Ingmar Bergman – Fanny och Alexander [Theatrical Version] (1982) (HD)

adminFebruary 26, 2023

0 582

Through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander, we witness the delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family, a sprawling bourgeois clan in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sweden. Ingmar Bergman intended Fanny and Alexander as his swan song, it is the warmest and most autobiographical film combining the director’s melancholy and emotional intensity with immense joy and sensuality.

philipdavies@imdb wrote:
Perhaps the most impressive feature of this wonderful film is the humility with which its creator presents it to the world, as if it were no grander than the old-fashioned Nativity-play shown in the early scenes at the Theatre.

At the end of this experience – to term it with any mere technical tag, like ‘movie’, would be inadequate – Bergman’s profoundly grown-up disillusionment has transformed into the pure spirituality of abnegation and acceptance. His intellectual pilgrimage, through possibly the greatest career in films, finds the director arriving back where he began, with the great simplicities of life. But there is a difference with his return, which is that his prodigality over the years has burnt the rage out of him, and finally allowed him to ‘enjoy what may be enjoyed’ (as one of the Ekdahls says), without further fretting over the puzzle of human existence. From all this human folly (he clearly feels) comes the only wisdom, which is – simply – to be human.