Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Film Review

In 1982, Ingmar Bergman was adamant that the final entry in his 36-year-long career as a film director would be the spectacular period drama Fanny and Alexander - a lavish production that would weave together the various strands of his previous work into one epic colourful tapestry.  As it turned out, this was not the end of Bergman's career - he continued making low budget dramas and documentaries for Swedish television throughout the 1980s and '90s, and bowed out, in great style, with the 2003 production Saraband.  Fanny and Alexander may not have been Bergman's last word, but it is one of his most successful and most highly regarded works.  The film won no less than four Oscars in 1983 (including the awards for Best Foreign Film and Best Cinematography) as well as the César for Best Foreign Film in 1984.

At first sight, Fanny and Alexander would appear to be the least typical of Bergman's films.   In its complete (and recommended) version, the film runs to just over five hours, the longest of the director's films, and it is in glorious colour (Bergman's preference for black-and-white is well-documented).  What is perhaps most striking about the film is its sumptuous design combined with an almost operatic scale - it's more redolent of Visconti or Fellini than Bergman.  When you consider that most of the director's other films are low-key, introspective dramas with a small cast and a very contained setting, the sprawling beast that is Fanny and Alexander would seem to be the perfect antithesis of an Ingmar Bergman film.

And yet, paradoxically, Fanny and Alexander is unmistakably a Bergman film.  This is apparent in the depth of characterisation, the interplay of emotions and the occurrence of such quintessential Bergman themes as faith, love and the nature of existence.   It is also the most intentionally autobiographical of Bergman's films.  The central character, 10-year-old Alexander, through whose consciousness the entire narrative is filtered, is Bergman in all but name.   It is well known that the director was traumatised in childhood by his father, an austere Lutheran minister, who is represented in this film by the bishop Vergerus.  Perhaps the main reason why this film makes such a deep impression on the spectator is because it is a personal film, with Bergman drawing on his own - possibly very painful - childhood experiences.

Fanny and Alexander is certainly one of Ingmar Bergman's most accessible and engaging films, although there's plenty of depth if you're inclined to look beneath the surface.  The film's appeal is due mainly to the fact that most - if not all - of what we see is through the eyes of the young Alexander.  Not everything that we see is real of course - the boy's colourful imagination gives rein to plenty of flights of fancy, and often things are distorted or misinterpreted, as would happen in the mind of any child.  The end result is a marvellously effective dreamlike evocation of childhood - sometimes highly comical, but equally there are some moments of genuine raw poignancy.

In common with any other Bergman film, the cast is an impeccable ensemble of some very talented performers.  However, the film's focal point is the boy Alexander, played by the instantly engaging 11-year-old Bertil Guve, with whom Bergman developed a close friendship during the shooting of the film.  The director remarked that the young actor seemed to be exactly as he was when he was a child.  Two other actors worthy of a mention are Harriet Andersson and Erland Josephson, who each appeared in a number of Bergman's previous films - Andersson in Summer with Monika (1953) and Josephson in Scenes from a Marriage (1973).

What the film is mainly concerned with is Alexander's emergence from childhood into the Big Bad World of grown-ups and tax inspectors.  The trigger for this emotional upheaval isn't the usual kind of thing (ugly facial spots or a sudden aversion to soap) but the premature death of his father.  It doesn't help that this momentous event happens just after he has become acquainted with Shakespeare's Hamlet.  Not surprisingly, the boy doesn't take kindly to his mother hitching up with another man, with indecent haste, and he ends up being slightly prejudiced against his new stepfather.  Too much culture too early can be a bad thing.

It is easy to sympathise with Alexander's loathing for Bishop Edvard.   Yet it is the bishop, not Alexander, who becomes the tragic figure of the film.  Can this be because Alexander (and hence Bergman) secretly regrets his feelings for his austere guardian?    There is a scene, near the end of the film, where the boy seems to realise of the injustice he may have committed in rejecting his stepfather so forcefully - and thereby allows himself to be condemned to a lifetime of guilt.

Bishop Edvard is certainly portrayed as the villain of the piece.  It is a slavish adherence to the precepts of his religion that makes him incapable of establishing any meaningful rapport with his wife and stepchildren, and it is no surprise that they grow to hate him.  The bishop's love for his new family is real, but it is as cold and unwelcoming as the bare stone walls of his home, lacking the warmth of compassion which his faith has driven out of him.   As in The Seventh Seal (1957), Bergman is offering an uncompromising critique of organised religion - can it make sense to profess love for an unseen God and have no love for individual men and women?  Aren't religions far more effective at engendering hate rather than love?

Fanny and Alexander is a deep and thought-provoking work but it is also hugely entertaining.  At its simplest, it's a lovingly drawn portrait of a seriously dysfunctional family, in which the adults are seen, again from a child's viewpoint, as buffoons, angels and monsters.  Alexander's two uncles provide plenty of comic relief - one is a pompous university professor who is saddled with the dimmest of wives and is constantly concerned with getting money out of his mother, the other an ageing Don Juan who isn't the slightest bit put out when he puts a servant girl in the family way.   Between the moments of devastating poignancy and dramatic tension, the film erupts into farce of the kind which only a particularly dour Lutheran pastor could fail to find amusing.

Film Synopsis

December 1907.  The once-famous actress Helena Ekdahl welcomes her family to her home to celebrate Christmas.  Her sons - Gustav Adolf, Carl and Oscar arrive with their wives and children.  Helena's favourite is Oscar, who runs the family's repertory theatre.  During a rehearsal of Hamlet, Oscar falls ill and dies soon after.  In her grief, his wife Emilie turns to the bishop Edvard Vergerus, and a marriage quickly ensues.  It is not long before Emilie realises her mistake.  Her new husband's austere lifestyle and uncompromising harshness makes life a misery for herself and her two young children, Fanny and Alexander.   When Vergerus refuses to grant Emilie a divorce, desperate measures are called for...