Persona

Persona (1966)

a film by Ingmar Bergman

"... it would be a serious misunderstanding to demand to know exactly what happens in Persona; for what is narrated is only deceptively, secondarily, a 'story' at all."

"Persona" by Susan Sontag

Sight and Sound, Autumn 1967

Speaking of Persona as a film about duality would be ignoring its first minutes, the burned film in the middle and its ending. Speaking of Persona as a film about a film about the soul of the artist, about the masks or about in-communication would be just an artifice if it is to be let like that without further explanation.

My reason to celebrate Persona is it open narrative, nothing is certain although everything is happening on the screen. The story unveils scene by scene but is the mind of the spectator were the story lives again and "makes sense" but there is not right sense, only swimming through our memory of the sequences and as Alma's character feel betrayed by speech itself.