The film has been interpreted in many different ways and has been the subject of long-standing debates among film fans as well as critics.
Lloyd Michaels sums up what he calls "the most widely held view" of
Persona’s content.[SUP]
[8][/SUP] According to this view,
Persona is "a kind of modernist horror movie"[SUP]
[9][/SUP] Elisabet’s condition, described by a doctor as "the hopeless dream to be", is "the shared condition of both life and film art".[SUP]
[10][/SUP] Bergman and Elisabet share the same dilemma: they cannot respond authentically to "large catastrophes" (such as the
Holocaust or the
Vietnam War).[SUP]
[9][/SUP] The actress Elisabet responds by no longer speaking: by contrast the filmmaker Bergman emphasizes that "necessary illusions" enable us to live.
Susan Sontag suggests that
Persona is constructed as a series of variations on a theme of "doubling".[SUP]
[11][/SUP] The subject of the film, Sontag proposes, is "violence of the spirit".[SUP]
[12][/SUP] Film scholar
P. Adams Sitney offers a completely different reading, arguing that "
Persona covertly dramatizes a psychoanalysis from the point of view of a patient".[SUP]
[13][/SUP]