Cast: Bertile Guve, Pernilla Allwin

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman

Running time: 5 hrs 12 mins

Genre: Drama/Foreign Films



CRITIQUE:


At the mention of Ingmar Bergman’s name, it calls to mind three things: death, a chess game and seashore. He’s this auteur whose works encompasses big philosophical things in life, death, depression, crumbling relationships and bleak melancholia, making him perhaps Sweden’s greatest miserablist. But the twilight of his career as a filmmaker, he shows a bright side nonetheless present in this director’s life: Fanny and Alexander is an optimistic film. The seasonal changes are utilised as a framework to this magnum opus, divided into five acts, each beginning with running water – emblematic to the flow of life.


If you get easily butt-numbed by watching people gather, socialise and eat dinner for some apparent longueur, you might as well grab a pillow. You might wake up to find the ending credits. The scale of this film is so all-embracing that it runs for more than five hours, an impossible one-sitting event. But once seen, it is never forgotten. All of life is here. This tale of childhood centred on the two titular siblings, Fanny and Alexander, is almost like a wrapping to more contents within. This is a family drama, acutely observed as it is sharply written. Stories of mothers, fathers, grandmas, uncles, aunts, maids are all here, as we watch the eminent theatre clan of the Ekdahls experience life, death, disaster, sorrow, tragedy and the eventual reunion. Later it moves into Dickensian territory as the mother submits to wed the Bishop, to which this union would cause suffering to the children. Religion and philosophy become intriguing central themes that this film touches on, with a dash of mysticism and magic, as tales of fantasy turn out to be as crucial to Alexander as his outer reality is. Hence, this is Alexander’s film more than anybody else, played to precocious precision by Bertile Guve. His blank expression and caustic remarks harbour the innocence yet stubborn knowing of Alexander. His witnessing of the death of his father causes him to shirk at one corner, his hatred of the Bishop makes him rebel, and his fear of the dark makes him weep. All things a child must be allowed to do.


VERDICT:

A powerful and extraordinary work, Fanny and Alexander might be Ingmar Bergman’s most masterful evocation of childhood.



RATING: A+