Fanny And Alexander (1982)

Fanny and Alexander (1982)

I love random films. They take you out of your comfort zone while having the comfort of the cinema. They make you focus and create a stretch you might not take at home, like anything. Gyms are compared to just jumping jacks at home. Walking when the bus stop is there, and the bus is in eyesight. These are the things you do as the focus requires the environment. However, I knew this would be three hours. But it’s lunchtime. It’s Sunday. We are not in the world cup, and getting out of the house would mean I don’t distract dad from his end of the bargain. Make a space in the living room, and I will make a tree.

I could have watched this film at home and made a tree. And argue with dad. And get the branches of our tree stuck in his luggage he was unpacking. But this was better for us all.

I knew this. I knew all this. And then I saw as the film started ‘Directed by Ingmar Bergman’ and my heart fucking sank. I had become one of them. I watched a three-hour Ingmar Bergman film in the middle of the afternoon with a coffee…christ. I’m lucky it’s a Sunday, or I might have done open mic poetry after about my life in the 90s and the difficulties with self-publishing.

Thankfully, Ingmar knew this and put the 1907 equivalent of ‘those people on the screen and reveled in a certain level that went beyond white hall farce and straight to confessions, with an hour of impropriety, inappropriate, filthy Fulford, and a bizarre pastiche where Downton took it up the abbey and sneered a lot about it, carrying on in sordid fashion.

Ostensibly about the two siblings in the title, and mainly through the older eyes of Alexander as opposed to the largely quiet and passive fanny, we have an ensemble movie that manages to create a sense of a trilogy. We watch the whole family—the Jewish suitor for grandma, the brothers, and their respective wives. And, of course, the children. A certain magical realism from Alexander’s view of the world helps explain the film’s extremes that are distinct in its three acts. Since coming home, I see it as a minis series in its conception,n running for about 5 to 6 hours. The theatrical run of a little over three is the better part of the deal, keeping a lean story while encompassing tonal breadth. In an ideal situation,n I would have watched these three parts as episodes. But having thought about it, If I had, I would have quit if I only saw any one of the episodes, and the price is genuinely more remarkable than the whole.

The first half of the farce is light, and further, it shows the entitled decadence of this family as they waffle, philander, and cheat with ego and aplomb. It fittingly makes them so opulent if anything, I wanted to see a comeuppance for the comfort of their world with servants as utilities.

Swift tragedy occurs, leading Alexander and Fanny’s wife to a grave mistake. Thinking piety and discipline are what they have been missing. But soon, in the hands of the Bishop…she soon realizes she has not swapped danger for safety but rather liberation for cruelty and compassion for a callous life. As the children attempt to cling to their own vibrancy and independence in their new home, one can not help but feel for them. And how they and the family attempt to entice them out of their predicament is a welcome moment to the end.

The outcome of fate and mythic qualities as the children hice with the Jewish family, outside religion and aristocracy. The film takes a meditative quality. It allows a reflection and a coming of age in alexander.

The film moves through tones that can be jarring at times. Yet it shows how Bergman, through the actors and the hyperreality at times. The bare minimalism at others has created a truly cinematic experience.

It is only by watching the film as a whole the threads seem stronger. If I had observed it in segments, the viewing would be too distaff to hold my attention and appeal.

It is heavy going at times. The brutalism of the Bishop’s family after such frivolity could go too far for many viewers. The vicious nature of Alexander’s lies also lends to the gothic at great lengths but could be too dark for others. I would say

With a Christmas movie, grief, anger, religion and gender, and liberty are commented on instead then explored, and given the setting of the early 1900s, an honest treatise on how women could empower themselves with so much systemically and anecdotally against them.

It’s a boxing day film. When the tree is up and the kids are sleeping. And dad has gone for a kip. With a bit of rum. And more importantly

Focus.