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"You will never get rid of me" Vergerus to Alexander
To properly discuss a film, a reviewer worth their salt refreshes their viewing of the work in order to capture all the nuances and avoid any possible inaccuracies due to a not always impeccable memory. Especially if the film in question is "Fanny and Alexander" (1982), the last and complex (in the true sense of the word) cinematic endeavor by Ingmar Bergman, lasting about three hours (originally five for television), it might seem bold to express oneself without the beautiful images still fresh on the retina. Yet this is precisely what I am about to do: the last time I enjoyed this film was at least two or three years ago. My choice is based on the fact that a masterpiece (which this is) always leaves something indelible in the person who benefits from it and, over time, is internalized and metabolized in an increasingly subjective and intimate manner, intertwining with the events and moods of the individual. On the other hand, it seems useless and painful to describe such a deep and content-rich film in a scholarly and conventional way, an operation already widely done by others certainly better than I would. I preemptively apologize for not being able to tackle all the film’s themes, a limitation of which I am fully aware.
I will touch on the plot: Fanny and Alexander (Bergman's alter egos) are two siblings belonging to a wealthy Swedish bourgeois family of the early twentieth century. Their father Oscar is a theater director, accompanied by his splendid wife Emilie. The key figure of the entire family is the stable grandmother Helena, a real matriarch, wise and monolithic; completing the picture are other aunts and relatives, each of whom is distinguished by more or less happy personal affairs. The first part of the film offers a portrait of this family, investigates the family relationships, and delves into the psychology of the individual characters by introducing the world of the two protagonists. One day Oscar, while playing Hamlet, dies during rehearsals. Some time later, Emilie marries Vergerus, the local Protestant pastor, and moves with the children to the austere home of her second husband. This new arrangement will be the cause of great anguish for the poor Alexander and Fanny due to the excessive strictness of their new father, who will not spare harsh punishments for the children. The atmosphere in the rectory, inhabited by suffering and negative figures, becomes increasingly heavy and distressing until the grandmother, with the help of a Jewish merchant, organizes the escape of the two grandchildren.
"Fanny and Alexander" does not just tell a story, on the contrary, it offers food for thought on the sense of imagination, fantasy, and the obsessions of men and Bergman himself. The director inserts and interweaves a myriad of microcosms and relates them to each other, using narrative blocks that focus attention now on one, now on another. The first part is dedicated to the happy family (the Christmas dinner) and is a synthesis of autobiographical childhood memories (the protagonists' home is a faithful reconstruction of the Bergman household environments) and the director's childhood desires. The theater sequence is a melancholic declaration of love for this extraordinary art form, complemented by the scene where Alexander gazes in ecstasy at the magic lantern, referring to the director's childlike enthusiasm for cinema. Other more sinister and gloomy worlds include the stepfather's house and the Jew's warehouse, actual graveyards of ghosts, which evoke the occult and fear, but not only. In these places, Alexander questions life, death, the afterlife, and God. Confronting the unreal, the fleeting, suffering, and death as a non-definitive entity draws an inevitable parallel with "Cries and Whispers," another even more grave and claustrophobic work, comparable in intensity and content but expressed in an even more dramatic form.
In "Fanny and Alexander," Bergman evokes and concentrates the dearest themes of his cinema, addressing ethical and moral issues in a non-trivial manner, often using metaphorical images not always easily interpreted. Alexander's head is inhabited by doubts, by phantoms of the living who seem dead and of the dead who return to amuse, haunt, or ask for help; in him, love and anguish, curiosity and fantasy coexist. The cultural references and richness of quotations, part of an intellectual education with a clear classical foundation, are tools to investigate, show, and contrast the most intimate essence of the human soul in all its facets. I cite as a single example the death of Oscar, the first and beloved father of the two children, who dies while performing Hamlet and, like Hamlet's father, returns to visit his son, but unlike the Shakespearean drama, he is driven not by a desire for revenge but by paternal love, a sense of duty and comfort towards the son.
The film remains suspended between reality and imagination, it offers no answers, but merely whispers some suggestions as if the director wanted to say many things without declaring anything. In fact, in this case, Bergman even renounces a fundamental pessimism that characterizes many of his previous works and opts for a hopeful possibilism, though not entirely reassuring. The images of the mask, the puppet, and the toy (once again used by Ours Truly) are a preamble to real life, which is nothing more than a larger toy, requiring greater imagination from those who wish to use it.
The photography and set designs, as well as the costumes, are magnificent as always and delineate a clear boundary between the two homes of the protagonists; the first characterized by warm colors and lavish settings, the second with sparse furnishings and an almost absence of color.
"Fanny and Alexander" is undoubtedly a great masterpiece crowning a career, indeed, one of the highest artistic journeys in the history of cinema, receiving international awards including four Oscars, among them Best Foreign Language Film. Currently, the best Italian DVD version is offered by "San Paolo" in a double box set, rich with interviews and extras.
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