Remember the classics

‘Fanny and Alexander’ (1982)

Certainly one of the most reflective and intensely personal films ever made, Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander” demands to be watched. If the viewer cannot be convinced of its brilliance, it must be said, at least, that it forces us to look back at how we came to be the people that we are.

Unlike other lengthy classics such as Tarkovsky’s “Andrei Rublev,” it is thoroughly recommended to watch it in Bergman’s preferred 312-minute cut over a period of several days. The film is divided into acts and conveniently allows for this approach, but every act takes us into a different moment in its characters’ lives. And by splitting the viewing time into several sections, the viewer almost becomes a character in his own right, by drifting in and out of these people’s lives at such integral moments.

The film follows several years in the lives of the Ekdahls, an upper-class family living in early 20th century Sweden whose roots lie firmly within the theater. Loving parents Oscar (Allan Edwall) and mother Emilie (Eva Froling) are both accomplished actors; the theater manages to pull together a fair profit, assuring a good future for their two children Alexander (Bertil Guve) and Fanny (Pernilla Allwin). As happiness and tragedy pass through the Ekdahl’s lives, the most affected among them seems to be Alexander, who often counters his surroundings with stark, detached observance, soft-spoken defiance and pondering the occasional existential quandary.

One of the film’s great graces is how its first half draws us in with an initially tight scope, which builds into something greater, rather than immediately revealing its fundamental examination of life: the stated purpose from its opening is a breakdown of social pretenses. The film opens with an extended family gathering at Christmas—perhaps the ultimate in forced grins and compliments—only to have every last one of them become two-faced and self-loathing once they have retreated back into their own worlds. But the attacks on such superficially cultured society (perhaps as an attack on bourgeois sensibilities in the mold of Luis Bunuel) only get nastier. Early into the film, Oscar suffers a stroke during a performance as the ghost in “Hamlet,” and dies; he leaves a deathbed wish to be given a simple funeral. However, under the influence of a snake-eyed bishop, Edvard (Jan Malsmjo), Emilie is convinced to turn the funeral into a lavish death march. During the march, Fanny hears her brother whispering a stream of unrelated obscenities under his breath. Which is the more disrespectful gesture: a string of offensive curse words or an unwanted spectacle contrary to a man’s dying wish?

But the artist’s fingerprint is indelibly marked upon “Fanny and Alexander,” and once it has captured us with some intriguing social commentary, it is free to unload heavier ideas on us and unmask its true intentions. The film is told from the perspective of a man who wishes to look back upon his earlier years but utilizing only the memories of a child; it is the only explanation for the film’s forays into magic, Shakespeare and Hans Christian Andersen. Fearing that her children will grow up without a father figure, Emilie quickly marries Edvard, a wicked stepfather by any account; after the wedding, the ghost of Alexander’s father constantly appears before him, throwing back to his final complete memory of his father, acting the role of Hamlet’s ghostly, vengeance-minded father.

Every performance is a triumph—as our surrogate eyes, Bertil Guve’s Alexander is wonderful in his deadpan acceptance and silent pain—but perhaps the longest-lasting impression is left by Jan Malsmjo‘s Edvard. Malsmjo was a well known comedic actor in Sweden, a “song and dance man” as the IMDb trivia page puts it, and perhaps that was the best man to perform such a role. Edvard is a character of such magnanimous evil—literally locking his stepfamily within his castled home and throwing verbal and physical abuse at them—that it would be easy to turn him into a cartoon. Professional villain actors would have taken the character to that extreme, but Edvard demands simply that form of evil and emotional degradation that carries a well meaning smirk that we encounter on an everyday level.

“Fanny and Alexander” is an obvious follower of the credo that “the child is the father of the man”; Bergman, in assessing his childhood—perhaps all childhoods—he concludes that a complete person can only be judged by every aspect of his life: happiness, sadness, victory, tragedy. “Fanny and Alexander” is thoroughly content, but only occasionally joyous; it is tinged with sadness but rarely maudlin; it is wistful but never truly nostalgic. All things considered, Bergman is happy with how his life turned out—and perhaps this film forced him to realize this more than he first did. At the time of filming, he regarded “Fanny and Alexander” as his final film, but he couldn’t stay away from the director’s chair for long. Perhaps it is wishful thinking, but it is certainly feasible to imagine that a director can be overtaken by the same power that captures his audience.