FANNY & ALEXANDER 1982lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2011/06/fanny-alexander-1982.html

Orson Welles' Citizen Kane tops many people's list of near-perfect films, but for me, any such list would have to startwhere Ingmar Bergman ended; with Fanny & Alexander, the legendary director's remarkably beautiful final film.In spite of being the most expensive and large-scale film of Ingmar Bergman's career, Fanny & Alexander isnevertheless a profoundly intimate and introspective movie about a well-to-do family in turn-of-the-century Swedenwhich has about it the dreamy air of semi-autobiographical nostalgia and reverie. Almost impossible not to view asthe summation of the director's impressive and influential career, its narrative highlights a great many of Bergman'slifelong preoccupations: fate, the existence of God, ghosts, the endurance of love, the pain of existence - as well asseveral actors and character names he has used over the years.

Bertil Guve as Alexander Ekdahl

1/9

Pernilla Allwin as Fanny Ekdahl

Gunn Wallgren as Helena Ekdahl

Erland Josephson as Isak Jacobi

2/9

Allan Edwall as Oscar Ekdahl

Ewa Froling as Emelie Ekdahl

Jan Malmsjo as Bishop Edvard Vergerus

3/9

Jarl Kulle as Gustav Adolf Ekdahl

You don't have to be an art-house aficionado or Bergman-ophile to appreciate Fanny & Alexander, for it is alsoBergman's most accessible, warm, and life-embracing film. Full of humor and finely-observed details of familialdevotion and discord, it is a film about family that is a welcome departure from the typical idealized depiction ofchildhood as an idyllic wonderland. Fanny & Alexander throws a trenchant light on the too-often terrifyingvulnerability and helplessness that is the lot of the young, while commenting poignantly on youth's greatestgift...children are blessed with an almost superhuman capacity to endure.

Viewed partially through the eyes of 10 year-old Alexander and his 8 year-old sister, Fanny, the beauty of this film isits ability to poetically capture that mystical time in a young life when, in the words of Stephen Sondheim,"Everything was possible and nothing made sense." It celebrates, at its center, that extraordinary aptitude inchildren to unquestioningly accept the real and the magical with the same level of gravity, accommodating both thetragic and joyous in life with an almost existential grace. In framing its magic realism within the structure of a broadlyemotive theatrical family seen from the perspective of a watchful little boy with a vivid, almost psychic,imagination; Fanny & Alexander offers us a glimpse into the formative influences (both sensual and spiritual) onBergman and his art.

"There comes my family"Helena, matriarch of the Ekdahl family, lovingly observes the arrival of her

offspring.

4/9

Although the theatrical version of Fanny & Alexander is a masterpiece in and of itself (clocking in at a considerable188-minutes), my movie-geek prayers were answered when the original, uncut 312-minute version was released inthe US several years back by The Criterion Collection (really, is this the only DVD release company that lovesmovies?). It is absolute HEAVEN! The opening Christmas sequence alone is worth the price.As some people do with The Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind, I watch Fanny & Alexander once a year, usuallyaround Christmas or New Year's. It's my idea of the perfect adult fairy tale. There's a villain, a haunted castle, adamsel in distress, evil in-laws, a sorcerer, and a magic potion. The literate screenplay (by Bergman) has passagesof genuine poetry that are as moving and eloquent as ever captured in a motion picture. No matter how often I seeit, it never fails to leave me charmed and teary-eyed.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMOne of the great gifts of getting older is that, with the gaining of wisdom (hopefully), comes a peace and ease withthe unalterable vicissitudes of life. You no longer need armor yourself with an unearned belief in life's cruelty, nor doyou need to sentimentalize your existence with fantasies of everything being rosy. You take the good with the badand learn to cling to the joyful moments, large and small, grateful for friends and loved ones and those everydaymiracles that you are content with never possibly understanding. Fanny & Alexander feels like a work of an artistmatured. Gone is the predominantly dark palate of Bergman's earlier works; with this film he is willing toembrace the light along with the shadows.

Life Lessons

PERFORMANCES

5/9

I first fell in love with the faces (such a delight to see wrinkles, sagging skin, imperfections -character!), thenthe brilliant words, then the affecting performances...all are so rich and in such full flower that I can't isolate anysingle individual as my favorite. Like Robert Altman's Nashville, Fanny & Alexander is built on the ensemble players,perfectly cast and completely in concert.

THE STUFF OF FANTASYMagic realism has long intrigued me when used in film. The matter-of-fact melding of the real and the supernaturalseems a perfect stylistic choice for motion pictures, but few films handle it effectively. In Fanny & Alexander the

6/9

intrusion of magic and the supernatural into the corporeal world suits the film's child's-eye-view perspective,its Grimm's fairy-tale-like narrative, and its philosophical meditations. None of this is new territory for Bergman, but Ithink this film showcases his most natural, least surreal employment of this stylistic device.

In one of the film's many poetically moving sequences, Alexander's "guardianangel" grants an unspoken wish.

THE STUFF OF DREAMSThe first 90-minutes of Fanny & Alexander is devoted to a family Christmas get-together that is a cinematic marveland could stand on its own as a separate film. Ostensibly an expositional introduction to all the main characters,everything from Sven Nykvist's breathtaking cinematography to the touchingly realized human interactions (there'san exchange between a sweet-faced little girl and one of the servants regarding the bearing of grief while others arehappy that just tears my heart out), it is a sequence of familial warmth unlike anything I've seen. Virtuosofilmmaking.

7/9

Helena: "Are you sad because you've grown old?" Isak: "I'm certainly not. Everything's getting worse. Worse people, worse machines,

worse wars...and worse weather."

I've never understood how Woody Allen, when trying to channel his idol Ingmar Bergman, always managed to comeup with such shallow, constipated, and dull copies. Bergman's work, if nothing else, brim over with life and humanity.I understand how he's not everybody's cup of tea, but my experience of his films (especially WildStrawberries...another favorite) has been that they are more passionate and emotional than cerebral, and a greatdeal more entertaining than they are given credit for.

Why exactly Fanny & Alexander speaks to me on such a sentimental level can be summed up by quotes from twoother films that convey (more eloquently than I could) philosophical ideologies that get me in the gut every time:

From the film Sling Blade- "I don't think anything bad ought to happen to children. I think the bad stuff should besaved up for the people who's grown up. That's the way I see it."

and

From the film Little Children- "We're all miracles. Know why? Because as humans, every day we go about ourbusiness, and all that time we know...we all know...that the things we love, the people we love, at any time now canall be taken away. We live knowing that and we keep going anyway. Animals don't do that."

These simple sentiments touch my emotional core very keenly. They are the facts of life and compassionate humanexistence. In Fanny & Alexander Ingmar Bergman expounds upon them in such artfully dramatic and poetic ways

8/9

that, in my eyes, he has created nothing short of an unqualified masterpiece.

Copyright © Ken AndersonKen Anderson is an LA-based freelance writer and lifelong film enthusiast.Read more essays on films from the ’60s & ‘70s at Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For.

9/9