The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

178 Atom Egoyan
It’s been suggested, and we’ve sort of touched on it, that Persona is almost
a pure reflexive film, about the audience’s relationship with film—in fact
the very film being watched. How did that feed into your experience?
Egoyan: We were very involved in the construction of the film. It really
tests our tolerances and our curiosity and sense of exploration as a viewer.
I think the film is also about the degree to which we tolerate the indulgences
of other people. I remember feeling exasperated by Ullmann’s silence
and really identifying with the nurse. And in the scene with the boiling hot
water—where she’s about to scald Liv Ullmann, and Liv Ullmann cries out—
I was there with the nurse.
More than the actual plot, you experience the film through the way the
human face is used. The ability to hold on a face speaks to an absolute trust.
There’s an incredibly long shot of Liv Ullmann as she’s listening to the Bach,
which then uses a very slow, physical fade to black. It wasn’t an optical effect;
I believe they actually began to change the light. All of that was really impressive
to me at the time. The sculptural sense of the film, and maybe the idea
that the screen becomes an installation—Bergman’s insistence on the screen
as a sculptural device.
At age fourteen, did you have movie director aspirations?
Egoyan: No, not at all. I was really more involved in theater. I think Persona
was one of the first films that struck me as providing a theatrical experience,
in as much as my imagination was working, and was as active as it would
be in live theater.
And of course, the title of this book is The Film That Changed My Life—
so how did this film do that for you?
Egoyan: It gave me an incredible respect for the medium and its possibilities.
To me, Persona marries a pure form and a very profound vision with
absolute conviction. It’s very inspiring. I felt that it was able to open a door
that wasn’t there before. At the time, there was the term Bergmanesque,
and everyone knew what it meant. They would parody it and dismiss it in
a way. Now, though, I notice there’s a whole, younger, newer generation of
filmmakers that doesn’t know this incredible body of work. Maybe that says
something about the way culture works.