FANNY AND ALEXANDER

“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.” – Hodding Carter

We watched Ingmar Bergman’s 1982 film “Fanny and Alexandrer” at the weekend. This is Bergman’s swansong and considered by some as his finest film, one of the best ever made. I had watched it in the eighties, but being younger and less reflective had found it rather pompous and boring. I watched through more mature eyes and through a more sympathetic and understanding prism this time around. The film is doubtlessly sumptuous and a cavalcade of tempora and mores of the Swedish pre-world-war-I reality. It also reads as an affectionate and nostalgic autobiographical note of the director’s own life (disturbing middle section notwithstanding).

The film is very long. In its entirety it is over five hours long, although it is usually shown in its curtailed 188 minute version. An epic either way. It is divided into three parts: An introductory lyrical and wonderfully evocative, joyous section of Christmas in the rambling Ekdahl household. A theatrical family with their many relatives and servants, upper middle class and certainly not niggardly in their ways, enjoying the bounties that life has given them. Oscar and Emilie Ekdahl, are the director and the leading lady of the local theatre company, Fanny and Alexander their young children. The lush Christmas décor in brilliant reds and vibrant greens is the backdrop of happy and often romping goings-on in which the characters are introduced and fleshed out.

The death of Oscar introduces the middle part of the film in which the widow Emilie is consoled by and then courted by the bishop, who finally marries her. Emilie, Fanny and Alexander move into his austere and forbidding house, where whites and greys dominate and the cold, barren rooms are locked with their windows barred. The children are forbidden to take their possessions with them and the bishop makes their life utterly wretched. Emilie regrets her marriage but is trapped in it by pregnancy.

The third part of the film is the liberation of Emilie and her children by Isaac, a family friend and lover of the children’s grandmother. The use of a Jew as a catalyst in this escape from the tyrannical bishop is a comment on the ways that religiosity shackles and tortures humanity, thwarting the epicurean philosophy so evident in the first part of the film. Bergman comments on religion, piousness, religiosity and ultimately, a thinly veiled tartuffian hypocrisy.

The world of children is explored and contrasted with that of adults. There is an earthy sexuality pervading the film – open and forgiving in the first part, ingrown and perverted in the middle. Redemption is foremost in the end with acceptance of the fruits of two dangerous liaisons. In the one instance, the redemption comes through generosity, while in the other purification is only resolved through the violence of hellfire.

The cinematography is absolutely breathtaking, the acting faultless and the direction masterly. Bergman has summed up his whole art in this film and has given us a beautifully haunting piece that enchants, disturbs, tantalises, frightens and amuses. It won four Oscars and numerous other awards, and has much in it to draw back the viewer for a second and third and fourth viewing. Not one to watch in one’s salad years, but certainly a film to savour in one’s port wine and stilton age.