(no subject)

[proximoception]

Actually I think the movie as a whole--a whole movie, I mean--wasn't as good as it was for me last time. That was the first time I saw the full version, though, a special gift, and it's only been three years [edit: six(!)]. Also I haven't been in a position to fully concentrate, which is perhaps part of why I've only been able to read Calvino for so long, since he's the best writer who never requires scrutiny, who reliably makes you feel he'll bring you in on whatever he's up to. I wasn't up to the work I was up to last time, the grateful reconstruction of a great whole from the unwinding sequence of fragments. But this time the film was more affecting, too affecting, frightening in a way films don't frighten me, and perhaps my losing sight of the structure, the edges, was part of why.

What was sleeping woke up when Isak told his story; it gave me a piece back, much the way getting to swim did. But what hit me even harder was the grandmother's description of loss, talking with the ghost of her dead son, which I'm sure I appreciated on previous viewings but was in no position to know just how right it is:

My feelings came from deep in my body. Even though I could control them, they shattered reality, if you know what I mean. Reality has remained broken ever since, and, oddly enough, it feels more real that way. So I don't bother to mend it. I just don't care anymore if nothing makes sense.

Funny how the pauses make it mean better, though the transcription still strikes me as exactly right, exactly what it's like.

Books are so clumsy with pauses, or rather readers are clumsy and the books are helpless to help.

Comments

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. Fanny & Alexander's one of my favorite films, and one I tend to rewatch around Christmas (although not last year). Basically I found it when I was small thanks to PBS and moved in, because I needed as place to live, and it was perfect, because that's what I discovered it had been made as, an alternate home for its creator, the imagined home. And so, not surprisingly, even the horror and triumph of the later escape from the Bishop was welcome and perfect.

Among the things newest to me in the longer version is dad telling the kids about the chair. He's completely unlike that in the shorter version - as kind, but never as alive - and so, even though I suppose I might have known he had it in him, I hadn't thought of it until it happened.

And - have you watched the making-of documentary that's part of the set? Because among other things, it has Bergman describing the blocking to all of the actors. He's eloquent, and insightfully dead-on, and it's great.