\u201cEverything can happen. Everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist. On a flimsy framework of reality, the imagination spins, weaving new patterns.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The quote, from August Strindberg\u2019s 1901 A Dream Play<\/em>, is the last thing we hear in Ingmar Bergman\u2019s final film, Fanny and Alexander<\/em>. But it should probably be placed up front during any discussion of the movie, which unspools in a liminal space somewhere between memories and dreams. Bergman\u2019s swan song for the cinema \u2013 though he continued to direct theater and television for the next two decades \u2013 is a massive, magnum opus intended to tackle all the topics and themes with which he\u2019d been wrestling over his previous 41 years of filmmaking. It\u2019s a sprawling epic featuring 60 speaking roles and over 1,200 extras, shot on a scale that Bergman –or any other Swedish filmmaker, for that matter\u2014had never attempted before. (The film was later edited into a 312-minute miniseries that played on TV, but for the purposes of this essay we\u2019re sticking with the director\u2019s 1982 theatrical cut, which runs a brisk three hours and nine minutes.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fanny and Alexander<\/em> found a wider audience than most Bergman films, and one can easily see why. It\u2019s imbued with a warmth and earthy humor missing from much of his earlier work, which could admittedly be a bit chilly sometimes \u2013 though nowhere near as frigid as the filmmaker\u2019s foreboding reputation might suggest. (The best kept secret in film schools is that The Seventh Seal<\/em> is actually a very funny and entertaining movie. The Virgin Spring<\/em>, not so much.) The first hour of Fanny and Alexander<\/em> takes place at a raucous Christmas Eve celebration held by the Ekdahl family, a boisterous collection of theater people and restaurateurs from bourgeois backgrounds. It\u2019s one of the great, extended, movie-starting parties, akin to the weddings in The Godfather<\/em> and The Deer Hunter<\/em>, making the viewer feel like an invited guest while casually introducing characters and conflicts that will later come to the fore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is quite the bash, full of singing, dancing and sloppy trysts behind the Christmas tree. One of the drunk uncles makes time with a voluptuous nanny while another blows out an entire candelabra with his farts. (As far as 20th<\/sup> century masters go, Bergman was nearly as fond of flatulence as Fellini.) We witness these adult antics through the enchanted eyes of eleven-year-old Alexander (Bertil Guve) and his sister Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) and at first it\u2019s easy to understand why so many cinephile families claim they watch Fanny and Alexander<\/em> together every Christmas. But they must shut it off after the first hour, because this lively Yuletide paradise is about to be lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The children\u2019s sickly father suffers a stroke onstage during rehearsal (in costume as Hamlet\u2019s father\u2019s ghost, of all roles!). By the following spring, their mother Emilie (Ewa Fr\u00f6ling) has remarried to Jan Malmsj\u00f6\u2019s Edvard, a dashing Lutheran bishop whose good looks can barely conceal a mean streak a mile wide. The cozy chaos of their old lives is replaced by austere, empty walls and rigidly enforced hours of silent prayer. The children are locked into their rooms with bars on the windows, held hostage by their stepfather\u2019s increasingly sadistic whims. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fanny and Alexander<\/em> was a homecoming for Bergman, his first film shot back in Sweden since a trumped-up 1976 arrest for tax evasion had sent him into exile in Munich, where the filmmaker suffered from debilitating depression even after the phony charges were dismissed. Outside the obvious autobiographical shadings from Bergman\u2019s childhood, the film is driven by the emotional intensity of someone violently ripped from their home in an artistic community and dropped into lonely, unfamiliar surroundings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The return of the Ekdahl kids to their houseful of eccentric, actor relatives gets an extra-textual kick when you\u2019re watching a director reunite with so many performers he\u2019d worked with so memorably over the years. Here\u2019s Harriet Andersson some 29 winters after our Summer With Monika<\/em>, a scene-stealing turn from Scenes From a Marriage<\/em> star Erland Josephson, and even a final role for Winter Light<\/em>\u2019s tormented priest and Bergman stock company mainstay Gunnar Bj\u00f6rnstrand. (There were almost two more: The roles of Emilie and Evard were originally written for Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow, both of whom turned down the movie for reasons that remained contentious for quite some time.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even though Bergman would continue to write screenplays, and television projects like After the Rehearsal<\/em> and Saraband<\/em> received theatrical releases in the United States, Fanny and Alexander<\/em> remains very much a filmmaker\u2019s final statement. It\u2019s bookended by blustery, farewell speeches from florid patriarchs to whom everybody\u2019s only half-paying attention, and I get a big kick out of how the Ekdahl women strategically let the men run their mouths until they\u2019re all talked out, gently indulging their fragile egos before going right back to running the show. It\u2019s hard not to read the bishop\u2019s cold quarters and the Ekdahls\u2019 happy home as two sides of Bergman\u2019s soul vying for custody of his alter-ego, Alexander. The film\u2019s final reel upends Strindberg\u2019s \u201cfilmy framework of reality,\u201d slipping into surreal sleight of hand as this battle of love and libertinism versus religious self-abnegation wakes the ghosts. They\u2019ve been waiting. \u201cFanny and Alexander\u201d is currently streaming on HBO Max<\/a>, and the Criterion Channel<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/fanny2-1024x705.jpg\")
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Abandoned for hours on end to contemplate his relationship with the Almighty, the young Bergman stand-in Alexander comes to the conclusion, \u201cIf there is a god, then he’s a shit, and I’d like to kick him in the butt.\u201d His incipient atheism isn\u2019t helping matters much, as it\u2019s going to take more than mere mortals to bring the Ekdahl kids home. But then, it\u2019s about time all those ghosts hanging around the closets and hallways finally made themselves useful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\")
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