PERSONA merges with, mirrors, and refracts THE SILENCE like the personalities of both films' female protagonists merge, mirror and refract each other. Critical consensus and Bergman's own statements have that THE SILENCE is about life in a world in which God no longer exists. Practically a remake, PERSONA explores the same psychological spaces but without any reference to God at all, as though Bergman figured it out and was done with the matter once and for all.
It could be argued that Art, rather than God, is the thematic space here. The film is braced on either end by images of movie projectors and at one point interrupted by a deliberate effect of breaking and burning film. The Liv Ullman character is an actress who refuses to speak, the way God refuses to speak in the films of Bergman's previous "religious period." Bibi Andersson is her nurse, who at first fills Ullman's silence with confessional banter of her own, then becomes increasingly hysterical at the absence of a response.
I honestly don't yet know what to make of PERSONA. This screening was made interesting by the fact that I took a 20 minute dinner-induced nap starting about 10 minutes into the film. I saw the setup, drifted off, then awoke to find Bibi Andersson giving Liv Ullman an explicit description of an orgy in which she'd taken part. This was no more dislocating than any other aspect of the film, so I just went with the moment and continued watching.
PERSONA did not draw me in the way THE SILENCE did. It wasn't just the nap. THE SILENCE is all soft dim light and seductively sleepy pacing; PERSONA is more harshly lit, colder, and more challenging. I felt like I was dreaming THE SILENCE, but I felt like I was looking through a hospital window into PERSONA.
