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Jan. 4th, 2005 10:35 amI haven't processed all my Christmas presents yet, having received something like fifty, but a favorite so far is the Fanny and Alexander box set. Fanny and Alexander was shot as a five-hour miniseries for Swedish TV in the early '80s. I think to get it financed Bergman reluctantly agreed to release a three-hour theatrical cut internationally, which is the version I saw on Bravo at Christmas about ten years ago, and have rented a couple times since. This is my favorite Bergman movie and just about my favorite period; also, to the extent best and favorite can be teased apart, I would venture this is likely the best movie by the best movie-maker to date. The boxed set includes both versions and a number of documentaries, as well as a little booklet of essays, one by Rick Moody characterizing the film as bildungsroman (which always struck me as a useless category--should we have awkward German labels for novels about adultery or business?).
Ingmar announced at the time that this would be his last film, though he continued making television films and writing screenplays for others until officially retiring from both television and the theater in 2003, at 85. Last or not, those seeing it notice Fanny and Alexander is in part a career summation, combining elements of Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Magician, Winter Light, Cries and Whispers etc. There's even a brief speech near the end that could serve as a plot synopsis of Persona.
It's not simply an anthology though. Something about the tone is new, the expansiveness is definitely new--Bergman deliberately approaches the scope of the novels of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky (having always had their intensity). His matchless skill at conveying the bite of passing moments, honed in his midlife-crisis '60s films, is combined for once with the sense of life's splendor found in his earlier work. The film is thought-through to an extent unusual even for Bergman, and plugs the griefs and consolations of his previous films into a broader, wiser message that would have delighted Goethe or late Shakespeare. It parallels the recent (superb) miniseries Angels in America quite closely in sections. There's something quite Shelleyan about this movie also; it comes remarkably close to Prometheus Unbound (of all things) at times, as well as The Cenci.
I mention connections and parallels and talk around the film itself because I want you to see it but don't want to give its surprises away. Not easy, no wonder advertisers resort to breasts.
The message is clearer in the television version, and most of the added sequences are beautiful or haunting or hilarious. The one imaginable demerit is that the opening Christmas sequence, long even in the shorter version, is now something like an hour and a half, during which there's no sign of plot. I love the sequence but can imagine sets turning off during it.
Ingmar announced at the time that this would be his last film, though he continued making television films and writing screenplays for others until officially retiring from both television and the theater in 2003, at 85. Last or not, those seeing it notice Fanny and Alexander is in part a career summation, combining elements of Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Magician, Winter Light, Cries and Whispers etc. There's even a brief speech near the end that could serve as a plot synopsis of Persona.
It's not simply an anthology though. Something about the tone is new, the expansiveness is definitely new--Bergman deliberately approaches the scope of the novels of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky (having always had their intensity). His matchless skill at conveying the bite of passing moments, honed in his midlife-crisis '60s films, is combined for once with the sense of life's splendor found in his earlier work. The film is thought-through to an extent unusual even for Bergman, and plugs the griefs and consolations of his previous films into a broader, wiser message that would have delighted Goethe or late Shakespeare. It parallels the recent (superb) miniseries Angels in America quite closely in sections. There's something quite Shelleyan about this movie also; it comes remarkably close to Prometheus Unbound (of all things) at times, as well as The Cenci.
I mention connections and parallels and talk around the film itself because I want you to see it but don't want to give its surprises away. Not easy, no wonder advertisers resort to breasts.
The message is clearer in the television version, and most of the added sequences are beautiful or haunting or hilarious. The one imaginable demerit is that the opening Christmas sequence, long even in the shorter version, is now something like an hour and a half, during which there's no sign of plot. I love the sequence but can imagine sets turning off during it.
