Persona

Ingmar Bergman was the prolific and influential Swedish filmmaker for decades, who made films in order to fix whatever inner problems he was dealing with. From the absence of God in his life to pure evil, Bergman's films are mature, if not sometimes overwhelmingly muddled. Persona is his best film. It deals with the soul. We open with a series of images: an erect penis, a boy waking from sleep and putting his hand up to the superimposed face of a woman, snow, stairs. We then meet Elisabet (Liv Ullman). She was a stage actress until all the pain in the world became too much and she fell permanently silent--mute. At the hospital, the doctors decide to send Elisabet to the shore with Nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson). Who are these women? They look so much alike, Elisabet so strange, Alma so strange. We learn of Alma's sexual encounter on a beach in one of the best sequences in all of film. We first watch the scene from Alma's point of view, and then from Elisabet's. It's about a ten minute sequence--it's wonderful. Alma and Elisabet co-exist in the world, they see the same things, they've lived similar lives. The way the film ends, the revelations that Bergman gives us are so great, so interesting, that it all makes Persona one of the best films of all time.