Persona

[Roshan]

For instance, Bergman used both sequences of Alma telling Elisabet and us 'what happened' with her baby--one with camera just on Alma and the other just on Elisabet instead of splicing them together because he liked them both and he felt like doing it. It's technical and it makes a point but apparently he didn't plan it and he could have just as easily chosen something else to make that point, or a different point.

Of course if you want to make films you want to understand the technique but if you want to make sense of it it's not going to have that much to do with linear sense-making and I don't think it did for him either. Also, don't forget he'd been romantically involved with one of these women and was planning on being involved with the other and they were best friends and he wrote it for them, so the film is as much about the dynamism of the mess of their own menage a trios on his island as anything else.

[Roshan]

" Bergman seems to be contending with something like the relationship between life and death and the "complex reality of ultimate knowledge," of whatever it is that underlies experiential reality. His ultimate aim seems to be to remind us of the “persona,” or mask, donned by life itself, with his opening sequence functioning as an image of the face that lies behind."

Yes, but ultimate knowledge isn't complex. Only contingent knowledge can be complex. Likewise the relationship between life and death is very simple. They are a unity.

This is what Elisabet laughs at. It does not 'make sense'. But what Elisabet doesn't get is that the trick is to live as though Maya were real, as though it made sense and mattered.

And that's the difference between her stubborn and ultimately pointless, very entitled silent protest, predestined to be replete with servant and beach house, and the self-immolation of the silent protesting monk against the war.

(Yes, I know. Despite his being Buddhist, not Hindu).

Maya is a veil--a very complex veil--that doesn't hide anything.

[Roshan]

But please, by all means Anthony, do talk shop.

For instance, there is a possibility that Elisabet purposely left the letter open, is there not? But on watching it the second time this doesn't seem to be the case and this is because of the footage chosen of how Liv Ullmann responds when she finds out it was read. Which doesn't rule out the possibility that she accidentally-on-purpose left it open but I definitely wouldn't put intentionality there in the basic sequence of what's knowable. Although I can't say it's IMpossible either. It just seems very unlikely.

But IF Bergman had wanted us to 'know this' or for it to be very ambiguous, he would have chosen other footage. At least that's my impression after the second viewing but I expect there'll be a third..

[e-ssam]

Does the scene happen in Elisabet's imagination, and Bergam is hinting at that via the extreme close-ups and dreamlike aspect of the entire thing? Regardless of whether or not either of these interpretations is true, to be able to deduce what "really" happened at this point, you'd have to track the allusions, internal relations, and explanations(while maintaining chronological consistency), and then contextualize these things within the film holistically. There are more allusions and interrelations in that scene alone than the ones I just pointed out, and throughout the whole film; it's all hard to even write about.

It could be Alma or Elisabet's pretty much imo, or maybe it switches, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
but i don't think anything happens in imagination, or anyone's imagination imo, that sequencing is a bit irrelevant, even for Bergman since he is tracking more or less the tension occuring in the whole social sphere, and the more merged they get the whole film goes in that direction more, which is mainly what he attempts for in close ups, (and probably the main reason too he likes them )

[Roshan]

i don't think anything happens in imagination, or anyone's imagination imo,

When is the shot of Elisabet back in the hospital toward the end? Don't things still happen with her on the island after?

[e-ssam]

i don't think anything happens in imagination, or anyone's imagination imo,

When is the shot of Elisabet back in the hospital toward the end? Don't things still happen with her on the island after?

well, she is packing and then she never shows again, and we don't know if they got two buses or just this one bus, or how the bus got there.
last appearance of the hospital was at 1hr 18mins, before any of them packs, and Alma is shown waking up after.

[e-ssam]

Bergman seems to me to be either NiFe or FeNi extreme creative subtype. All time is converged and so are all interpretations; the Te one, the sequential one of 'protocol', is ultimately the least important, and this is why the 'order of things', the 'what really happened', the 'who DID what?" is also superficial.

For FeNi more than FiNi?

[e-ssam]

"the Te one, the sequential one of 'protocol', is ultimately the least important, and this is why the 'order of things', the 'what really happened', the 'who DID what?" is also superficial."
ah, FiNi would want still some grasping to do (that or for us to piece it together?)
which, if that was the case, it probably wouldn't have stayed as the blackbox

[Roshan]

"the Te one, the sequential one of 'protocol', is ultimately the least important, and this is why the 'order of things', the 'what really happened', the 'who DID what?" is also superficial."
ah, FiNi would want still some grasping to do (that or for us to piece it together?)
which, if that was the case, it probably wouldn't have stayed as the blackbox

Well, first of all, I don't think he's gamma. I think he's an 'evolutionary beta'. He's far too focused on our struggle for individuation, so not first slot Fi, and also on 'barbarian' elements like werewolves and vampires (which I should have mentioned when I pointed out four mythic traditions--Greek classics, Christianity, psychology, and film history. He has a fifth, which is folklore of the woods, so to say). And in interviews he's just much too chill for both SeNi and FiTe axes. But another thing is FiSe regardless of structure is Ne PolR. Everything is designed to hone in. Ni agenda is at the expense of Ne. Bergman is constantly moving the goal posts.

So yeah, I would say creative subtype FeNi with extreme Fi unignoring is still more likely than FiSe no matter how much it jumps. I watched interviews with him, Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson. Liv seems SiFe and Bibi I'm not sure but these are 'homey' people. All, including him. FiSe is 'tribe rejecting', an arch-individualist. Bergman doesn't seem so--and his films may be about how painful the societal transition from beta to gamma is.

But I should have clarified that. Pretty much everyone assumes he must be Fi > Fe.

[Roshan]

Does the scene happen in Elisabet's imagination, and Bergam is hinting at that via the extreme close-ups and dreamlike aspect of the entire thing? Regardless of whether or not either of these interpretations is true, to be able to deduce what "really" happened at this point, you'd have to track the allusions, internal relations, and explanations(while maintaining chronological consistency), and then contextualize these things within the film holistically. There are more allusions and interrelations in that scene alone than the ones I just pointed out, and throughout the whole film; it's all hard to even write about.

It could be Alma or Elisabet's pretty much imo, or maybe it switches, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
but i don't think anything happens in imagination, or anyone's imagination imo, that sequencing is a bit irrelevant, even for Bergman since he is tracking more or less the tension occuring in the whole social sphere, and the more merged they get the whole film goes in that direction more, which is mainly what he attempts for in close ups, (and probably the main reason too he likes them )

So you're saying you think everything that we see on the screen actually happens, though it might be out of sequence?