Although prior to Persona there had been more experimental films, more wildly radical movies, Persona is monumental because the edges that Bergman pushed work on multiple different levels and carry profound significance to the nature of film as a narrative medium.
Critic John Simon compared Persona to James Joyce's Ulysses.(5) Both works forever changed the grammar and vocabularies of their respective mediums and, like all works of genius, all subsequent films and novels had to contend with the revolutions that their authors initiated. In the first eight minutes of shockingly bizarre but effective montage, Bergman deconstructs the narrative structure of film to make the medium transparent to the viewer. What elevates these random images beyond mere shock effect and to the level of genius is that so many layers of meaning are implicated; the images evoke timeless and eternal paradoxes and struggles of the human condition, foreshadow the drama of the film, demonstrate the relationship between consciousness and unconsciousness, and question the relationship between viewer and image. Although Persona settles into a conventional narrative, the complexity of the film and the multiple levels of meaning are sustained. Bergman provokes us to question whether we, as viewers of the film, are watching two autonomous women going through identity crises or whether we are watching more of a dream where two figures metaphorically symbolize two aspects of the same psyche battling for supremacy of consciousness.
What's interesting about Persona is that not only are its levels of genius inspired on multiple tiers of meanings, however, it also captures Uranus at work on multiple planes of meaning as well. The jarring dissonance from radical juxtapositions of images, the narrative breakdown, and the confrontational clash between the two female figures of the film captures the experiential tone and crisis-like atmosphere of the mid-1960's in microcosm. As Uranus was being conjoined by Pluto and opposed by Saturn in the middle of the 1960's (see chart), many of the narratives, scripts, and structures that held nations and groups together were being broken down. Sex and sexual relations, political ideologies, identity issues, and racial barriers were being deconstructed and re-scripted. Likewise, every artform at the time was going through major re-visioning and reformulation. Persona was among a handful of films that
captured the harsh discord and deconstruction of the time aesthetically. Moreover, the emergence of the true self and the discarding of the false identity—a subject that Bergman explores with harrowing realism in Persona—is often the result of a significant Uranus transit. One may feel psychologically fragmented and a losing touch with the masks and public presentations that can very surprising and very suddenly be shattered during a Uranus transit.
Finally, Bergman himself was experiencing an important Uranus transit to his natal Venus and Sun during the filming and subsequent release of Persona. (see chart; solar only) Of the film, Bergman himself said, "I went as far as I could go."(6) Pushing boundaries was certainly "in the air" at that point in time and Bergman himself was feeling the pull of Uranus and ride the creative edge with the film. Persona is one of the very few films we have whose complexity and ability to disturb arise from a depth of genius and not idle pretension.
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