SCHOTT: Realms of real and unreal difficult to separate in ‘Persona’

Ingmar Bergman's "Persona" (1966) is about the nature of the cinema, of the mind, of the soul, of the life, of the universe.

It is about everything. But that can't be, because nothing happens in it. Or everything happens in it. It's tough to explain. You'd understand if you saw it. Well, no you wouldn't.

The premise seems simple enough, though there might not be one. Famous stage actress Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann) suddenly stops talking one night during a performance of "Electra".

Her condition lasts for months. She is taken to a hospital, where doctors assess that her unwillingness to speak or move is not a physical or psychological condition but a conscious decision that medicine cannot counter.

She is sent to her psychiatrist's secluded summer home on the beach with the young and talkative Nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) to let the phase run its course.

While the two women are alone, the boundaries between them crumble. Their relationship becomes shockingly intimate, possibly erotic, certainly cruel. They become close, both physically and ideologically. We are led to believe that on some plane they may even have become a single person.

But we can't begin to understand "Persona" without looking at key moments and narrowing its planes. The film begins with the lighting of the arc lamp in the film projector and ends with it extinguishing.

The whole of the film is burdened by the cinema. This is obviously true of all movies, but Bergman doesn't want us to forget. He wants it to weigh on our minds. He wants us to consider this as an integral part of the experience.

Following the lighting of the arc lamp is brief sequence of harsh images that are uncannily precise in the reaction they invoke, one of nakedness and vulnerability.

The montage harkens back to the inception of the cinema. Scenes of early comedies and animation are inter-cut with shots of a tarantula, the gutting of a sheep and nails being driven through hands.

Finally the sequence settles down on an awkward young boy on a cot in an empty room. The boy is Bergman (who cast the ugliest child he could find as a manifestation of his own negative self-image).

The boy turns to the camera, to us, and when we switch to an over-the-shoulder shot of the boy we can see that he was looking at a screen, upon which the faces of Elisabet and Alma are moving in and out of one another.

Already, "Persona" has established itself within the confines of the cinema and now within Bergman himself. Both the boy and the projector are images that will cap both ends of the film. Two planes have already been suggested.

The summer home occupies most of the film and is composed of one great scene after another. When first Alma and Elisabet move there, Alma is the caretaker and Elisabet the patient. But once they arrive, form their routines and grow comfortable with one another, Alma appears to be the one who finds their seclusion the most therapeutic.

Alma is flattered that such a prominent celebrity would listen to her so attentively. She begins to share secrets she had never told a soul, not even her fiancé, who is never actually seen.

Many monologues follow. Elisabet has somehow opened some door into Alma, and all of her secrets come pouring out. Pay close attention to Elisabet's expressions as she listens. See if you can tell what she's up to.

There's certainly something sinister in her cool detachment, her vicarious interaction with Alma's intimacy, but the real question is whether she deliberately instigated the deconstruction of Alma's visage or is simply reveling in this opportunity to study the innermost workings of someone so willing to reveal them.

But Elisabet gives herself away. She writes a letter to her husband, telling him Alma's secrets and how fun it is to study her, and leaves the envelope unsealed, which may well have been deliberate.

When Alma finds out that she's been reduced to a lab rat by her own patient, she reacts strongly. Her intimacy with Elisabet endures, but it is driven now by negative energy. She senses her identity beginning to collapse.

This is precisely the first half of "Persona." Right at center of the film, when Alma's love transitions to profound cruelty, the celluloid itself tears and burns, and the film hums slowly to life again, reborn, accelerating back to speed and coming harshly back into focus.

The scenes that comprise the second half of the film are more difficult and disjointed. Many of the lines and rules the film had established disintegrate. Its potential explanations drift away into oblivion.

It is not an unfair reading to suggest that the two women were never at the seaside cottage at all. Could it be that the film was a metaphor for the struggle within Elisabet to remain silent or begin speaking again? That ultimately, within cinema, and then within Bergman, the bulk of the film finally takes place within Elisabet?

Bergman is teasing us with the idea that there is ultimately only one woman. Alma acknowledges that the two of them look alike, but that can't be it, can it? The souls of Alma and Elisabet couldn't be any further apart. What's it really worth that they look alike? When images are all there are, it's worth everything, and what else is the cinema?

Rollan Schott is a senior English major. Reach him at rollanschott@dailynebraskan.com.