Films, like all works of art, not to mention consciousnesses, are prisoners of time and space. Films are acutely aware of their corporeality, even if that corporeality is in its final stage only an ephemeral reflection of beams of light off of a screen. So in order to ease the pain of beginning and ending, some films subject themselves to tripartite classical narratives which present the overarchingly static quality of the arc; they move “from order to disorder, and then back to order again,” as if to say, “Well, I hope you enjoyed me, but there really was no reason for viewing – everything is as it once was.” Other films do not try to gloss over their own tangibility in such a way. They deal with their ironic existence, and even, in some cases, relish it.
Ingmar Bergman’s Persona does precisely this. Bergman realizes the essence of a film before our eyes – start, stop. What is the meaning of film that projects images that reference the projector itself? Somewhat of a reversal in continuity – a reflection, in fact – the essence of film. Bergman displays a short history of the cinema – and its use in dealing with both the libido and the fear of death. And it seems that the slaughtering of the lamb, in this regard, the crucifixion is not only recorded by the apparatus, but achieved by it. There is an inmixing of cause and effect from the camera to recorded reality, and back again. This mirrors the Persona. It is a constant flux – a struggle – between image and the gaps. When Bergman’s film looks (poorly on DVD) as if it is being eaten by the projector, how does that false self-reflexivity act? I am less interested in the reaction of the audience than I am in the truth of the image. Either way, however, I only view the film from a distance – even when I may touch the screen.
There are three parts of the film that represent its own disintegration – the beginning, the middle, and the end. Persona is a narrative, after all, of course. Yet it is a difficult one – one that is both there and not there, for we are there in its stead. We identify and alienate. We sit in the darkness, acutely aware of our own corporeality – yet mindless of it – and we grope, for comfort, understanding – for something else, when in reality we want ourselves. We are somehow presented with a film, punishing in its own ephemerality, as that is its very corporeality – and so we sit up and, lit only by it, we reach out for its face. Yet it effaces us. Or we bring it to us so that we may be effaced.
Stop. The film has burned out of the projector. The sprockets have lost their track and the heat of the bulb has ruined the image. Will we have to get a new one, same as the old, in order to finish? Somehow, that breakdown didn’t seem quite right, rather choppy. It comes back on – I’m glad – I was left here, lit only by the white reflection of the screen, to myself for a second, and I still didn’t know that change is only stasis. For an instant there, I thought change was change and that things had changed. The audio is voices, yet jumbled in time – the track must have lost its spatial continuity with the sensor. Again the fear of death, yet somehow comical if I don’t understand it.
There is a moment, at times called ekstasis, when sadness becomes overwhelming joy. She cries, like the rain, on the pillow, yet smiles – who smiles? – and begins to laugh. She cries and laughs and realizes that she is alive, for better and worse. That things are only as they seem and that they seem somehow different: acceptable. And not only that, but they are negligible. It seems so stupid. That this moment is beautiful – a beautiful moment is unquestionable. It glows upon us, and yet it glows within us, as the audience, as the benefactors of a space and time that is gone now.
