Fanny and Alexander [The Television Version] (1983)

Not rated, both because this is an international film, but also because it was a TV mini-series in 1983.  Isn't this a blog about movies?  Well, it counts as a movie because it is the expanded form of a theatrically released film.  It is not for children, although it never really feels outright offensive.  I mean, the movie has sex and nudity, domestic and child abuse, language, adulty, sexual boundary issues with children, discussions about abortions, and some pretty brutal deaths.  Despite its tone being tame, it actually has a lot of objectionable content.  Also, blasphemy...

DIRECTOR: Ingmar Bergman

I've technically gotten a few days off from blogging because it takes a minute to watch a five-and-a-half hour movie / mini-series.  I did it on purpose.  I wanted a nice little break and I knew that I should knock out one of the editions of Fanny and Alexander so I wouldn't have to write about them borderline back-to-back.  So I skipped ahead so I could just get this one out of the way.  Now, the crazy part is that I've seen this version of the movie before.  I actually haven't watched the theatrical cut yet.  But I'll tell you what.  I didn't remember much about this movie until I started rewatching it.  It was the right amount of time, too.  While things came back to me, it was kind of like watching the movie anew.  And let me tell you something.  I remember why I liked this movie so much.

There's so much that I kind of want to say and they're all kind of half-formed.  Please be patient with me.  Fanny and Alexander feels like a fusion between the Brontes and Henrik Ibsen.  Heck, Ibsen even gets name-dropped in this movie.  There is something just elevated about this that puts Fanny and Alexander almost in the academic canon.  Sure, cinephiles are wholly aware of this movie, if only because Cinefix often uses stills of this movie when discussing color choices.  But Fanny and Alexander is just a smart and meticulously crafted film that has some of the themes and motifs that we see in classic literature.  The greats seem to take small stories about individuals enduring unimaginable hardships and elevating them to epic proportions.  Now, I'm not quite sure why the movie is named Fanny and Alexander, because this is fundamentally Alexander's story.  (I mean, I get that Fanny is with him for a lot of the film, but we experience the traumatic events through Alexander's eyes.  Fanny barely speaks the entire film and often isn't the one making decisions or taking risks.)   I can't speak to the theatrical version yet, but Bergman slowly builds up the world of the Ekdahls, a flawed family that is --for all of its toxicity --incredibly functional.  When the lynchpin of the family is removed because of what seems to be a stroke, a grieving widows quick rush to normalcy ruins everything for the core Ekdahl family members, most notably the children.

Again, my Daddy Issues are what bind me to this story.  Okay, I wasn't locked in my room by my stepfather.  He and I just butted heads similarly to Alexander and the bishop.  But the story is just a well-crafted version of what other people have attempted.  Bergman, especially the later Bergman, rarely takes so focused and explicit of an approach when it comes to storytelling.  It's not that he's being lazy with Fanny and Alexander.  Quite the opposite.  There are still moments to analyze and interpret in this story, especially when it comes to Alexander's relationships to potential ghosts coupled with a hatred for God.  But Fanny and Alexander seems to carry Bergman's most intense development of character that isn't hidden under layers of abstract storytelling.  While it may take about an hour to mentally chart the personalities and conflicts of the large Ekdahl family, these characters, by the time the conflict is in full swing, are so well-explained that each of their choices makes sense in the grand scheme of the story. 

I hate to use the word "villain" when it comes to the antagonist of the film.  "Villain" has an almost simplistic connotation.  Often, action movies have villains.  But Bishop Edvard is such a terrifying villain because he's this character that, no matter what is levied against him, he always seems to be holding the cards.  When Emilie threatens to leave him, he has the law on his side.  When he is seemingly backed into a corner by Gustav Adolf over a matter of money, he prides himself on loving the simple life.  He is this constantly flowing river of underestimation that he becomes honestly quite frightening as an antagonist.  Now, part of me wants to criticize that.  Edvard kind of teeters on the edge of realistic and moustache twirling.  Remember, characters can be antagonists and still be morally right and good.  That's not Edvard.  Villains tend to do things because they embrace the notion of being evil.  Selfishness and sin is their primary motivators.  See, I still see Edvard as an antagonist and a villain (which is normal), but I don't think that Edvard sees himself as the villain.  There are moments where Edvard tells Emelie that she should not hate him.  He begs for her love and once even concedes that he will treat the children nicer. 

But Edvard's motivation is also incredibly terrifying.  Every time that Edvard does something horrible, he claims that he does so out of love.  Yet everything in his world is built upon a world of misery.  Even the ghosts in Edvard's attic are malevolent.  When Alexander is locked in the attic for telling damning lies about Edvard (which was told to an awful spy who never really gets her comeuppance, unless she burned in that fire too), he sees these two girls who claim that he shouldn't disparage their father by telling stories that the girls wanted to escape.  (I should note, I love that Bergman never really gives us a clear indication that this is an outright ghost story or not.  It seems like Fanny sees the ghost of their mutual father, but that could be the imagination of children.) In the weirdest way possible, Edvard does see himself as the hero of the story.  You can see this internal conflict within him when he sees that his very intense behavior is both morally deplorable and the only way for a man of the cloth to live.  Coupled with that is the fact that Edvard has his own universe inside of his home, creating an echo chamber for his bankrupt personality.  It's really interesting.

I love the plays, guys.  I love that Bergman wholeheartedly embraces some of the foundational walls of Hamlet to tell the story of an abusive stepfather coupled with the ghost of a father.  Now, I don't want to be the guy who throws Emilie under the bus.  She deserves to, but I want to be really careful as I discuss Emilie. "Frailty, thy name is woman" is such a great line that I don't think is in this movie.  Just to be completely clear, the final play that kills Alexander's father is Hamlet.  Of course, he plays the ghost of King Hamlet, which is some pretty on-the-nose foreshadowing.  But Emilie tells Alexander that he is not Hamlet and that Edvard is not Claudius.  It's just that...he is?  And all of that really fits with Emilie's story.  Emilie is perhaps one of the most frustrating parts of this story.  To a certain respect, you understand her perspective.  She doesn't want to be alone.  She's vulnerable and this confident guy who is respected in the community makes his intentions clear.  But we're all in Alexander's shoes (partially because he's the avatar for the audience) in thinking that this is a terrible idea.  After all, he's really introduced to Alexander as a major character through a disciplinary action that is far too intimate for an outsider to be discussing.  But Emilie can't see it.  She spirals as Edvard gets continually more and more abusive to the family.  But "Frailty" works really well tied to Hamlet because she keeps ping-ponging back and forth.  She is grateful for Isak's intervention in kidnapping her children, but then she begs Carl and Gustav Adolf to bring the children back.  My only read of that scene is that he has coerced her, but also that she really wants her kids back.  It's an odd moment.

Can I tell you what moment locked the film for me?  It's the final shots of the film.  Alexander has gone through hell to get out of that house.  The epilogue shows the rejuvenation of the main cast.  The Ekdahls still have their hang-ups, but people are happy.   As Alexander walks down the house, a new ghost has come to haunt him and that is the ghost of Bishop Edvard.  Listen, my final takeaway about the ghosts is that they are just as real as the movie needs them to be.  But the honest truth is that, as good as things are for Alexander, he has been traumatized by his time with this monster of a man.  Edvard claims that Alexander will never escape him and that is the most relatable moment of the movie for me.  It's so good and I can't explain how this movie needed this ending.  The movie is depressing and it needed a bittersweet ending.  The dismount is mostly positive, but that moment is a healthy dose of reality.  Emilie's choices will stay with that boy forever. He no longer has a relationship with God and, honestly, his interactions with adults is probably permanently skewed.   Still the movie works with that.

Golly, I forgot how good the movie was.  Is it long?  Yes.  Will I admit that there were times that I didn't want to watch it?  Sure.  But there are also times when I don't want to read, despite the fact that I love reading.   It's one of those masterpieces of cinema that, between the visuals and the narrative, everything just works.  I'm curious how the theatrical version is going to play out because the nuanced storytelling goes a long way to making this thing greater than the sum of its parts.  Still, I am excited...eventually.