I'm in love with this movie! Am I the only one here?!

Persona is my favorite Bergman film, and somewhere near the top in terms of all films all time. But before proceeding I should also mention it has come to seem to me to be essentially in a category by itself. In the sense that I know of no film like it, making it difficult to compare to other films.

It is different moreover in a number of ways. One obvious way is that it is so self-consciously cinematic, beginning and ending, along with an interrupting scene about two thirds of the way through, wiht images that overtly call attention to the fact that this is a purely filmic enterprise. Yet it proceeds to include what may well be a rather strange narrative to most viewers, but a narrative nonetheless. What is really going on here, though, is that the film is consciously using the medium of film to address an overall theme of the relation of human existence to the search for meaning by raising a number of subthemes if you will, and to varying degrees disposing of them before moving on to others.

These subthemes include whether the psychological is the best or primary means by which we can understand others, and ourselves. Another is sexuality, another violence, another family and raising children. To be clear this journey through thematic treatments is not clearly sequential - that would be too obvious, and tendentious.

Returning to the overall theme, the subject I believe is really a rather simple one - where do we find, how do we define, meaning and authenticity in our relations with others? The film addresses this question in the context of the relation between the two main characters, Elizabet and Alma, with the former's muteness first what appears to be a psychological condition which Alma, as part of her job, is there to help with. But I strongly believe the psychological is actually discarded early on as the primary means of understanding the film.

Rather than proceed with the "better" explanation I have expressed elsewhere on these threads, I am posting this particular post to acknowledge that the film does raise these subthemes in a way that the viewer, I think, is in fact intended to consider as primary. Thus the question on seeing the film again, and again, is does one's prior understanding actually survive the newest viewing?

The experience of watching a great film multiple times is of course different for each film. But there usually is a kind of pattern. Usually I see the same basic understanding, but here perhaps reminded of some nuance I had not seen, or the importance of which I had not given previous adequate significance to. Perhaps some aspect of a character in the film will differ. And perhaps more or less weight to alternative scenarios of what might happen after the film "ends".

But while those sorts of things do happen on viewing Persona, I also find Bergman challenging me, requiring that I reconsider what I formerly concluded. This is part of the film's brilliance, since in essence it is all about the difficulties of accurately perceiving, or more realistically understanding at all, the essence of meaning in the way we live our lives. Even what I feel is the core of the "point" of the film can look somewhat different from the different angle each new viewing provides.

Persona ends with those overt cinematic references, as it always does, and we are reminded that a purely representational work is here not what Bergman says we have experienced. Yet the experience has served to teach us by a different means, and that is what makes it so singular.