A quintessential example of avant-garde cinema. Bergman's influential film holds so much more than one initially thinks. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 1, 2024

A succession of ever more difficult and rewarding films has turned up in recent years. But that good fortune releases nobody who cares about films from acclaiming work as original and triumphant as Persona.

| May 3, 2024

... A nifty, stylish and unforgettable hour and a half.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 14, 2023

The quintessential, mid-century art film...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 1, 2023

The movie is weird, as are all of [Bergman's], but it is worth seeing -- even twice.

| Jun 30, 2021

Persona was a challenging film to watch, but I really responded to it. I was confused, intrigued, fascinated, and sad for both the women in the story.

| Mar 29, 2021

There are so many threads... in this extraordinary, tantalising film that it ts impossible to give precise directions: more perhaps than any other film in the history of the cinema, it is a treasure trove in which each must seek his own jewels.

| Nov 20, 2020

This original and individual work acts upon us in its own way; what is finally impossible to escape are the faces of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann, agonized objects of Bergman's worship.

| Aug 4, 2020

[T]hose affecting scenes linger still in the mind. Though products of manipulation, the emotions are real. Cinema speaks in spite of itself-and in spite of Bergman.

| Jul 1, 2020

Completely exhausted the medium's potential in one staggering blaze of monochromatic glory.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 25, 2019

The ambiguous nature of this work discussing identity, modernity and duality, alongside its technical feats in cinematography allow it to be an expansive platform for discussion and analysis.

| Aug 24, 2018

Certainly Persona is Bergman's most concentrated work, in a sense a summation of the themes dominant in most of his previous films; and it is undeniably a difficult film, if only because it leaves itself open to so many interpretations.

| Feb 8, 2018

Whether the film's ambiguous meanings strike you as profound or overblown, there's greatness enough in its aesthetic marvels: the power of its performances, the beauty of its images and the deftness of its sudden shifts.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 3, 2018

Hardcore surrealism is rarely this enjoyable.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 2, 2018

It remains as mysterious and troubling now as it ever was.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 27, 2017

[Bergman] gives us a movie within a movie, but he seems hardly to have made the enclosing movie, and then he throws away the inner one.

| Apr 7, 2016

Maybe one's quarrel with Bergman has to do with a feeling that even austerity begins to look like a special kind of emotional self-indulgence.

| Aug 3, 2015

This is the ultimate celluloid Rorschach test, where the production refuses to offer a straightforward solution to the maze of thorny challenges.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 8, 2014

One of the most complicated and radical films even Bergman ever made.

| Apr 23, 2014

[...]Persona marks a radical break for Bergman, an acknowledgment up front of the illusion and fundamental artifice of making movies.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 7, 2014