Persona Ingmar Bergman Online

[Narcisa Flierl]

Mynew video is about how Swedish director Ingmar Bergman frames and composes faces on screen. And while this is the element of Bergman's work that I felt would be most interesting to showcase on screen in a video essay- I've been completely captivated by many aspects of his filmmaking over the last year. From the variety of deeply personal, profound issues and topics he explores, to the diversity in his narrative approaches to those topics.

I haven't seen all his films (give me a break there are 69) but I've seen enough now that I think I can offer a quick outline of where I think you should start if you want to explore his films for the first time.

The first time I watched Ingmar Bergman's Persona I was too young for the film. I don't mean I was a adolescent sneaking a viewing at an R-rated flick- I just mean that in my early twenties I didn't quite have the life experience, knowledge of film, or maturity needed to really appreciate what the film had to say.

This is something I don't see many critics talk about- how our perception of films can radically change as we age, as time passes, with multiple viewings, or as any number of other variables that surround a work change. But I think it's worth talking about.

This is just one part of the subjectivity of experiencing a specific film. And it's an aspect of experiencing film that I often find puzzlingly absent from the discussion. As a filmgoer, sometimes you won't appreciate something, and it has nothing to do with the actual quality of the film itself. Instead it has everything to do with your relationship to what the film is, or the story the film is telling. Some films are going to tell an interesting story very artfully- and it's just not going to be what resonates with you because of your interests, personality, or where you're currently at in life.

This doesn't mean you need to pretend to love films that don't interest you. But I think an awareness of your own subjectivity in this regard, and an ability or at least attempt to separate "how well a story is being told" from "if you liked that story personally" is necessary for good criticism.

And yet with film there tends to be a sort of universality implied in the discussion. There's not much nuance in saying "you'll enjoy this film if you..." People obviously have differing tastes in kind of films but for some reason it seems to be a "battle" where everyone asserts that what they like is "objectively the best" and that everyone should like it, and if you don't... well, "you just don't appreciate good movies."

Maybe this culture does exist in other mediums and I just don't see it because I'm not as involved in the discussion, but regardless, I think embracing complexity and subjectivity are a healthier way to engage with a medium and the discussion surrounding it, I think it will give you a more accurate picture of the art itself and how it works.

My appreciation of film has only grown the more I embrace the fact that I like certain things because of who I am, and while I love sharing why I do and don't like certain things and making arguments online for why I certain things aren't enjoyable to me. I don't need anyone else to like the same art I do, and I don't need to assert what I like as the objective best for everyone. I think this should be pretty basic stuff, but it's an attitude that really seems to be absent from large portions of the "film discussion community online" if such a thing can even be labeled. And I think that community would be healthier the more it understood and embraced subjectivity as an element of criticism and discussion.

Great post! Though I thought people do acknowledge subjectivity more than you mention here. Maybe it's the Twitter crowd that "asserts" the "this is great/rubbish" with implications that anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong? Or maybe it's just that I'm blind to this attitude being a particularly relevant one...

Kudos on a superb method of recommending films, something that should be way more prevalent in such discussions. People are going to like different films for different reasons, and for such a director like Bergman, keeping that in mind makes people's further explorations into his work all the more enticing and rewarding.

With respect to your comments on the 'all-or-nothing' opinionating on films, I think that's a function of it being (still conventionally regarded as) a community activity. There's a value people place on being part of the group that's joining in on a movie experience together in a way that reading books or listening to music are more easily separable into private and personal experiences. (That said, try to tell people "Hamilton" has this or that flaw and I expect you'll get a similar pushback).

Finally, want to note that I had co-hosted a podcast where we did in fact go through all of Bergman's films, and incredibly exhilarating and rewarding endeavor, one that took over 9 hours to talk about over 3 episodes. If you'd like to hear what we said about the 'heavy-hitters' like "Winter Light" or "Persona", you can listen to the middle episode at:

From my experience, I highly second Axel's comment on "Face to Face" (not just mixing "Persona" and his 70s but some "Wild Strawberries" / "Prison" in there too, and a titanic performance by Liv Ullman!), and if you want something different and surprising from Bergman, check out "A Lesson In Love" - it's a screwball comedy (and a good one)!

This doesn't mean you need to pretend to love films that don't interest you. But I think an awareness of your own subjectivity in this regard, and an ability or at least attempt to separate \\\"how well a story is being told\\\" from \\\"if you liked that story personally\\\" is necessary for good criticism.

This is something I think we inherently understand about a lot of other mediums. We ask people what their taste in music is, fully recognizing that they may not like a certain genre just because they're not into it, and although there are exceptions, usually people don't write off every style of music they\u2019re not into as garbage.

And yet with film there tends to be a sort of universality implied in the discussion. There's not much nuance in saying \\\"you'll enjoy this film if you...\\\" People obviously have differing tastes in kind of films but for some reason it seems to be a \\\"battle\\\" where everyone asserts that what they like is \\\"objectively the best\\\" and that everyone should like it, and if you don't... well, \\\"you just don't appreciate good movies.\\\"

My appreciation of film has only grown the more I embrace the fact that I like certain things because of who I am, and while I love sharing why I do and don't like certain things and making arguments online for why I certain things aren't enjoyable to me. I don't need anyone else to like the same art I do, and I don't need to assert what I like as the objective best for everyone. I think this should be pretty basic stuff, but it's an attitude that really seems to be absent from large portions of the \\\"film discussion community online\\\" if such a thing can even be labeled. And I think that community would be healthier the more it understood and embraced subjectivity as an element of criticism and discussion.

Ingmar Bergman is still the doyen of cinema. He is known for masterpieces of controlled human emotion, exploring every facet of the personality in relentless detail. He wrote: "I had the possibility of corresponding with the world around me in a language that is literally spoken from soul to soul."

These two screenplays, liberally illustrated with production stills featuring actors, including his favourite actress, ex wife, Liv Ullman, are classics of the screen. They will be sought after by film students, and lovers of his films, New interest in Bergman is being generated by the recent release of Faithless, Liv Ullman's 2001 masterpiece, with a screenplay by Bergman.

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