose the doctor intended, Alma was in fact quite suitable.”
Companion? Come on this is not how things work in the real world! Does a real hospital function like this??? Remember what I wrote:
“She knew so well-deeply the character of a nurse coworker? She gave them her house? Would a doctor be allowed to handle a patient like that? Was sure about the results? How would the hospital management allow Alma's absence? etc. etc. That's not how things work in real life! It's clear that something else is implied here beneath! (even its not the one I am pointing!)It's not so straightforward!”
12)”I frankly find the discussion of the shadow to be without value. You have failed to establish that you even know what you are talking about in comparing the shadow to Jung’s concept of persona, let alone show how you can persuasively use the concept to understand Persona.”
“Comparing the shadow to Jung’s concept of persona”? What are you talking about? Are you familiar with Jung’s model of the psyche, archetypes etc.? You said previously that you are, but either you misunderstood what I wrote (sorry if this is the case- English is not my native language. Tell what part is not clear so I may explain), or I have to say that you don’t remember something about Yung correctly! Read again what I wrote:
“We see very differently this one. You' re saying that because the film is named persona "it has to talk to us about Yung's "persona", not "shadow", so my interpretation, which includes the "shadow" is a stretch. Well in my point of view, Bergman names the film as "persona" to imply that this film is the story of Elizabeth's condition, which has "a lot of connection" with what Jung thought as "persona". The reason that you see a lot of "shadow" in my interpretation is that the "shadow" part has to be explained more in this analysis, as it is the not straightforward part (easily comprehended). Don't forget that in my interpretation Alma is the "shadow" and still the film is not a story about her; it's about Elizabeth! Simply given, you cannot talk about "persona" without talking about the "shadow"!”
“let alone show how you can persuasively use the concept to understand Persona.”
Read again my initial post!
13)” Hm. Shortly after the melding image, Alma is seen leaving the house, as if nothing had happened between the unified image and the leaving from the house. Really? Have you seen the film recently? That is an inaccurate representation of what is in the film. It leaves out among other things Alma saying I am Alma, you are Elizabeth Vogler, I am not Elizabeth Vogler.
It leaves out the scene right before when Alma says repeat after me, Nothing. Before that Alma says :
“You can do what you want.
“You won't get to me.”
One has to ignore all that happens between the melded image and Alma’s departure to reach your conclusion. Nice try, but you are totally unpersuasive.”
This is the final struggle of Alma fighting for her “existence”. This has been answered above:
“That is because when the unconscious comes to light there is no unconscious left, her existence is in danger.”
Leaving means the loss of the struggle.
14) You do not hold the one and only truth you know (if we assume that your analysis stands as true, which I doubt a lot!)! And also have in mind that when someone follows dogmatically an idea, as rational may be that idea, it is more than sure that he will become totally irrational in the end! This is a fact…
You haven’t answered a number of issues raised in my previous posts.
You characterize my opinion as “nonsense” when my interpretation is in the same line with the ones of a big number of viewers (majority actually) and film critics. For instance:
Film scholar P. Adams Sitney: "Persona covertly dramatizes a psychoanalysis from the point of view of a patient"
Bergmanorama: Persona (1966), a film that marked Bergman’s departure from metaphysics toward the realm of human psychology (http://bergmanorama.webs.com/profile.htm)
Once again, crystal clear!
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kenny-164
11 years ago
Erractic,
As these back and forth discussions progress, sometimes where the discussion started becomes obscure. By framework I have meant the structure of Persona, and how it relates to the overall point and theme of it (on the implicit assumption that the structure of the film reveals both the “lesson” of it as well as the director’s primary intent in making the film). In describing such framework I have been attempting to show how it should best be interpreted. Identification of the framework works hand in hand with identification of the director’s overall frame of reference. That concept can otherwise be stated or termed the director’s primary thematic approach.
I understand as I have said from my first post on this thread that there is a limiting effect involved if one relies on your chosen frame of reference, which in turn makes your choice lead to an understanding that misses the film’s main themes and point. That does not mean as I have conceded that no interpretation as you have suggested is possible. Of course it is possible. My objection instead is it leaves out too much and simultaneously distorts what the film actually contains.
I have mentioned elsewhere here that when I first saw Persona and for some time thereafter I also interpreted it to be Elizabeth’s story, which is a sort of psychological journey. But I have come to see that too much in the film must be left out, ignored, in order to sustain that point of view. I also have come to better know Bergman’s larger body of work since then. It is clear that he is interested in the psychological, and some of them have a development or change in a character’s psychology as central to the narrative. But even in those the psychological serves the main thematic development, as in Persona, and does not become the primary frame of reference. It is also true that Persona avoids the direct messaging approach, if you will, and is open to interpretation, including by those who have a basic frame of reference or even agenda that is not what I think Bergman was really driving at. For example there analyses out there that Persona is primarily about the erotic, or about conflict between people, as well as the psychological. That is understandable, but ultimately incomplete, unsatisfying.
Turning to other of your points, I previously addressed why you are in error to say that psychology is the starting point of Persona. Bergman as an Existentialist does not share that view. His body of work does not reflect it as a primary focus. Part of the reason why is that he shares the perception of Existentialists that man never exists apart, and that the social is the primordial context of meaning.
I have also already addressed why the film itself does not show any melding of Alma and Elizabeth into one person, and in fact does not even have any such melding as its primary concern whether it occurs or not. In fact I have said while the film certainly contains narrative elements, it is not primarily “a story” at all.
Despite the fact that Bergman and certain of his contemporaries were looking to go beyond basic storytelling now over fifty or more years ago, it remains a radical and for many off putting notion that a film might not be primarily a narrative. Or could not necessarily be. I have mentioned Antonioni before, and while he and Bergman diverge in several ways, Bergman was quite aware of Antonioni’s work. I would say two films made before Persona might be helpful to this discussion.
In L’Avventura, Antonioni famously began with an unclear identification of who the protagonist was, at first suggesting it was a character named Anna, who had a friend named Claudia (played by Monica Vitti). Anna was the lover of Sandro. The three and some friends go off on a boat trip to a remote island. Before halfway through the film, Anna disappears. The others at first go off trying to find her, and for some period the film seems to have moved from an examination of sorts of the main characters and their friends to a search narrative, as they comb the island looking for Anna. But soon we see Sandro become very interested in Claudia, and at first imperceptibly the film pivots away from the search, in fact no longer focused on Anna at all, her fate or even memory no longer at issue. Instead the film concerns itself with the relationship between Sandro and Claudia. The experience of viewing this film is as if Antonioni is purposely thwarting the viewer’s reflexive expectation that the film will reveal “the story” by following it to its conclusion.
L’Eclisse, Antonioni’s third film with Ms. Vitti, is even more radical in its denial of the conventional story telling arc of narration. It follows her character Vittoria’s exit from a relationship with one man as she soon begins one with another, named Paolo. Along the way, though, communication between them and others is even more problematic than in Persona! But without giving away spoilers L’Eclisse we can say ends in a way that not only thwarts the expectation of seeing a story, but in effect denies that it is about story telling at all.
Persona is a very different film, except I do think it shares a specific intent and purpose in not being held to the conventional expectations of what a film should be, and specifically to be primarily about being something other than a story.
It is clear to me that your understanding of Persona as a psychological journey has lead you to force what is in the film into a view that the overall structure of the film is as narrative. To be clear I agree there are narrative elements in Persona. Of course there are. But Persona also clearly subverts the expectations of those who implicitly assume it tells a story. It is instead primarily thematic, the theme being how the concept of the persona affects relations between people and how we view our own persona and the personas of others as a mediating dynamic. The thematic aspect of the film includes the explicit recognition that it has proceeded as a cinematic exercise, bringing along with it whatever strengths and limitations are inherent in the medium of film in general and in the approach taken by Bergman in particular.
I do not disregard the psychological in understanding Persona. I for the reasons I have mentioned merely do not find the psychological to be the primary frame of reference.
I never said or never thought that Bergman should be expected to connect the dots for us. That does not mean, however, that you are free to connect the dots however you wish without doing violence to what is actually within the film and what the overall point of it is. In that connection it is ludicrous to suggest that the film is primarily about the causes of Elizabeth’s “condition.” I put the word in quotes because you are very unclear, saying contradictory things, in attempting to describe what it is that is “bothering” her.
Rather than figure out what you are trying to say, it is clear that what brings Elizabeth to the doctor’s facility is her muteness. On this score there really is no other interpretation. And while the doctor does not identify some psychological malady or physical cause to her muteness (in fact says there are no such factors), she does recognize muteness as the primary symptom. Of course it is. Here we have someone who had literally before been making her living in large part by speaking her lines, not to mention how speaking, verbalization, is the primary means by which we communicate with each other. Does that mean there are no other things bothering Elizabeth? Of course not. As I said she suffers from anxiety, from guilt and anger, from frustration and dislocation. But as I said yesterday the psychological manner in which these elements have led to her muteness, and how they might be cured through psychological or other medical methods, is not the concern of the film.
The fact that the film addresses things or situations in Elizabeth’s life as possibly related to her condition does not mean that the film is primarily concerned with such relation. The information provided is more used not in a narrative convention but instead as thematic material.
The repeat of Alma’s description of Elizabeth’s relation to her son is of obvious importance to the film. It is in fact repeated, but this singular technique’s use raises the question why it is. There is the repeat of the same words, in both cases spoken by Alma. There is the difference that in the first example, while we hear Alma we see Elizabeth’s face, and thereby see her reactions in facial expressions to what Alma is saying. Then we have the monologue repeated, this time seeing Alma’s face as she speaks. I have previously noted that the opening and ending sequences of images call attention to the fact that the film is a consciously cinematic enterprise. In this scene we cannot ignore that the sequence of the repeated monologue involves a conscious difference and distinction between the two ways the camera, and our focus, lead to different experiences, and different interpretations, depending on which is being used or chosen by the director. (In fact of course these are not the only two ways in which this monologue could have been shot and then seen by us, but that is also implicit in the unfolding of the scene as it was shot.)
The sequence of the repeated monologue shows how perspective can change understanding, and how different people (different personas) can experience an attempt at communication that has the same content. It shows a difference in the way the two women stand in relation to the content of the monologue, depending on their respective frames of reference. This understanding of course is part of the overall theme of communication as the means by which we both proceed with attempts to have genuine human connection but also are limited by the shortcomings of it. Our personas are the dynamic aspects or states of being with others where these attempts and shortcomings, that which is achieved and how we fall short, is the overall frame of reference and thematic concern of the film.
A frame of reference, as you posit, that argues that the narrative content of the monologue is primordial is unpersuasive. First of all the argument that this sequence “leads” to a melding of the two into one is, as I showed yesterday, unpersuasive – there is no resolution, no identification of a dynamic by or through which such a unification was achieved. Quite simply the film does not “show” how or why such monologue would have led to any such result. The cinematic technique of the two faces melded together is immediately followed by a break in the film, in turn followed by further antipathetic words from Alma and now clearly alienated behavior from both women. In other words the break in the film and not the melding of the two images is the crescendo.
Am I then saying that the content has no purpose? Of course not. Its telling by Alma and degree of accuracy shows us that the communication of an authentic understanding can proceed in a way that amounts to psychological violence. To a contest between people. What can expose someone more than a statement by someone else that is both negative and true? In short, we see the limits of communication as a means to make one’s persona more authentic.
The melded sight of the two breaks the film, the film proceeds to ennui, Alma pulls back from the visual doubling (no longer similar clothes) as a representation of her pulling back from identification with Elizabeth, and leaves.
As for other parts of your post, I simply cannot make sense of your in effect assertion that the unconscious, as you assert is portrayed by Alma, “fights” to maintain itself as the film winds down. And upon failing to maintain itself, flees. That makes no sense. On top of not making any sense, how does the fleeing of the unconscious leave Elizabeth in a unified state? I know of no way of understanding psychology that sees a sort of banishment of the unconscious leading to conscious understanding as a beneficial psychological therapy. Bringing unconscious motivations into the light as it were, to become conscious of them, is not to banish them.
Perhaps you are misusing the word banishment? Yet you seem tied to it by characterizing Alma's departure as a banishment.
As for Jungian psychology, I have made a few attempts by now already that you have not addressed to understand that Persona is a film about personas. Primarily about personas. That does not mean I am ruling out other elements of psychology, Jungian or otherwise. But Persona is not primarily about the unconscious.
As for your supposed identification of a contradiction under your point 4, you quite simply have misread. I have said the psychological is not the primary frame of reference and theme, not that there are no psychological elements in the film.
In closing I note you are invested by having put together your argument and no doubt found the sources you have listed as persuasive. You probably feel good about yourself for having read them and thought you understood them. I understand that, and to some extent I am sure you have understood them. But that does not change that Persona is not so limited as your OP and subsequent explanations have shown themselves to be.
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kenny-164
11 years ago
I should also add separately since it does not concern this psychology business that the limits of the use of various forms of art and other endeavors in understanding or revealing truth is a perennial theme in Bergman's films. One quite striking and powerful example can be found in The Passion. There the character Elis has a hobby of photography, but to call it a hobby greatly understates its importance. For such a phlegmatic and dismissive person as is his character, Elis quite evidently has put a huge amount of work and focus into his hobby. The results shown are very good, as far as the kind of approach he has taken is concerned. Portraits for the most part and in close focus, the art of photography is clearly analogous to cinema, and to Bergman's use of extreme closeups of actor's faces in particular.
Yet in showing his work to his neighbor Andreas, Elis is dismissive, saying he of course does not think his photographs are all that revealing of the true nature or thoughts and feelings of his subjects. The photos in short are limited in their effectiveness. They only reveal so much, and cannot reveal more.
This can also of course be said not only about cinema, including Bergman's own work, but about any art, and in fact any effort at all to understand truth and that which is hidden.
This is quite clearly a recurring motif or theme in Bergman's work.
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erratic1983
11 years ago
Kenny,
1)“As these back and forth discussions progress, sometimes where the discussion started becomes obscure.”
True
2)” By framework I have meant the structure of Persona, and how it relates to the overall point and theme of it (on the implicit assumption that the structure of the film reveals both the “lesson” of it as well as the director’s primary intent in making the film). In describing such framework I have been attempting to show how it should best be interpreted. Identification of the framework works hand in hand with identification of the director’s overall frame of reference. That concept can otherwise be stated or termed the director’s primary thematic approach.”
I have already proved in earlier posts how this interpretation goes the same way as other pieces of Bergman’s work (see what I wrote on “silence”, “the hour of the wolf” etc.)
3)” I understand as I have said from my first post on this thread that there is a limiting effect involved if one relies on your chosen frame of reference”
Also answered earlier. As I wrote about your approach:
“When I read about it I feel like I am reading a plot synopsis for the film. You describe exactly what you watch. Not less, but not more... Bergman plants 10 things so that a hundred will be born. Every minute of the film lasts 10 or 15 in your mind, thinking of it.”
4)” In fact I have said while the film certainly contains narrative elements, it is not primarily “a story” at all”
This is in the same context with what you had wrote earlier:
“it also contains elements that ultimately show them to be inadequate”
That’s what I meant saying earlier that your point of view somehow decreases the value of the film. You just describe what you watch. Then, because your interpretation cannot explain the film (that is because it’s not enough just to watch passively in such a film, we have to examine carefully each thing in this movie, and give a lot of thought on everything), you come to say that there is inadequacy and lack of continuity in it. Sorry but you said it yourself earlier:
“Bergman quite simply did not put things into his films out of sloppiness, or incoherence”
You contradict yourself again. And don’t start the “having no narrative” and “inadequate elements” don’t mean “lack of continuity” to me! Please!
5)” it is ludicrous to suggest that the film is primarily about the causes of Elizabeth’s “condition.” I put the word in quotes because you are very unclear, saying contradictory things, in attempting to describe what it is that is “bothering” her.”
Unclear? Contradictory? Really? Read again what I wrote in my initial post:
“As the story of Elizabeth unfolds, we are informed that she is an actress and had a breakdown while she performed the role of Elektra. Since that, she doesn't speak at all (willingly in a way, as it's implied). Elektra is a character of two greek tragedies, hating her mother. We easily come to the conclusion that when she came to play a role like that, hating the mother, she thought that could be the way her child feels (or will feel) about her, because of her terrible behavior towards him, as a parent. Naturally, this came as a huge shock for her, making her catatonic. As a result of this, she can't accept herself (specifically a part of her, the unconscious one). She doesn't accept herself as a whole, she doesn't accept the "shadow" part (aka Alma), because it is responsible for her unhealthy relationship with her son (and his possible negative "Elektra-like" feelings about her).”
Crystal clear!
And “it is ludicrous to suggest that the film is primarily about the causes of Elizabeth’s condition”? Really? Most of the film is about what happens in the house between them, where they were sent because of the causes of her condition you know! (the word condition is not in quotes anymore, for obvious reasons!)
6)” The sequence of the repeated monologue shows how perspective can change understanding, and how different people (different personas) can experience an attempt at communication that has the same content. It shows a difference in the way the two women stand in relation to the content of the monologue, depending on their respective frames of reference. This understanding of course is part of the overall theme of communication as the means by which we both proceed with attempts to have genuine human connection but also are limited by the shortcomings of it. Our personas are the dynamic aspects or states of being with others where these attempts and shortcomings, that which is achieved and how we fall short, is the overall frame of reference and thematic concern of the film.”
This is hilarious! If we take that Alma and Elizabeth are two different persons, then this great scene is of no real value! And that is because Alma talks about something that has no real, personal interest for herself. If they were two different persons then the communication has not the same context for both. Elizabeth is personal involved, deeply. But that doesn’t apply for Alma! In other words the repetition serves nothing! BUT if we take that they are aspects of the same person, then the scene is REALLY IMPORTANT. Alma and Elizabeth are personally involved in what the monologue describes and we watch how the two different aspects of herself react to it (separately, differently). Now the repetition is full of meaning! That example was a practical proof of why your point of view is limiting, inadequate and decreases the value of the film...
7)” no identification of a dynamic by or through which such a unification was achieved”
Except from the obvious (the scene with Alma/Elizabeth unified in the image we see), you fail to see that the monologue serves in this way. They sort of “come into an agreement” about what happened (Elizabeth accepts what she has “exiled" to her unconscious and she accepts the facts). Their points of view unify.
8)”As for other parts of your post, I simply cannot make sense of your in effect assertion that the unconscious, as you assert is portrayed by Alma, “fights” to maintain itself as the film winds down.”
Again answered earlier:
“She feels exploited and threatened. That is because when the unconscious comes to light there is no unconscious left, her existence is in danger.”
9)” On top of not making any sense, how does the fleeing of the unconscious leave Elizabeth in a unified state?”
It’s over there in my initial post again, connected with the monologue scene:
“Alma then tells all the truth about her (Elizabeth) becoming a mother (in a monologue we watch twice). She makes her confront the whole truth; she didn't really want to have a child in the first place, she wanted to have an abortion, she sees the child as a burden for her. Alma does this probably as an attempt to hurt Elizabeth because she feels exploited and threatened by her, as noticed before. But in the same time accomplishes the goal of the doctor; Elizabeth faces the truth. The outcome is that Elizabeth, through this painful procedure, confronts the truth, her inner thoughts and feelings that she couldn't bare until that moment. She acknowledges (accepts?) this part of her, her "shadow".
It's at that point that we see the image of the two women' faces mixing in one face. Elizabeth as a whole, her two aspects combined make who she really is. Alma and Elizabeth are the two sides of herself. So now Elizabeth is not divided anymore into two separate parts. She acknowledges herself as a whole. She has brought into the consciousness those inner, hidden feelings and desires. There is no "shadow" anymore.”
10)”banishment of the unconscious leading to conscious understanding as a beneficial psychological therapy. Bringing unconscious motivations into the light as it were, to become conscious of them, is not to banish them.”
You failed to understand this point of my interpretation. Elizabeth is getting consciously aware of some things that see had repelled. In our screens we see Alma leaving. That is because, as I have many times explained, what we see in our screens, in the house part of the film, is what happens in Elizabeth’s mind. What happens when she is getting consciously aware of these things, is that Alma’s (who is symbolizing the things she had repelled) existence stops. “That is because when the unconscious comes to light there is no unconscious left”.
11)My conclusion from all this conversation includes (but is not limited to) two points I would like state :
a)You have not answered to many issues raised (including the husband scene, the repetition of the monologue and others)
b)You have written in previous posts that:
my interpretation “becomes a sort of false crescendo”, that parts of it are “nonsense”, or that “the structure of the film, what it says and does not say, works against any view of the film as primarily about a narrative of Elizabeth told from a psychological perspective”
But finally, in your last post you accept my interpretation as a possible one by saying:
“That does not mean as I have conceded that no interpretation as you have suggested is possible. Of course it is possible.”
Which means that you agree with the purpose of this thread; remember that it is titled as “possible interpretation”. This means, taking into account that this film cannot be definitely interpreted 100% in an one and only specific manner, that there is no point in arguing; you agree that this thread stands valid. This is a possible interpretation. Is it the most possible? That’s up to each reader (some will say yes, some will say no).
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kenny-164
11 years ago
erratic,
I know you mentioned that English is not your primary language, and perhaps the difficulties we have been having are to some extent related to that. I am reluctant to leave it at that, but perhaps it is best. For example you do not seem to understand how I can say that your initial OP contains both a possible interpretation and one that is inadequate and too limiting. You also critically fail to address how the film breaks following the image of the two women melded together, and no unification of identification is shown. You also clearly are misusing the term banishment to refer to the unconscious in general.
Perhaps most critically you ignore the primacy of the theme of the relation between personas and attempts to use communication to make them, meaning us in our relation to others, more authentic. For example your assertion that the repeated monologue by Alma can only be understood as indicating that Elizabeth and Alma are the same person does not even begin to address why Bergman repeated the monologue. The CONTENT of the monologue was the same - why repeat it to make the point if the content was all that we needed to establish some revelation to Elizabeth? Of course the monologue was not literally repeated to Elizabeth. She did not need to hear it twice in order to understand the point Alma was making. Instead the purpose was of a piece with the thematic purpose of the film, showing how the camera's different perspective led to differing interpretations of the same words, again showing the limits of communication.
In connection with the foregoing you continue to fail to address how the break in the film is followed by interactions between the two that go against your claim of a unified personality.
We do not even know if Elizabeth leaves the house, and has begun speaking again. Why these indisputable elements do not show you that the film is not primarily concerned about Elizabeth's story is not only beyond me, but I see it as pointless to make further efforts in that regard.
You know, in the end it kind of has become like the very point of the film. The limits of communication. Oh well...
For the benefit of other readers of this thread, if there are any, the intent of Alma in saying what she does in her monologue is both straightforward in its purposeful element and complex in the content of it. She clearly intends to hurt Elizabeth, hurt her feelings. Why Alma would do so has been established at least as far back as when she read Elizabeth's letter. The content of what she says is complex in that it contains some element of doubling, the comparison of Elizabeth's experience of being a mother compared and contrasted to Alma's experience of having had an abortion following the sexual encounter on the beach.
I also have before addressed the meaning of Alma's dream/fantasy of having a sexual encounter with Elizabeth's husband, which again I think was included to show that an attempt at closeness and identification failed on the erotic fantasy level.
Finally I think it should be clear that the thematic is a more significant and interesting aspect than a kind of plot driven understanding of whether Elizabeth will speak again and how she might come to do so. I mean really, who cares about that? Much more significant is how we relate and fall short in our interactions with others.
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erratic1983
11 years ago
Kenny,
1)" For example you do not seem to understand how I can say that your initial OP contains both a possible interpretation and one that is inadequate and too limiting"
I understand what you are saying now(still I totally disagree with the second part!). The thing is, that in previous posts of yours you wrote:
my interpretation “becomes a sort of false crescendo”, that parts of it are “nonsense”, or that “the structure of the film, what it says and does not say, works against any view of the film as primarily about a narrative of Elizabeth told from a psychological perspective”
When you characterize a theory as "nonsense" I don't think you consider it as possible!!!
2)"You also critically fail to address how the film breaks following the image of the two women melded together, and no unification of identification is shown"
Alma's monologue is the "reconciliation" you are looking for. I wrote:
"Except from the obvious (the scene with Alma/Elizabeth unified in the image we see), you fail to see that the monologue serves in this way. They sort of “come into an agreement” about what happened (Elizabeth accepts what she has “exiled" to her unconscious and she accepts the facts). Their points of view unify."
Elizabeth conscious aspect confronts the truth. Now she has the same view on the facts as her unconscious side.
3)"You also clearly are misusing the term banishment to refer to the unconscious in general."
Nope. I've already explained this one. One more time. Nothing is "banished". She is getting consciously aware of the things that she had repelled. Those things, which are symbolized by Alma, were repelled into her unconscious previously. Now that she's aware of them, that she has shed light on those unconscious stuff, this unconscious side is no more; it has become conscious. So symbolically, we watch in the film Alma leaving. (those things don't exist as unconscious anymore)
4)"Perhaps most critically you ignore the primacy of the theme of the relation between personas and attempts to use communication to make them, meaning us in our relation to others, more authentic."
The primacy? You keep posting your opinion like it is the one and only truth!
5)" The CONTENT of the monologue was the same - why repeat it to make the point if the content was all that we needed to establish some revelation to Elizabeth? Of course the monologue was not literally repeated to Elizabeth. She did not need to hear it twice in order to understand the point Alma was making. Instead the purpose was of a piece with the thematic purpose of the film, showing how the camera's different perspective led to differing interpretations of the same words, again showing the limits of communication."
Already answered. If we take your interpretation, the scene is not so important at all! Bergman could do the same with any other scene they were talking. Also what's the point of doing that in a scene where the content of the monologue is important only for Elizabeth? Why to bother to watch Alma (too) saying something that doesn't really care about it? Just to show "the limits of communication"? COME ON! It's a breaking moment in the film! It's obvious that it plays a more important part in it! On the contrary if we take Alma/Elizabeth are the same person, there's a big point in repeating the monologue; so the viewer can watch how the two aspects of this person react to it, what effect has got on each of them, as (in this case) it is very important for both of them.
And I have another question for you. How could Alma know all these stuff about Elizabeth if they are different persons? And don't tell me she took this kind of information from the doctor or the hospital; this is not convincing at all!!!
6)"I also have before addressed the meaning of Alma's dream/fantasy of having a sexual encounter with Elizabeth's husband, which again I think was included to show that an attempt at closeness and identification failed on the erotic fantasy level."
Which i will repeat that makes no sense at all!
7)Sorry but, after all this discussion, it is clear (for me at least) that your take on the film is limiting. If you read again our posts you'll see yourself how many points you have left unanswered (or at least pretty weakly answered) (Elizabeth's husband making love with Alma, how a nurse can go on a "mission" (?!!!) away from the hospital she works, the significance of Alma's monologue, the stuff Alma knows about Elizabeth's personal life, the film according to you “having no narrative” and “inadequate elements”, all those film critics saying that this is a movie about psychology etc. etc.).
On the contrary you repeat 2-3 points of my interpretation that you feel that do not fit, either because of the general theme that you THINK that the film is about, or because you think that in a Bergman's film (especially this one) everything would be straightforward, explained to you in the face in all details; sorry no way this could be the case, we have to conclude some things ourselves (again this is a Bergman film)!
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kenny-164
11 years ago
erratic,
Again, language misunderstandings increasingly make this exchange less productive, and I am not encouraged in wondering whether further discussions will lead to any progress. For example I do not understand other than if it is a language problem how you can see as contradictory that your general interpretation is possible while parts of it are nonsense. I give up on getting you to understand that one, and pretty much on getting you to understand more in general.
Your clarification on banishment of the unconscious perhaps fits better with what actually occurs psychologically when one brings something in the unconscious into consciousness, through recognition, whether in therapy or not. Fine as far as it goes, but you seem still tied to the idea that Alma's departure if not a banishment (as you described it previously) is now because she in effect is no longer necessary. Really?
The somber look on her face, the determination to leave without apparent goodbye and get on the bus leaving Elizabeth behind, is now a symbolic representation of her role as unconscious no longer being "necessary"? We are supposed to "understand" that the unconscious has taken being revealed to consciousness as some kind of personal rejection? Heh. You have to be joking. And of course this ignores how this cinematic representation should be taken to show some kind of unification of personality (as you insist occurred), whether of some part of Elizabeth that had "gone missing" during her performance of Electra, or more accurately leading up to it, or of a melding of the two women. It simply does not fit.
In any event, it should be clear that banishment is not a concept and term that fits the psychological. Nor does it support any view of melding or unification.
Your sole point worth discussing here is the notion that repeat of Alma's monologue shows an agreement between the two women on the substance of the points covered, whereby their points of view unify. Again, and you HAVE NOT addressed the obvious point that this so called unification is immediately followed by a break in the film, a cracking of the appearance of the two faces together, a crack in the cinematic representation of that which is the static persona (face - mask). In short the structure of the film itself shows no unifying dynamic, and goes on to show residual violence, anger and distance between the two in the following portion of the film.
I do not contend that a neat description of the film as I have posited here is a complete statement of it. But I do think it is the best frame of reference for examining and understanding Persona. Your OP on the other hand begins and ends with a purely psychological examination and analysis. This ignores too much as I have said. It ignores the way the film includes early on the doctor's assessment (echoed btw in Bergman's own voice in the voice over as the women go to Faro) that Elizabeth is not suffering from a psychological condition (which the film has no element indicating that the doctor's assessmsent is unreliable - none). In terms of the film's structure you effectively insist the film becomes primarily a story about how Elizabeth is cured by unifying with her unconscious.
To repeat that frame of reference, we should recognize that Persona is a consciously cinematic exercise, as strongly indicated in the series of images at its beginning and end, and also the break in the middle. From an Existentialist perspective Bergman addresses the dynamic or connection between the way we exist with others and express ourselves, put ourselves forward, with the face and our behavior (persona), and ways in which we attempt to communicate, here particularly with the object being a more authentic connection and way of being. Does changing our personas, or piercing or getting around another's persona, become the basis for more authentic existence with others?
The film proceeds thematically but with narrative elements that serve as source material for the examination and explication of its themes. A critical theme that is simultaneously the primary cinematic technique is doubling, or twinning, showing at the same time interconnection, or how relations and communication are intertwined while the polarities that are doubled, including the main characters, remain apart.
The film does not conclude with any unification (here meaning both that Alma and Elizabeth do not "come together" in either the sense of a single person but also and alternatively in a symbolic sense of authentic and complete understanding between the two as representatives of archetypal personas). as such on one level the lack of a coming together can be viewed as an indication that the effort of using communication to achieve the goal of more authenticity "failed". But of course while the effort did not produce either a literal unification or even as between two archetypal personas, it is an overstatement to say it was merely a failure. Something was achieved. We better understand among other things that our masks serve a certain purpose. We should not aim to have relations be a series of lies, but neither must we see "the whole truth" as free of the problematic.
Along the way we can understand Elizabeth's choice of silence, while we also see it does not eliminate in her (as a simple act leading to a pat result) the capacity for psychological violence toward Alma. (Perhaps ironically her silence becomes a means by which a certain amount of violence against Alma proceeds - perhaps in fact we might see her silence contributing in some way to her wanting to hurt Alma? Perhaps...) But.. Elizabeth does seem to get stronger as the film proceeds, which she literally needs to do to move on however she will move on, although it is not clear to what end (I do think she leaves off her muteness, however, as the doctor predicted.) We also recognize that even as Alma chooses some violent measures herself, her attempts to do her job, to help Elizabeth, to "do good", were not wholly without merit and even beneficial effects.
The film ends in such a way that the viewer can make some hopefully informed assessments, even choices, about what happens to Alma and Elizabeth, respectively, after the film ends. That is part of its beauty and value. Probably since Bergman was not prepared to make those choices himself, at least to then present his view didactically, they are left to us.
Also along the way Persona should be viewed as another example of his general and recurring theme that artistic endeavors have limits for all their benefits as to just how much they can tell us. The medium of film in particular can, and should be explored further, say certain things that the printed or spoken word cannot. But so can music. And non-cinematic images, such as paintings and sculptures. And not only other forms of art, but human endeavors in general (such as the main character's career as a doctor in Wild Strawberries, or even the minister's in Winter Light).
To some the net result might seem a basis for a certain pessimism. But perhaps instead it is a glass half full half empty situation, for as noted we do learn something! Well, as the knight Antonius Block learns in The Seventh Seal, God did not intend us to have complete knowledge, and instead we must rely on the glimpses we get of the divine, whether in nature or in others. It is better than complete ignorance.
Even better than the purely psychological. Heh.
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erratic1983
11 years ago
Kenny,
Sorry but no language misunderstandings from my side. When I believe that something contains "nonsense", then I can not think of it as a possibility. ...You can...! There is no need to comment this one anymore!
My god! You keep changing my words! "Banishment", "banishment", "the unconscious has taken being revealed to consciousness as some kind of personal rejection", "banishment"??? Are you kidding? That's what I wrote earlier? Read again please. I am bored to do another copy-paste for this one! I think I am very clear.
And you keep repeating yourself about how this interpretation doesn't fit your perception about the theme of the film. Well that's just fine with me because, as stated before, I find your approach pretty limiting.
I wrote earlier that reading your aproach was like reading a "plain plot synopsis". I feel now I was totally right about it, having read HoratiusFlacc's thread "two real women"(who agrees in most stuff with you). He keeps quoting dialogues from the film taking literally everything to the last word! That was my point talking about a "plain plot synopsis".
Also have in mind that most of the stuff you refer to, fit in this interpretation too! And yes you are right, they are a big deal. I do not mention them because I believe that anyone really watching the film gets them. For instance, all the conclusions we reach about Alma and Karl-Henrik stand in this interpretation too. It doesn't really matter if "house Alma" doesn't exist. The viewer gets the same "food for thought". Seeing the film in my way doesn't mean I do not see what you are pointing. But I think that through this interpretation you can go some steps further.
Not to mention that you both fail to understand this interpretation; HoratiusFlacc, in his post, keeps quoting dialogues from the beginning of the movie (before the two girls go to the house) and saying "this can't be in Vogler's mind"!!! Hello! Read again my initial post! The part of the movie that "we see inside Vogler's mind" is AFTER these dialogues! Another one: you write that "To start with, there is no reason to believe that the doctor exists only either symbolically or in the mind of Elizabeth". Did I ever write anything like this??? Give me a break guys! You have your own opinion, whatever, I respect that, but at least read about the "other opinion" before you criticise it! I have said it before: "you are being extrememely dogmatic in this one, which makes you don't see it clearly".
And... surprise, surprise; once again you don't answer at all:
"If you read again our posts you'll see yourself how many points you have left unanswered (or at least pretty weakly answered) (Elizabeth's husband making love with Alma, how a nurse can go on a "mission" (?!!!) away from the hospital she works, the significance of Alma's monologue, the stuff Alma knows about Elizabeth's personal life, the film according to you “having no narrative” and “inadequate elements”, all those film critics saying that this is a movie about psychology etc. etc.)."
Sorry! You try to go totally straightforward in this; naturally the result is full of holes!
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kenny-164
11 years ago
The misreadings and language misunderstandings continue. Poor erratic.
First of all I never said Persona has no narrative. I explicitly referred to narrative elements. OF COURSE they are in the film. I instead have clearly and consistently said Persona is primarily thematic and not about telling a story.
Another element is how one can have an interpretation, while one or more of the perceptions supporting the interpretation can very well be nonsense. Yes, that tends to undermine the interpretation, but since there can also be other bases for the interpretation, the "nonsense" does not wholly dispose of the interpretation.
I also do not see the knowledge Alma displays about Elizabeth's past as requiring we view her as Elizabeth. It would not even begin to approach plot hole status to see Alma, being a nurse at the psychiatric clinic where Elizabeth was a patient, could become familiar with her history from Elizabeth's file. In any event we are not required to understand that Alma's narrative is precisely correct in every respect - it instead plays primarily as an aggressive rejection of Elizabeth.
You also miss the point about the doctor, again. It is not a question of whether Elizabeth imagines the doctor. We are well past such a wild perception. It has to do with the CONTENT of the doctor's take on Elizabeth and how it signals the film's turn away from a psychological frame of reference.
Moving on here...
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erratic1983
11 years ago
1) No misreadings. No language misunderstandings. It's just you; keep writting contradictory stuff.
2) If an interpretation contains nonsense in some amount, then it may be at most interesting. But it will never be possible to stand true as a whole. Not without changing the the nonsense parts. Please be logic!
3) The thread "two real women" states that in my interpretation the doctor is not a real person and uses it to show that my point is weak. The problem here is that I never even implied that the doctor is not real!
4) You suggest that:
a) a personal detail (a dialogue with someone not close to her years before) would be in her personal file at the hospital? Come on! This is hillarious! This makes no sense at all! No hospital file would contain something like that. Alma would only know such a thing, only if she was present at the incident or if Elizabeth had told her (obviously clear when watching the scene that both of them are not the case)
or
b) Alma's narrative was incorrect. No way! If it didn't stand then it wouldn't have any impact on Elizabeth (which obviously had!) and the scene would be garbage (instead it is the exact opposite of garbage and there's the repetition element in it!)
So this is another plot hole in your interpretation!
5) And the real problem is that this is not the only one! Clearly some elements-scenes in the film just don't make sense if the film is not watched through a psychological interpretation. This includes
a) Alma's monologue as just mentioned- A)these are stuff that Alma just can't know about (if she is not the same person with Elizabeth), B)the scene is of no real value if they are not the same person. Alma would talk about something that doesn't affect her personally. There is no reason for the repetition, no important reason to watch Alma's reaction.
b) The scene with Elizabeth's husband does not make sense in your interpretation even if you suggest it is a dream. (Alma having sex with him=failure of communication between Alma and Elizabeth???? Come on! No sense at all!)
c) How it is possible for a nurse to be sent on a "mission" away from the hospital she works, in a coleague's house, to spend time with a person that doesn't need treatment???? Which hospital is being managed like this????
etc. etc. etc. stuff you failed or avoided to answer in all this disscusion... Full of holes! Sorry but the film is being undermined through the intepretation you suggest!
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HoratiusFlacc
11 years ago
Erratic, you yourself said that yours is just one possible interpretation and that "there is no such thing as the one correct interpretation of persona". There's no need to get too defensive or agressive.
Your interpretation lives because a lot of people kind of see the film as you do.
If you think we're dogmatic, on one hand, and your vision is the clear and right one, on the other, so be it.
But, continuing to ramble on anyway for my enjoyment... :)
You say I took things literally to the last word. This is not true, I do not (especially at the end), and such is not possible in this film. But there's enough to take literally. And we can start (just start) from there: that was my point, effective or not.
Consider: you yourself are saying again that Alma at the beginning is actually a real person and that only at the summer house the "mind journey" takes place.
Very well. She's real at the start of the film.
So please go along with me for a while: the doctor says at the beginning to a real Alma that Vogler"'s healthy both mentally and physically". You agree that this is happening in fact, right?
Then, still a real Alma says: "If Mrs. Vogler's silence and immobility are her decision...That shows great mental strength. I might not be able to cope".
I'm not able to take these words in any other way but literally. They are saying that there is nothing wrong clinically with Vogler. Plain and simple. Not only that, but she actually has great strength of mind.
Then the "mind journey" begins according to your interpretation.
So what's the point of those words and such introduction? Why does the real Alma say such things and then never gets back to the film (only as the representation of Vogler's unconscious)? Why did Bergman write those words if in fact what happens next is actually a surreal metaphor of Vogler's mind struggles?
It's not something said casually – this intelligent film is saying to the viewer right at the beginning: we're stating that there's nothing wrong with Vogler's mind despite her appearing in a hospital (that's why she's not staying there...), so don't go looking for interpretations related to such.
A viewer following the film naturally has to take that into consideration to eventually form an interpretation, whatever it is.
Just like that, the path for a purely psychological interpretation of your kind has already been blocked (if you listen to the film first and your idea after...).
Vogler's dilemma is bigger, imho, an existential one.
Consider the following words that cannot be understood simply this time:
The hopeless dream of being.
Not seeming, but being.
In every waking moment
aware, alert.
The tug of war... what you are
with others and who you really are.
A feeling of vertigo
and a constant hunger
to be finally exposed.
To be seen through,
cut down...
even obliterated.
Every tone of voice a lie.
Every gesture false.
Every smile a grimace.
I wrote before, for some reason (heh, it was a mess...), that the doctor's speech to Elisabet makes "it painfully clear what is part of Vogler". That was badly put. That the doctor (after having dismissed clinical problems) is somehow expressing to the viewer what is really perturbing Vogler can be clear. Exactly what she means is not and can be quite cryptic to a lot of people.
The interpretation of such words depends on your perspective on things.
You adapt such words to your interpretation, do you not?
Those who share some sort of existential perspective on things will tend to see the film as expressing more than just a conscious-unconscious struggle and resolution that does not take into enough account the larger complexity in human existence, relations and perspectives suggested through means of the same film.
Vogler's not trying to resolve and unite something specific inside of her, nor is something like you described happening.
Her specific commitment to avoid lies, for autenticity and truth (to the point of deliberately assuming muteness...) is not purely only related to something within for within, if I'm writing proper english, but it is related to a kind of awareness of the subjective nature of the perceptions and interactions with what we call reality, ourselves and others.
Some issues:
- Elizabeth's husband making love with Alma
See the “Two real women” thread. I'll write something there.
- how a nurse can go on a "mission"
Let's not make too much of this. It's just a convenient plot thing for the film's purpose.
Of importance for the film is not first a "perfectly logical story" but what is expressed and how.
I don't see anything particularly wrong with this plot device and it suits the purpose. Alma and Vogler have to be isolated.
- the significance of Alma's monologue
See the “Two real women” thread. I'll write something there.
- the stuff Alma knows about Elizabeth's personal life
See the “Two real women” thread.
- the film according to you “having no narrative” and “inadequate elements”
I think there's misunderstanding here. You read something too fast.
- all those film critics saying that this is a movie about psychology etc
Heh, just because one is using a critic mask doesn't mean one can just hammer and crack any surface as one wishes. It's pretty easy for all of us to bounce right off and end up swimming in familiar waters...
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erratic1983
11 years ago
HoratiusFlacc,
1) "There's no need to get too defensive or agressive."
I didn't want to be either of these. If you check the previous posts of the thread, you 'll easily see who got in this kind of mood first! Sorry but when someone says that I write "nonsense" and other similar stuff, there will be a reaction from me. I am not Gandhi (wish I was!).
2) "I'm not able to take these words in any other way but literally. They are saying that there is nothing wrong clinically with Vogler. Plain and simple."
I have answered this earlier, but I 'll try to be clearer, as I see that this is one of the two main elements in the film that make you doubt about my interpretation.
If a person has had a traumatic experience (or more than one), which has influenced him, that doesn't mean that the outcome of this influence will be a clinical condition of that person. Meaning: ok, Elizabeth's muteness is not a "clinical condition". But that doesn't mean that it is a random situation; I think that we can agree on this one. There are some reasons that made her "decide to be mute"; she has "some issues" (relation with her son etc.). Now when a person has issues like her (that do not consist a clinical condition), it is typical to get through sessions with a psychologist to get past them. It doesn't mean this person is "psycho" or something. It doesn't mean he has a clinical condition. At most cases he is thought to be "mentally healthy". Also it is not medical treatment. No drugs but psychoanalysis etc. What we see in the house is how Elizabeth's mind conceives these sessions.
3) ""If Mrs. Vogler's silence and immobility are her decision...That shows great mental strength. I might not be able to cope"
and
"So what's the point of those words and such introduction? Why does the real Alma say such things and then never gets back to the film (only as the representation of Vogler's unconscious)? Why did Bergman write those words if in fact what happens next is actually a surreal metaphor of Vogler's mind struggles?"
As I had written earlier, to be honest about the point you mentioned (doctor and Alma's conversation)- it's just before we get to the house and I can't decide 100% how to conceive it. It could be interprated as the start of the mind journey, an introduction to it. The only scene before the house part of the movie, that is not real. Meaning: the doctor tries here to trigger the journey, tries to conveince the unconcsious part of Elizabeth (Alma) to get to the house (participate in the journey). This explains Alma's reaction pretty well. But to be honest I can't make up my mind on this one for sure.
Now if we take this scene literally, as it happened before the mental journey, it is there to point Elizabeth's mental strengh. To prepare us for the intensity, the strain we will encounter in this journey (in the interaction between her concsious and her unconcsious aspect), as we do of course.
4) "It's not something said casually – this intelligent film is saying to the viewer right at the beginning: we're stating that there's nothing wrong with Vogler's mind despite her appearing in a hospital (that's why she's not staying there...), so don't go looking for interpretations related to such.
A viewer following the film naturally has to take that into consideration to eventually form an interpretation, whatever it is.
Just like that, the path for a purely psychological interpretation of your kind has already been blocked (if you listen to the film first and your idea after...)."
What it is blocked, when the doctor's saying that she is mentally and physically healthy, is the suggestion that Elizabeth is mad, psycho or something. So the viewer tries to understand from that point on, what are the causes of her muteness, since she is mentally ok. And also tries to understand the way that these causes will be revealed, since this is impossible through strickly medical treatment. So this is the perfect introduction to the mental journey that follows!
5) "The hopeless dream of being.
Not seeming, but being.
In every waking moment
aware, alert.
The tug of war... what you are
with others and who you really are.
A feeling of vertigo
and a constant hunger
to be finally exposed.
To be seen through,
cut down...
even obliterated.
Every tone of voice a lie.
Every gesture false.
Every smile a grimace."
These lines fit perfectly in my interpretation! "Not seeming, but being.", "to be finally exposed. To be seen through, cut down... even obliterated." Do you get it?
6) "- Elizabeth's husband making love with Alma
See the “Two real women” thread. I'll write something there.
- the significance of Alma's monologue
See the “Two real women” thread. I'll write something there.
- the stuff Alma knows about Elizabeth's personal life
See the “Two real women” thread."
I am interested on your point of view on these, so I will visit your thread!
7) "how a nurse can go on a "mission"
Let's not make too much of this. It's just a convenient plot thing for the film's purpose.
Of importance for the film is not first a "perfectly logical story" but what is expressed and how.
I don't see anything particularly wrong with this plot device and it suits the purpose. Alma and Vogler have to be isolated."
But a hospital would never be managed this way! A nurse would never be permited to go as shown. And if it's not a part of a treatment, since you state that Elizabeth is totally ok, then the problem with this is bigger! Why to go with Alma and not with anyone else not assigned by the hospital? This way it would be more logical! And why specifically in the doctor's house and not anywhere else? Why should the doctor even care so much to give away her house? The movie could go on its way without these elements. They are put there for a reason. No offence but I strongly believe that this doesn't make sense the way you put it... And I agree that this is not a "perfectly logical story", but there must be at least a motive for Bergman to present things this way, I don't believe they would be set this way randomly.
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kenny-164
11 years ago
erratic,
You are the kind of poster who insists you understand those who disagree with you, but clearly you do not. I have answered all your objections before with much more persuasive arguments than you make, and you insist on disregarding points I have made that undercut your theories. You also evidence a lack of understanding of Bergman's overall work and common thematic concerns.
Alma's work is not clinical, but is in accord with the doctor's take on what really ails Elizabeth, and that is that she is stuck confronting her existential alienation from her persona. She is attempting to overcome that alienation by first shortcircuiting her prior persona, by going mute. It is not the least bit difficult to understand why the doctor would choose the verbose and upbeat Alma to join her, considering Alma also has a background as a psychiatric nurse. The setting also is a signal - a private house in a vacation setting, not an institution. No drugs (other than cigarettes and booze). This should not be hard to follow, but for you it is.
I have explained how Alma's encounter with Elizabeth's husband is dreamt. Do all your dreams make complete sense? Alma has shown before a disposition to ponder the erotic, obviously. She has also quite evidently wondered how much she has in common with Elizabeth - this again is an exercise in the cinematic device of doubling as an Existential technique in exploring attempts at authentic understanding and communication. Perhaps you simply do not understand Existentialism (I have tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but in fact you have given no indication that you understand Existentialism's basic concepts). In any event the film is also signalling that the erotic frame of reference will prove limited in serving as the film's primary frame of reference. This is specifically shown in Alma's dreamt confusion over the nature of Elizabeth's husband and her relationship with Elizabeth - her fantasized experience of "being Elizabeth" does not add to her understanding, and in fact adds to her confusion.
Not to digress but as I have said a few times before, the overall theme of the film is that we are limited in achieving authentic understanding by trying to get around or pierce through the personas of those we care about. This is precisely what occurs in Alma's dreamt encounter with Elizabeth's husband. You can argue on behalf of in your view a superior understanding of this encounter. But if instead you continue bleating that it "makes no sense at all!" I will merely find continuing evidence that you do not understand Existentialism.
I have also more than once explained the meaning of Alma's monologue, and also the reason why it is repeated, which you have failed to offer any plausible justification for in connection with your putative frame of reference.
As for the content of the monologue, you suddenly want to give complete deference to a literal interpretation of it - really? I have no patience for your argument on this element. You have consistently failed to describe why Alma's monologue fits into a narrative arc concerned with "what happens to Elizabeth's psyche!" Hearing an imagined other person aggressively attacking you with awful truths about your past shows what? How Elizabeth gets cured? How she will eventually decide to start talking again? Achieve psychological "unity"? How mundane! How ill fitting to the overall approach of this film!
Instead the monologue is the most explicit example of doubling, with the film showing us the limits of cinema itself to explore and find authentic human connection. I have specifically explaiend in that connection why Bergman used the rather daring technique of repeating the monologue - by focusing on the expressions of the two women, and their distinctions and differences, we see how the choice of where the camera is directed limits the use of film in understanding authentic human connection. This in turn fits with the content of the scene, which is clearly an aggressive attack on Elizabeth, signalling Alma's turning away from her.
I already explained how Alma could know something about Elizabeth's past, and you missed my reference to the fact we are NOT required to understand all that Alma says as literally correct. It is not necessary for it to be literally correct in all respects. It is Alma's attitude and Elizabeth's reaction that are primary, not Elizabeth's "story". The scene has an impact on Elizabeth because she has alienated Alma and recognizes that her approach of using muteness has turned her attempt to seek the authentic into an encounter of psychological violence.
Regarding the doctor, I am going to say for the last time what you misunderstand is the significance of WHAT THE DOCTOR SAYS. What the doctor said means that the film turns away from the psychological to the existential.
It is clear that it is your insistence on seeing the film as a psychological story that limits your understanding.
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erratic1983
11 years ago
Kenny,
1) "You are the kind of poster who insists you understand those who disagree with you, but clearly you do not"
Here we go again with the aggressive tone... No sir! You are the kind of poster who: when someone disagrees with you, you imply that he disagrees, because he doesn't understand your writtings (he doesn't match your iq probably) or because he is uneducated on the subject disscussed. There's no other way! There is no possibility that he could be right! First I don't know a thing about existantialism, then about Jung, then about Bergman etc. Sure! Whatever you say!
2) "You also evidence a lack of understanding of Bergman's overall work and common thematic concerns."
You fail to understand that this is a film "that marked Bergman’s departure from metaphysics toward the realm of human psychology" as mentioned before. I wonder have you watched Bergman's '70s? "Cries and whispers" maybe? Psychological aspect is no. 1 there- end of story! But generally you fail to see in the rest of his work, the same aspects you fail to see in persona (as I wrote earlier about the "hour of the wolf", the "silence" etc.).
3) "Alma's work is not clinical, but is in accord with the doctor's take on what really ails Elizabeth, and that is that she is stuck confronting her existential alienation from her persona. She is attempting to overcome that alienation by first shortcircuiting her prior persona, by going mute. It is not the least bit difficult to understand why the doctor would choose the verbose and upbeat Alma to join her, considering Alma also has a background as a psychiatric nurse. The setting also is a signal - a private house in a vacation setting, not an institution. No drugs (other than cigarettes and booze). This should not be hard to follow, but for you it is."
More or less in a similar tone as I wrote to HoratiusFlacc (but with some more points):
But a hospital would never be managed this way! A nurse would never be permited to go as shown. And if it's not a part of a treatment, since you state that Elizabeth is totally ok, then the problem with this is bigger! Why to go with Alma and not with anyone else not assigned by the hospital? Why not another person, not from the hospital with the similar temper as Alma? (which wouldn't lead to a plot hole) This way it would be more logical! And why specifically in the doctor's house and not in a similar location? Why should the doctor even care so much to give away her house?
What's the reason to make these decisions if we take that Elizabeth is totally ok as you state? Is it her responsibility to do so? Actually would the doctor even be permited to make these decisions (especially for a person who is healthy as you consider her to be)? This is totally contradictory with your claim that she is mentally totally ok (which you mention again and again to state that my interpretation doesn't stand!)
Plus, the movie could go on the same way without these elements
4) "Do all your dreams make complete sense?"
Again and again presenting the holes of your interpretation as inadequacies of the film, undermining it...
5) "Perhaps you simply do not understand Existentialism (I have tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but in fact you have given no indication that you understand Existentialism's basic concepts)"
Perhaps you are too stubborn to accept that your interpretation of the dream simply DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!
6) "In any event the film is also signalling that the erotic frame of reference will prove limited in serving as the film's primary frame of reference. This is specifically shown in Alma's dreamt confusion over the nature of Elizabeth's husband and her relationship with Elizabeth - her fantasized experience of "being Elizabeth" does not add to her understanding, and in fact adds to her confusion."
But Alma is not fantasising of being Elizabeth! Elizabeth's husband is taking Alma for his wife and then Elizabeth forces her to accept the role! No sense! If your point was valid Alma would have accepted the role willingly from the beginning. Elizabeth wouldn't be seen in the dream sequence. Also, through a sexual intercourse she will understand their relationship?
Remember the dialogue in the scene?
"I'll find out
what he wants from us"
7) "But if instead you continue bleating that it "makes no sense at all!" I will merely find continuing evidence that you do not understand Existentialism."
Here we go again! "You dare to disagree? Then you are ignorant!"
IT IS JUST THAT THIS SCENE AS FILMED DOES NOT FIT TO SUCH A PERSPECTIVE WELL!
8) "I have also more than once explained the meaning of Alma's monologue, and also the reason why it is repeated, which you have failed to offer any plausible justification for in connection with your putative frame of reference."
Answered four times allready!!!
"Alma then tells all the truth about her (Elizabeth) becoming a mother (in a monologue we watch twice). She makes her confront the whole truth; she didn't really want to have a child in the first place, she wanted to have an abortion, she sees the child as a burden for her. Alma does this probably as an attempt to hurt Elizabeth because she feels exploited and threatened by her, as noticed before. But in the same time accomplishes the goal of the doctor; Elizabeth faces the truth. The outcome is that Elizabeth, through this painful procedure, confronts the truth, her inner thoughts and feelings that she couldn't bare until that moment"
"If we take your interpretation, the scene is not so important at all! Bergman could do the same with any other scene they were talking. Also what's the point of doing that in a scene where the content of the monologue is important only for Elizabeth? Why to bother to watch Alma (too) saying something that doesn't really care about it? Just to show "the limits of communication"? COME ON! It's a breaking moment in the film! It's obvious that it plays a more important part in it! On the contrary if we take Alma/Elizabeth are the same person, there's a big point in repeating the monologue; so the viewer can watch how the two aspects of this person react to it, what effect has got on each of them, as (in this case) it is very important for both of them."
9) "As for the content of the monologue, you suddenly want to give complete deference to a literal interpretation of it - really? I have no patience for your argument on this element."
Not literal. Just making sense. And you cannot make it so through your interpretation. She cannot know all these stuff if they are two different persons.
10) "You have consistently failed to describe why Alma's monologue fits into a narrative arc concerned with "what happens to Elizabeth's psyche!"
REALLY? See point 8 of this post
11) "Hearing an imagined other person aggressively attacking you with awful truths about your past shows what? How Elizabeth gets cured?"
Clearly, you are the one who doesn't understand what I write. Alma is not a "random imagined person". She is her unconcsious aspect. Elizabeth, through this painful procedure, confronts the truth, that awful truth that was hidden in her uncocsious (her Alma side). In situations like this, acceptance is the first big step that one has to make to be "cured".
12) "Achieve psychological "unity"? How mundane! How ill fitting to the overall approach of this film!"
Ill fitting? Yeah right! Anyone who has just seen the poster of the film would disagree with you.
13) "Instead the monologue is the most explicit example of doubling, with the film showing us the limits of cinema itself to explore and find authentic human connection. I have specifically explaiend in that connection why Bergman used the rather daring technique of repeating the monologue - by focusing on the expressions of the two women, and their distinctions and differences, we see how the choice of where the camera is directed limits the use of film in understanding authentic human connection. This in turn fits with the content of the scene, which is clearly an aggressive attack on Elizabeth, signalling Alma's turning away from her."
There are many more aggressive attacks on Elizabeth. Why Bergman chose this scene to repeat? Why in a monologue that its content is indifferent to Alma? No sense! There must be something more! Once again, it's not me that I don't understand existentalism; it's you again trying to fit it somewhere that it simply doesn't fit! "Human connection"? How much more vague can you be?!
14) "I already explained how Alma could know something about Elizabeth's past"
The hospital files? Be serious!
15) ", and you missed my reference to the fact we are NOT required to understand all that Alma says as literally correct. It is not necessary for it to be literally correct in all respects. It is Alma's attitude and Elizabeth's reaction that are primary, not Elizabeth's "story". The scene has an impact on Elizabeth because she has alienated Alma and recognizes that her approach of using muteness has turned her attempt to seek the authentic into an encounter of psychological violence."
So according to you, it doesn't matter what Alma would say. Anything be told aggressively would have the same impact on Elizabeth????!!!! Or Bergman just put something random there in the so important monologue of the film, because he thought that what matters is the "thematic approach", the reactions of the characters, not the content of the monologue???!!!!
Well I will agree that the impact of the monologue is more important, but writing those stuff about its content, just to justify the holes of your interpretation is unacceptable...
16) "Regarding the doctor, I am going to say for the last time what you misunderstand is the significance of WHAT THE DOCTOR SAYS. What the doctor said means that the film turns away from the psychological to the existential.
It is clear that it is your insistence on seeing the film as a psychological story that limits your understanding."
As I wrote to HoratiusFlacc:
"If a person has had a traumatic experience (or more than one), which has influenced him, that doesn't mean that the outcome of this influence will be a clinical condition of that person. Meaning: ok, Elizabeth's muteness is not a "clinical condition". But that doesn't mean that it is a random situation; I think that we can agree on this one. There are some reasons that made her "decide to be mute"; she has "some issues" (relation with her son etc.). Now when a person has issues like her (that do not consist a clinical condition), it is typical to get through sessions with a psychologist to get past them. It doesn't mean this person is "psycho" or something. It doesn't mean he has a clinical condition. At most cases he is thought to be "mentally healthy". Also it is not medical treatment. No drugs but psychoanalysis etc. What we see in the house is how Elizabeth's mind conceives these sessions."
and
"What it is blocked, when the doctor's saying that she is mentally and physically healthy, is the suggestion that Elizabeth is mad, psycho or something. So the viewer tries to understand from that point on, what are the causes of her muteness, since she is mentally ok. And also tries to understand the way that these causes will be revealed, since this is impossible through strickly medical treatment. So this is the perfect introduction to the mental journey that follows!"
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kenny-164
11 years ago
erratic proves he or she knows nothing about Existentialism. On one hand that is hardly the worst thing in the world in general. Many people do not. But when a poster, actually more than one poster, establishes how an Existentialist viewpoint helps understand why the psychological frame of reference is inadequate and lacking, such an establishment cannot be overcome by simple ignorance, ignoring the point and proceeding as if it was never made. "I dont understand it and therefore I dont have to address it!" That neatly sums up erratic's position here.
And of course there is no evidence whatsoever, a laughable thought, really, that Persona should be understood as a wholesale turning away by Bergman from an Existentialist perspective. I mean really...
I will keep my wasting time trying to get through to erratic as limited to this section of the prior post, and then one more, concerning the repeated monologue:
"Alma then tells all the truth about ... Elizabeth... becoming a mother... She makes her confront the whole truth; she didn't really want to have a child in the first place, she wanted to have an abortion, she sees the child as a burden for her. Alma does this probably as an attempt to hurt Elizabeth because she feels exploited and threatened by her, as noticed before. But... Elizabeth faces the truth. The outcome is that Elizabeth, through this painful procedure, confronts the truth, her inner thoughts and feelings that she couldn't bare until that moment."
Not only do you know nothing about Existentialism, you don't seem to know much at all about psychology. Being confronted with a painful truth about yourself, even if revealed from the unconcsious, is the mechanism by which one is "cured" of what ails Elizabeth? So, she was mute because she really thought all along that she wanted her son???
Or is it that she became mute because she wanted to have an abortion, didn't, now has her son, and then what?
There is also the part Alma mentions about Elizabeth's so-called lack of motherliness. So, hearing (or having it be revealed) in the form of an accusation that Elizabeth is not motherly cures her??? How does that happen?
In short, I don't see how these accusations, whether true or not, leads to a unification of conscious and unconscious, and a psychological cure. How does the unconscious represented by Alma "join" with Elizabeth by revealing this so-called painful truth?
It is not apparent to me that this is all some kind of deeply hidden "truth" in the first place. It sounds like Elizabeth well knows she has been a less than perfect mother, for probably her son's whole life. So what exactly has Alma revealed here?
It makes much more sense to understand Alma's monologue as an instance of psychological violence perpetrated by Alma, representing a turning point away from her attempts to find authenticity by delving deeply into an attempt at understanding Elizabeth's inner essence, behind her persona.
You write whole long winded posts without ever referring to the concept of persona, you realize. You have from the get go. This is a problem for a discussion of a film titled Persona. I don't know what to make of a person who does not recognize this as a problem.
"If we take your interpretation, the scene is not so important at all! Bergman could do the same with any other scene they were talking. Also what's the point of doing that in a scene where the content of the monologue is important only for Elizabeth? Why to bother to watch Alma (too) saying something that doesn't really care about it? Just to show "the limits of communication"? COME ON! It's a breaking moment in the film!"
Hm. The "limits of communication" is not significant, you suggest. Limits on the ability of people to understand each other, what their essence really is if it can be distinguished from the mask we present the everyday world, or if it cannot, has no existential significance???? Are you kidding me? You do not understand these concepts. OF COURSE the central point of the film corresponds to the repeated monologue.
"On the contrary if we take Alma/Elizabeth are the same person, there's a big point in repeating the monologue; so the viewer can watch how the two aspects of this person react to it, what effect has got on each of them, as (in this case) it is very important for both of them."
There might be the slightest smidgeon of basis for your pov here if the film showed how the experience of the two actresses shown in the film led to an understanding that was in some way in common. The scene instead must be understood as showing THE DIFFERENCE in the way the two actreses express themselves as the same words are heard, the same content presented, but experienced differently.
You say two sides of the same personality experience it differently. What object is served by making such a showing? Nothing.
As I have pointed out before, the film proceeds after this scene to show increasing alienation between the two women, leading eventually to Alma's departure. The monologue is not shown to have been part of any psychological cure, or even failure of such a cure for that matter. It is instead important for its Existentialist content. The doubling of the characters reached a crescendo of aggression and turning away, showing simultaneously how one's mask is essential, in both the practical and Existentialist senses of the word, and also how "too much" understanding led to such aggression.
Now to be sure one can argue that the aggression that is exhibited here, at least in terms of its extent and how it played out, is a function ofthe specific personalities involved. Different persons, different personas, would interact differently. But I think Persona says that all such encounters eventually reach a point where some limit presents itself. In fact we cannot even know everything about ourselves ( the connection between our consciious and subconscious motivations is a simple example of this truth).
Finally you completely misunderstand Horatio's poem. When the word and concept of being is introduced in those lines, the reference is to being as an existential term, not as a term referring to the static state of existence.
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erratic1983
11 years ago
1) "erratic proves he or she knows nothing about Existentialism. On one hand that is hardly the worst thing in the world in general. Many people do not. But when a poster, actually more than one poster, establishes how an Existentialist viewpoint helps understand why the psychological frame of reference is inadequate and lacking, such an establishment cannot be overcome by simple ignorance, ignoring the point and proceeding as if it was never made. "I dont understand it and therefore I dont have to address it!" That neatly sums up erratic's position here."
Kenny proves that he is so egomaniac that he will keep insulting his interlocutor if he proves him wrong. HOW OLD ARE YOU? Grow up...
2) "And of course there is no evidence whatsoever, a laughable thought, really, that Persona should be understood as a wholesale turning away by Bergman from an Existentialist perspective. I mean really..."
Ok, so you haven't watched Bergman's 70s movies. I recommend it to you. Really. And all these critics writing about the psychological journey of persona just write garbage; Kenny said so, case solved...
3) "Not only do you know nothing about Existentialism, you don't seem to know much at all about psychology. Being confronted with a painful truth about yourself, even if revealed from the unconcsious, is the mechanism by which one is "cured" of what ails Elizabeth? So, she was mute because she really thought all along that she wanted her son???
Or is it that she became mute because she wanted to have an abortion, didn't, now has her son, and then what?
There is also the part Alma mentions about Elizabeth's so-called lack of motherliness. So, hearing (or having it be revealed) in the form of an accusation that Elizabeth is not motherly cures her??? How does that happen?"
As I have mentioned earlier you don't really read my posts. That's why you write mumbo jumbo when you refer to them. Read again:
"In situations like this, acceptance is the first big step that one has to make to be "cured"."
Do you disagree??? If you do, then you don't know anything about psychology (which Ι knew allready of course from your previous sayings, but I am used to be more productive than to insult people I am talking to) (LOL!I had to put that somewhere!)
The problem is how you take everything with this so literally. Also, you know, when I say that "Alma leaves" and Elizabeth is "cured", I do not mean she starts to talk immediatelly and at the end of the film she is going out to party. It's clear from the way the movie ends that this is not the case. But she has done the first big step.
4) "It is not apparent to me that this is all some kind of deeply hidden "truth" in the first place. It sounds like Elizabeth well knows she has been a less than perfect mother, for probably her son's whole life. So what exactly has Alma revealed here?"
Alma is the unconcsious side of Elizabeth. In this monologue she states all her inner, unconcsious thoughts about her child that never came out openly. These thoughts are CRUEL. Yes she knows she has been a less than perfect mother. But here she confronts the way she felt about the child, which is the reason of being such a parent. These feelings are really CRUEL, she has never accepted that she feels this way. She has never taken the weight of responsibility that fits to her. She couldn't handle it. So she has repelled it. Until now. Note that to other people looked like a happy expectant mother when pregnant etc.
Now according to Kenny this monologue is something like Elizabeth hearing once again that "she has been a less than perfect mother". But let's see a big part of the monologue to see if this is true:
"But all the time you acted, played the part of the happy expectant mother. And everybody said, "She has never been this beautiful." You tried several times to get rid of the fetus. But you failed. When you knew it was inevitable, you started to hate the child and wished it would be stillborn. You wished that the baby would be dead. You wanted a dead child. It was a long and difficult delivery. You suffered for days. The baby was delivered with forceps. You looked with disgust at your screaming child and whispered, "Can't you die soon? Can't you die?" But he survived. The boy screamed day and night... ...and you hated him. You were afraid. You felt guilty. In the end, relatives and a nanny took care of the boy, and you could leave your sickbed and return to the theater. But the suffering wasn't over. The boy was seized by a massive and unfathomable love for his mother. You resisted desperately because you felt th"at you could not return it.You try and try... ...but the meetings with him are cruel and awkward. You can't do it."
LOL!!! If this is not big for someone then what is big???
Sorry but you are writting mumbo jumbo once again...
5) "Hm. The "limits of communication" is not significant, you suggest. Limits on the ability of people to understand each other, what their essence really is if it can be distinguished from the mask we present the everyday world, or if it cannot, has no existential significance???? Are you kidding me? You do not understand these concepts. OF COURSE the central point of the film corresponds to the repeated monologue."
I didn't say that "limits of communication" is not significant. You are altering my writings once again. I wrote that there is no sense in doing it this way in this scene as I explained many, many times in previous posts.
6) "There might be the slightest smidgeon of basis for your pov here if the film showed how the experience of the two actresses shown in the film led to an understanding that was in some way in common. The scene instead must be understood as showing THE DIFFERENCE in the way the two actreses express themselves as the same words are heard, the same content presented, but experienced differently."
Ok, once again because you still haven't understood. In my interpretation the difference of reactions is the key because the content of the dialog is important for both characters (as two aspects of the same person). So different reactions to something equally important. In yours it has no such value because the content does not affect Alma personally.
7) "You say two sides of the same personality experience it differently. What object is served by making such a showing? Nothing."
LOL! Read again my initial post. You haven't got a thing of it!
8) " The monologue is not shown to have been part of any psychological cure, or even failure of such a cure for that matter."
Mumbo jumbo again. See points 3 and 4 of this post.
9) "Finally you completely misunderstand Horatio's poem. When the word and concept of being is introduced in those lines, the reference is to being as an existential term, not as a term referring to the static state of existence."
Kenny is Chuck Norris. He understands everything. Whoever comes with another view is doomed!!!
p.s.1: if you haven't watched it allready, I recommend to you Godard's "Alphaville". You will be excited with "alpha 60"
p.s.2: of course once more you replied... selectively. What about:
-Bergman's 70s?
-a hospital would never be managed this way
-would the doctor even be permited to make these decisions (especially for a person who is healthy as you consider her to be)?
-But Alma is not fantasising of being Elizabeth! (dream)
-She cannot know all these stuff if they are two different persons. (monologue)
etc. etc.
Hey and don't forget to mention (at last!) some proof of me being ignorant about existentialism. Because up to now you keep writting it because... because... well I don't know, you haven't mentioned! (I guess it's convenient for you going this way...!)
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kenny-164
11 years ago
Of course this has become more an exercise on my part to speak to readers of this thread than to erratic, who has made clear an inability to honestly respond to criticism.
For the record I have seen six films by Bergman that are post-Persona including the entire tv production of Scenes from a Marriage and the film erratic specifically referred to, Cries and Whispers. While it is a common understanding of Bergman that his work from approximately the mid fifties until The Silence in part addressed what we can call theological concerns, and that those that followed did not directly address theological concerns, there is hardly any uniform agreement that Persona represented a decided turn to the psychological. First of all the psychological was ONE or AN element in effectively all of his films. Of course that is the case, and I have never said his films are devoid of psychological material. One can choose to look at them if one is so inclined purely from a psychological perspective.
But my point is that is limiting, and ignores the overall frame of reference running throughout, which is existential.
For example, in Through a Glass Darkly the protagonist Karin, played by Harriet Andersson (in a spectacular performance, btw), is explicitly suffering from mental illness, probably schizophrenia. This is arguably, as I think clear, Bergman's most explicitly psychological film. But by this I do not mean his frame of reference is the psychological; instead I mean the importance of the psychological to the film's narrative elements is greatest. Arguably a close second (some might place it first!) is Hour of the Wolf, where Johan suffers from an inability to distinguish fantasy, including horror, from "the real".
In fact the psychological is almost always (in fact always?) A PART of Bergman's films. Max von Sydow's supporting character in Winter Light has despair drive him to suicide. In The Passion his character Andreas attempts to put behind his psychological isolation, following the death of his marriage, by joining the society of the couple of Elis and Eva Vergarus and their friend Anna Fromm, only to find each of them suffering from different psychological problems. In The Silence we see an outwardly virtually anhedonistic sister named Ester berate her sister Anna for among other things having sex with men, while she descends into a debilitating illness no doubt contributed to by her near constant smoking and more intermittent boozing. Scenes from a Marriage explores the loss leading to depression following marital dysfunction. The list goes on and on.
But in each case the psychological is not primary, and seeing these films as purely psychological narrows and distorts their meanings and value.
Let's take Through a Glass Darkly. While the film follows Karin's mental descent, it proceeds in a family setting, where Karin and the others interact, each trying to understand the meaning of what is happening to her, what can be done, and what cannot be done, to help her, also with a backdrop of an existential and theological concern how this could be happening and what it says about God and his (putative) silence. To see it as primarily psychological requires an ignorance of what makes up the essence of the film.
A more significant and common theme in Bergman's films concerns the limits that apply to our search for meaning. He begins by accepting the ontologically based observation, by Heidegger and others, that meaning can, and in effect can only, be found in an examination of being in its dynamic and not static sense. He as noted in his near mid career point for several years explicitly addressed man's being in relation to God in this search for meaning, but throughout (and before as well - see Summer with Monika as an example less tied to the theological, but still existential) he examined the question and search for meaning.
Related most importantly to this search is a kind of counter to it, which is I suppose can be stated why if it is the case that meaning can only be found in an examination of existence, and being, that we find ourselves limited in making all that much progress in that regard? Here we enter the complex dynamic of perceptions, the world of everydayness, and of course the connection between our inner selves and the medium by which we interact with others, which of course are our personas.
The film Persona I think is best understood as Bergman saying that his most creative use of the medium of film has only taken him, and us as the viewers, so far in the search for meaning in being with others. It turns out that our masks are not only barriers to understanding, but to a great extent necessary elements of our selves, necessary to mediate relations with others, because we cannot literally do so if you will "directly" from one's inner self to another's inner self.
The mediation served by our personas is necessary.
But this in turn means that the limiting effect of personas on authentic understanding is in effect unavoidable. Well, if it is, so be it.
I saw an interview Bergman gave later in his life which among other things echoed the experience of the character Antonius Block in The Seventh Seal. There the ontological observation was presented in effect that God did not want us to have too much knowledge, and consequently the World and our relation to it are set up that way. An atheist's observation would merely say in essential agreement with this observation that whatever the source of the way the world is, without God in their case, it remains the case that this is the way the world is.
Despite this limiting consideration, Bergman went on to say (as we see in The Seventh Seal) that we are given glimpses of "something" beyond the literal, the everyday world. What that something is is not clear, and is very much subject to debate, expressions of Faith, and doubt, and even despair. but I think (in his later life) Bergman was acknowledging not only that those glimpses are revealed to us, but also that they have a connection to something beyond the everyday literal.
In other words while Persona obviously does not have the specific thematic concerns and narrative subject matter of films like Winter Light or The Seventh Seal, it shares with ALL of his work a dynamic effort, in fact a struggle, to deal with the limits of understanding even within an ontological frame of reference.
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erratic1983
11 years ago
1) "Of course this has become more an exercise on my part to speak to readers of this thread than to erratic, who has made clear an inability to honestly respond to criticism."
Of course, once again you give no answers. This is called "inability to honestly respond to criticism".
2) You know, when you write spoilers about other movies you should warn the readers first...
3) "In fact the psychological is almost always (in fact always?) A PART of Bergman's films"
You are obliged to aknowledge it but then...
"But in each case the psychological is not primary, and seeing these films as purely psychological narrows and distorts their meanings and value."
...then you pass your own opinion as the one and only truth (common of you in this thread)
4) "Bergman was acknowledging not only that those glimpses are revealed to us, but also that they have a connection to something beyond the everyday literal."
Hillarious! This alone shows how much have you understand of Bergman's work.
5)No surprises here. You failed to answer all the subjects arised (again). Case solved.
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