Lucius (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} luciusk) wrote,@ 2007-12-07 14:30:00 |
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Persona (1966)
Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece is cinema as art. Sparse, ambiguous, and can be interpreted many ways, this film makes you work to understand it. It easily falls prey to a Western psychoanalysis, which seems to put raw emotion, often negative or afflictive ones, as a sort of "real" part of the persona, and the cold silent empty silence of stoicism as the "fake" part.
Externally, one generally keeps his mouth shut to be polite and avoid controversy, but internally one may harbor thoughts and feelings which want to be expressed. I do not believe that the thoughts and emotions of fear, anger, jealousy, hatred, longing, or attachment are beneficial, and expressing them only reinforces and habituates these feelings, making one more prone to experience them again.
Another way to look at this film is to look at the interplay of the two characters. One talks, and the other is silent throughout the film. At first, it's therapeutic, as if the silence meant that one is listening and understanding everything that the other says. One feels that one can tell her deepest darkest secrets, and get these burdens off her chest, without any attachment or judgement.
Then it becomes annoying, like the silent one is hiding something, silently watching, analyzing, and passing judgement, but without giving the talker the benefit of the results. Because one has told all her secrets, she feels close, and she starts to become attached to the silent one. The attachment becomes a sort of clinging, and then anger at the other because she won't reciprocate by telling her secrets.
At last the anger becomes hatred, and she would do anything, including the threat of physical harm, to get a word out of the silent one. But this doesn't resolve anything. Later scenes with the silent one's husband and in a monologue explaining her past don't offer any resolution. They only further strengthen the silent one's silence, and the talker's descent into neurosis.
Maybe I'm trying to fit this film into a narrative of my own choosing, but I've also read a film review which tries to shoehorn it into a Freudian psychoanalysis, and everybody brings their own experiences to the interpretation.
There's also some deeply disturbing imagery and a graphic description of an orgy, plus the film is self-referential in showing a film reel and film crew and other things that try to be clever, but I just tried to ignore that stuff since it's annoying. "Yes, I know we're watching a film, and it's just a story."
I don't see the need to wrap up this commentary with some profound conclusion, since most of the films I've watched, and life in general, don't have any profound resolution. People move on with their lives, and the film ends when there isn't anything interesting left to tell.
I have been reading up on Buddhism, specifically the Dalai Lama's recent writings, and I have come to question the dominant mode of Western psychoanalysis which posits that many negative emotions such as anger, fear, hatred, jealousy, craving, and attachment are fundamental parts of the human mind. These afflictions, as the Buddhist call them, may exist since birth in most people, but they are not a permanent part of who you are, and through training one can minimize their effects on your life.
Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece is cinema as art. Sparse, ambiguous, and can be interpreted many ways, this film makes you work to understand it. It easily falls prey to a Western psychoanalysis, which seems to put raw emotion, often negative or afflictive ones, as a sort of "real" part of the persona, and the cold silent empty silence of stoicism as the "fake" part.
Externally, one generally keeps his mouth shut to be polite and avoid controversy, but internally one may harbor thoughts and feelings which want to be expressed. I do not believe that the thoughts and emotions of fear, anger, jealousy, hatred, longing, or attachment are beneficial, and expressing them only reinforces and habituates these feelings, making one more prone to experience them again.
Another way to look at this film is to look at the interplay of the two characters. One talks, and the other is silent throughout the film. At first, it's therapeutic, as if the silence meant that one is listening and understanding everything that the other says. One feels that one can tell her deepest darkest secrets, and get these burdens off her chest, without any attachment or judgement.
Then it becomes annoying, like the silent one is hiding something, silently watching, analyzing, and passing judgement, but without giving the talker the benefit of the results. Because one has told all her secrets, she feels close, and she starts to become attached to the silent one. The attachment becomes a sort of clinging, and then anger at the other because she won't reciprocate by telling her secrets.
At last the anger becomes hatred, and she would do anything, including the threat of physical harm, to get a word out of the silent one. But this doesn't resolve anything. Later scenes with the silent one's husband and in a monologue explaining her past don't offer any resolution. They only further strengthen the silent one's silence, and the talker's descent into neurosis.
Maybe I'm trying to fit this film into a narrative of my own choosing, but I've also read a film review which tries to shoehorn it into a Freudian psychoanalysis, and everybody brings their own experiences to the interpretation.
There's also some deeply disturbing imagery and a graphic description of an orgy, plus the film is self-referential in showing a film reel and film crew and other things that try to be clever, but I just tried to ignore that stuff since it's annoying. "Yes, I know we're watching a film, and it's just a story."
I don't see the need to wrap up this commentary with some profound conclusion, since most of the films I've watched, and life in general, don't have any profound resolution. People move on with their lives, and the film ends when there isn't anything interesting left to tell.
I have been reading up on Buddhism, specifically the Dalai Lama's recent writings, and I have come to question the dominant mode of Western psychoanalysis which posits that many negative emotions such as anger, fear, hatred, jealousy, craving, and attachment are fundamental parts of the human mind. These afflictions, as the Buddhist call them, may exist since birth in most people, but they are not a permanent part of who you are, and through training one can minimize their effects on your life.
