Bergman or only the givers can be takers.

“Bergman, a year in life”, a film by Jane Magnusson,  
 “Bergman, sex and betrayal”, a book by Thomas Sjoberg. 

Both are fascinating because they deal with a fascination subject.  Both give intriguing details and facts.  Yet, both flirt with an accusatory tone charging that Bergman was cruel and unjust to many.  That flirt, which is not unusual when talking about giants, cheapens both accounts.   In both there are snippets of lip-service to balance the view, but the overall emotional direction is unmistakable. “How could he be so harsh, self-centred and unfair?” - the question looms in the background.   “This somehow lessens his achievements because others paid price for their creation” - seems to be the conclusion.   The presumption is based on a wrong assumption, the question is unfairly stated and never really explored.

Pity, since Bergman’s personal gifts to those around him must have been enormous.    Better understanding of those gifts would be a way to explain the level from which he dealt with reality, and to illuminate his, I suspect, enormous contributions to the lives of others.   As an artist and as a person.

Thorsten Flinck, an actor and a director who played in a stage production of “The Misanthrope” is portrayed as a super talented man brutally squashed by Bergman for altering the production, which Bergman hasn’t seen for almost year after the opening night.  The emphasis in the documentary is placed on a vicious attack by Bergman on the guy and the wound that this outburst inflicted.   Not on the production and the artistic interactions, which I guess enriched all participants tremendously.

Those who mistreat others should always be named, criticised and stopped.  Being “an artist” doesn’t give anybody a licence not to follow the rules of civil interactions with others.  At the same time there are numerous cases of theatre directors who are ruthless, short tempered, who don’t suffer fools gladly and yet who elevate those who know how to listen to their new highs.

I suspect Bergman was just faster than most and often didn’t have patience for those who didn’t grasp his ways.  On a personal level it’s intriguing that Liv Ulman in the documentary says he hasn’t ever done anything to hurt her.

Two Electras?

Persona by Ingmar Bergman, 

the first appearance of Electra (Liv Ullmann)

The second appearance of Electra

(Bibi Anderson?)

In Persona, Bergman uses two shots of Elisabeth Vogler acting on stage. The first comes early on when Alma is told about her new patient.  The second appears at the end when Alma, alone, leaves the house on an island.

I’ve been conducting a Bergman films analysis class several times already. This fall one student upon looking closely at the two shots proposed that in the second shot it is Alma (Bibi Anderson) and not Elisabeth (Liv Ullmann).

Such an interpretation would make perfect sense out of the film’s ending which puzzled many for years. Is it possible that Bergman planted such an “key” to understand his film and never revealed it? Is it possible that nobody (nobody!) noticed it since the release of Persona in 1966?

Of course the idea that Alma and Elisabeth are one is banal by now, and some have said that it could be all happening inside the Alma’s psyche, but never have I found the proof of it in the actual “double casting of Electra”.

Check it out for yourself comparing the screenshots above.   

Doubles everywhere?

Persona

by Ingmar Bergman

Grappling with “Persona” at the seminar that I am conducting at the Warsaw School of Social Psychology.

How much “story” should be in a story?

Is our traditional need for a completed narrative more of a hindrance to understand the world or a powerful tool in deciphering reality?

Do we live in closed narratives?

Aren’t the connections (between the various parts of ourselves and between ourselves and the external) the next America waiting to be discovered?