The film presents Bergman's deepest despair about human nature, human survival, and human relationships. There is no innocence, no kindness, no love, only pain, fear, deceit, hatred, indifference. Individuals and individuals can only rely on lies to live in peace, and once they expose themselves, they will hurt each other. Man has to live forever in the conflict between the urge to expose himself by exchanging disguise for peace (the "pretender" is in a soft veil), and true peace can only be obtained through death.
In the story, there are only four characters: the doctor, the nurse, the patient, and the patient's husband, but there are actually three characters: God (the doctor sees the nurse from an omniscient perspective and knows the patient's mind clearly, dressed in white like a judge) Sitting at a desk like a desk, looking up to shoot), me (nurse and patient—one seemingly bright and self-exposing; one dark, silent, indifferent, hypocritical), the other (husband). But in the first half, the two women get along and conflict as two individuals, each other's.
Spatial structure: hospital—closed, narrow, de-realized—internal; seaside and villa—open, spacious—external (a closed space constructed with curtains in the villa at the end of the film is internal) . Various seemingly unrelated clips are connected in series at the beginning of the film. Each short image is intended to convey a general message, simply rehearsing the complexity and darkness of human nature (split, conflict, insidiousness, fear, anxiety, guilt.... ..), and tells us: it's a movie. The child who cannot sleep in a closed space is the most authentic self (what book is he reading?), and he touches the mask - my mask. The fragmentation and scorching of the screen suddenly appear in the film, which is the division and destruction of people.
The main target of the film is the nurse. The young nurse is initially self-deceitful (wipe face - disguise - "I'm happy" - self-deception), observed, self-exposing, and is exposing herself to the hard, rough, cold (stone - he In the process of getting close to and facing their own darkness and ugliness, they are hurt by others and retaliate against them—exposing their own ugliness. When the silent Other speaks, the nurse realizes that she is being observed, and instead becomes the observer. Whether for the nurse or the patient, this observation is an internal observation, an observation of oneself from one's own kind, a self-examination.
The patient is the first object shown in the film. He is older than the nurse. After half a lifetime of acting, he realizes his own ridiculousness and absurdity. She is well aware of her own darkness and ugliness, and cannot bear the contradiction between wanting to reveal her true self and lying. She has only three lines in the film: go to sleep, no, nothing. Patient shreds picture of son - she hates "son" and doesn't believe in innocence. The patient's son is ugly - really I am ugly; the patient hates his own son - I hate my own ugliness. Ugly I don't deserve love.
The conflict between the nurse and the patient is not only a conflict between me and the other, but also a conflict within the self—the real darkness and the camouflaged light. First the "light" tries to help the dark to reform, then the two become one - become "me", or find the two to be the same (the character looks directly at the camera/audience many times - the character is the same as the audience) - They (they and us) are "people". "I" face the other (husband) and live in peace with it in disguised light.
In the same dialogue from two different perspectives at the end of the film (here the nurse's uneasy moving hand due to the contradiction is compared with the motionless hands of the two elderly corpses at the beginning), both characters thoroughly examine their own Dark and ugly. Disguise and reality are one, the two characters accept the way of existence of disguise and return to their original lives.
(Every time I watch a Bergman movie, it's like a waterfall of dialogue, and the information density is quite high...but such a complex and deep theme may only be presented by adding dialogue.)
View more about Persona reviews
