BIG'S BIG MOVIE LIST

     The movie then became an actual character-driven story (which I soon discovered was a Swedish film) about a mentally disturbed, mute and borderline catatonic actress Elisabet (Liv Ullman) and her care nurse Sister Alma (Bibi Anderson, meow) who travel to Elisabet's doctor's summer home in the Swedish countryside in an attempt to improve Elisabet's condition with the country air. The pair grow close over time, and Alma begins to share secrets with the silent Elisabet, in what I found to be a series of highly thought-provoking and existential scenes.

 

     Everything seems to be going well until Alma secretly reads a letter from Elisabet to her husband and discovers that Elisabet divulged Alma's secrets (specifically a story about having anonymous sex with a young boy) to Elisabet's husband and has been studying and analyzing Alma with curiosity and amusement. With this knowledge, Alma returns to the country house, and the film descends into a deeply cerebral mindfudge.

 

    This one required all of my focus from start to finish. I took pretty thorough notes and came away with a theory about the meaning of the film that I believe holds up (for spoiler purposes, I wont go into it, but I feel that the ending is open to interpretation). Bergman's direction of these two complex characters is well executed, the performances of Anderson and Ullman are superb (Bibi Anderson I found particularly enchanting. Supposedly, Bergman fell in love with her during shooting) and the backdrop of the secluded Swedish country house – a small cabin up against a rocky beach – makes for a wonderful sort of blank canvas on which the events play out.

 

    Some scenes are strange and overly dreamlike, which I found to be more disorienting and bothersome than captivating, and there are some more theatrical scenes that I could've done without. It's unlikely that I would find this movie on Cinemax any time soon, and if I did, I doubt I would set aside time to watch it again, but like any respectable headgame film, I have to recommend that any curious parties give it a look.

 

“Persona” is part of the Criterion Collection and currently available on Hulu Plus.