Fanny and Alexander

Some months back TCM ran Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander in TCM Imports. Since it runs over three hours, I didn't get the time to sit and watch the whole thing until recently. But it's available on a pricey DVD from the Criterion Collection, so I can do a review on it here.

Alexander (Bertil Guve) and his kid sister Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) Ekdahl are children in a middle-class household in a Swedish city at the beginning of the 20th century (I don't think the exact year is given, but reference is made at the end to Strindberg's A Dream Play, which was written in 1901 but only first performed in 1907, so do the math). One year at Christmas, they attend a party given by their well-off grandmother, that seems as interminable as the wedding in The Deer Hunter.

At this party and its aftermath, we learn that things aren't as bright as they seem for everybody, asone of the uncles is carrying on a series of affairs, while another of the uncles is chronically in debt. Of course, none of this is going to matter in a little while as Fanny and Alexander's father Oscar (Allan Edwall) dies suddenly at the theater that's been in the family for generations and that he currently runs. Mom Emilie (Ewa Fröling) doesn't know what to do, so when the bishop Vergerus (Jan Malmsjö) who officiates at Oscar's wedding seems nice to her and the kids, she decides to marry him for security.

Mom couldn't have been more wrong, as the Bishop is extremely austere and expects everybody else to live the same way, and woe betide anybody who doesn't. Alexander, for one, can't live that way, as he has a vivid imagination which he has him believing he sees ghosts (I think; I didn't quite get what was going on until reading some reviews). Specifically, he claims that he saw the Bishop's first wife and children and that they told him a fantastic story of how badly the Bishop treated them, leading them to try to escape the house and winding up drowning in the nearby river. The Bishop punishes Alexander so badly that Emilie realizes she has to get the kids out of the house.

That's where Isak (Erland Josephson), a Jewish puppeteer who is also one of Grandma's lovers, comes in. He comes up with a ruse to get the kids out of the house and keep them at his place where the Bishop supposedly won't find them. Isak's house is odd, not just with the puppets but with mentally ill "son" Ismael (played by actress Stina Ekblad) having odd premonitions or something and understanding Alexander.

Frankly, I found Fanny and Alexander to be not my cup of tea at all. It's nicely photographed, but overlong and sprawling. I think a much better movie to be made out of the material would have ditched most of the Christmas party goings on and just used enough of it to establish Alexander's idyllic life before Dad dies and Mom remarries. It would also have been a reasonable length. However, since it's an Ingmar Bergman movie, there are a whole bunch of people who are going to praise it to high heaven. So watch and judge for yourself.