The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Persona
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After Persona, I began to watch the other films, films like The Silence,
Through a Glass Darkly, and Hour of the Wolf. This whole, incredible body
of work was very important to me.
I think film allows for tremendous exploration. It’s made me an artist in a
completely uncompromised way, a person who tests the limits of the form.
It’s been said that the movie is not only a deconstruction of itself, but
also Bergman’s myth—that he had become sort of this stagey, mythic
director. The New York Times reviewer wrote that it added to his myth
and was “a film about loneliness.” In breaking form, he seems to build
his ivory tower as an artist. What do you think his intentions were?
Egoyan: The whole notion of indulgence is very interesting. It comes up a
lot in the movie—how indulgent the actress seems to be. At one point, the
director of the hospital calls her game and says that it must be very nice to
be an actress. But this is a performance as well and as an audience member,
you also have control over this. You become really exasperated with her,
and yet it’s very compelling. In a way, maybe Bergman was reflecting on
that fact.
The film is wildly pretentious at moments because it’s presenting these​
images without any clarification. Like I said, there are really strong and almost
laughably iconographic moments—like the crucifixion—that really have no
rational explanation, yet they sweep you away with their power. The same is
true of the atonal, fractured score at the beginning—the whole beginning is
an affront, and yet it does have this cumulative sense of purpose.
I think the role of storytellers and the language they use is one of the
latent themes of the film. With the incredible erotic monologue, the orgy
that is described at a certain point—you’re so aware of the process of the
story being told. A lot of shots are of Liv Ullmann listening. It made me
really aware of the device of the listener, the person who is encountering
the story. A focus on that person is as compelling as the person who is
actually speaking.
There’s a great passage in the Susan Sontag piece. She writes about a
reading of the film as a “parable of the predatory demonic energies of
the artist, incorrigibly scavenging life for raw material.” It’s like that