Happy Holidays everyone! To celebrate the most wonderful time of the year, I've decided to complete a daily review series of 12 Christmas movies leading up to the big 12/25. To qualify, the movies have to be tied to Christmas in some way and also something I've never seen before. I'll be going in chronological order. So, without further ado, if you got chestnuts, roast 'em - and enjoy my 12 Days of Christmas Movies!
Fanny and Alexander
Dir. Ingmar Bergman
NOTE: There are two versions of this film, a 188-minute theatrical cut and the "definitive" 312-minute cut that originally aired on Swedish TV. The 4-episode TV version is generally considered superior, so of course I hunkered down and watched all 5.5 hours of it. There are no "half measures" on Talking the Talkies!
The master of existential angst, Ingmar Bergman basically defined what an "art film" was in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. With movies like The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and Persona, the Swedish director is pretty much the first thing most people think of in regards to "European art cinema" (black-and-white, religious themes, super-serious, ambiguous, etc). Fanny and Alexander, a massive, lavish coming-of-age epic, was meant to be his final swan song, his last movie to cap off a decades-long career in cinema. It went on to win four Oscars and is often cited as one of the greatest films of all time. As a movie geek, the pressure is on to love this movie!
Loosely resembling Bergman's childhood, the story follows the goings on of a large Swedish family, the Ekdahls, in 1907 (though Bergman wasn't born until 10 years later). Alexander (Bertil Guve) and his sister Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) live a well-to-do life surrounded by the theater, butlers, and fancy antique furniture. The entire first episode is this extravagant Christmas Eve party where we get a sense of all the family members as well as the absolutely gorgeous set design in which every single aspect of the house seems delicate, yet lived-in. There's the wistful grandmother, Helena (Gunn Wållgren), the father and mother (Allan Edwall & Ewa Fröling), both actors, the promiscuous uncle Gustav (Jarl Kulle) and his permissive wife (Mona Malm), and a possibly perverted uncle (Börje Ahlstedt), who amuses the children by farting into a candle.
This first episode, while beautiful-looking, was not easy to relate to and dragged on and on. Since I have no memory of being a young, rich Swedish boy at the turn of the twentieth century, the sense of nostalgia that I think was supposed to wash over me wasn't there. However, the film starts to pick up with two major conflicts in the 2nd and 3rd episodes - when Alexander's father passes away and when his mother marries Bishop Edvard Vergérus (Jan Malmsjö), who turns out to be a controlling, abusive sonofabitch. At that point, Fanny and Alexander sort of plays like a young version of Hamlet, with a ghost dad, an evil stepfather, and just about every character questioning god and their place in the universe.
One of my biggest problems with Ingmar Bergman's films is that they're too dark and depressing. Even during the first episode, which is mostly a joyous Christmas celebration, there's a palpable sadness under the surface (and sickness when it comes to the father, Oscar). Watching this movie now, especially in a year when there have been so many vibrant child performances (Dafne Keen in Logan, Mckenna Grace in Gifted, and Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project to name a few), the kids here seemed as dead inside as grown, world-weary adults. After the death of their father, Alexander turns into an uninteresting moody kid, even muttering obscenities under his breath during the funeral. Fanny pretty much never had much personality (I find it bizarre her name is in the title).
This movie operates under a kind of child's dream logic, working more like a memory than a traditional story. So basically what that means is there's an excuse for inexplicable continuity where things make no sense. For instance, there's a plot in the fourth episode by the Ekdahl family to take Fanny and Alexander away from their step-dad by offering to buy a trunk with them secretly hidden in it. However, instead of the sequence ending in either tension or catharsis, it ends in utter confusion as the siblings appear to BOTH escape in the trunk and remain stuck in their room. While I appreciate the ambition of telling a story from the dark, fantastical mind of a child, I think movies like Pan's Labyrinth do a better job of evoking that sense of imagination and horror.
Whenever I hold an unenthusiastic opinion of a "classic" work of art such as Fanny and Alexander, I do indeed feel like a jackass. Who the hell am I, writing my comments from the peanut gallery, to dislike a filmmaker touted as one of the greatest of all time? But I'm not going to lie for the sake of my cinephile street cred. Bergman's films are not just slow, they're emotionally draining. Though he has an incredible eye for compositions and a great knack for telling stories with philosophical richness, I find most of his work exhausting to sit through. And at 312 minutes, Fanny and Alexander is Bergman at his most opulent and indulgent, for better and worse.
Rating: 3 out of 5
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