Fanny and Alexander [The Theatrical Version] (1982)

Rated R for nudity, especially in a sexual context, and child abuse.  I keep thinking that I want to watch Fanny and Alexander with my family because I'm such a big fan of it and I relate to the movie so much.  Then I remember that Bergman --being kind of a perv himself --added a character who sleeps around and wants to show that kind of stuff.  Also, Alexander, who is a child, copes with his father's death and any kind of hardship by whispering curse words in succession.  Yeah, this one is probably deservedly R.

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

​Okay, let's do this one more time.  I've written about Fanny and Alexander a whole bunch of times.  You can find my commentary about the television cut on this very blog.  But I am also fairly confident that I posted about this movie on Flixster back when they used to have a movie review section.  I love this movie.  But because I tend to lean into "director's visions" (which ultimately may not be the case here, I don't know!), I tend to only watch the longer cuts of things.  Now, to avoid dancing around a subject, I do have to admit that I like the longer cut a lot better.  I'm going to be griping about the theatrical cut a bit in this.  But even with the time cut off of this movie, Fanny and Alexander is still the best Bergman movie.

Let's complain for a bit because I'm in a grumpy mood.  (I really thought that I would get Teacher of the Year this year and I didn't.  I had a rough year and I put myself on the line a lot.  Still, a friend of mine got it and I am paradoxically happy for him while still self-loathing.)  Fanny and Alexander is what I want out of Bergman all of the time.  When I watched the television version, even though the story is remarkably small, it has this epic, Doctor Zhivago element to the whole thing.  We exist in the world of the Ekdahls through and through.  The first act --which is surprisingly mostly intact in the television version --gives us incredible access to this family.  We see what they look like when they are happy.  It's the Shire elements of The Lord of the Rings.  We have to understand what these characters have to lose before the rug is pulled out from under them.  We see their petty little differences.  We see what they prioritize.  For an exposition, the beginning does a lot of heavy lifting.  Watching this as part of a three hour movie, it was shocking to see that the first third of the movie (for the non-math people in the room: 1 hour) was completely devoted to the exposition.  The inciting incident, Alexander's father collapsing on stage, doesn't happen for a full hour.  That's insane.  

What it does for us is gives us investment in the death of Oskar.  Now, when the film is longer, that exposition makes a bit more sense.  Again, The Lord of the Rings is also incredibly long.  We can afford a few minutes of cinematic real estate to see what life is like before the problem.  But Bergman does some things in that first act that play out in the rest of the film when it comes to the television version that doesn't happen in the theatrical cut.

The theatrical cut focuses a lot more of the time on the eponymous Fanny and (especially) Alexander while they have been separated from their family.  When they are stuck with the bishop, we still have the great understanding of the cruelty of this theocratic dictator that the television version shares.  But what is missing is the damage that the disappearance of Fanny and Alexander have on the Ekdahls.  In the television cut, the time with the bishop seems far longer than what we see in the television version.  While Bergman seems to have kept the Fanny and Alexander parts of the story, removing the Ekdahls does two things to the story.  The first part is that we don't see the respective members of the Ekdahl family getting over their own crap.  Carl and Gustav have really terrible flaws that are highlighted in the first act before Oskar collapses.  Carl spends money and treats his wife terrbly and Gustav is a filanderer (once again, Bergman?  We get it.)

Yet, in the television cut, these two demonstrate their own respective humanities when it comes to these two children suffering under the bishop.  These two are kind of the heroes of the story.  Yes, it is Isak who finally gets the two kids out.  But because we only see Isak's attempt to get the kids out and he makes it seem easy.  Also, when Isak takes the kids out, using illusions to do so, it almost lends a vibe of the impossible.  It makes an act of God the first and only attempt to help out, making the children's strife something almost simple.  When there is no challenge happening with these children, it makes the conflict seem somewhat nerfed.  Now, if I had to be honest with myself, I only know this because I love the television version so much.  But when you have Gustav and Carl put all of their crap aside for the sake of the greater good, it makes the entire thing feel far more dire than what we're seeing in the theatrical cut.  

Now, when I write these blogs, especially when the movie is a different version of the same movie, I tend not to read previous blogs.  I'd love to say it's because I want to approach every blog with a fresh eye, untarnished by whatever I thought in the past.  But the reality is that nobody has time for that and I'm a pretty overwhelmed personality by design.  Still, I do want to talk about some things that I have to guess that I talked about before.  I'm a dead dad kid.  I've written some version of that in lots of other blog entries.  I'm the victim of losing my dad at a young age.  When a movie touches on similar plotlines, I tend to be a little more of a sap than your average viewer.  The thing about Fanny and Alexander is that too many beats align with my life.

I could read this as Bergman having insight into mortality and loss.  I mean, that's the most likely answer.  Bergman is Bergman.  He's no slouch.  I may not be the biggest Bergman guy in the world, but I've never pretended that the man wasn't a genius.  Like when Emilie Ekdahl speedruns her way into another marriage because she can't stand being an unmarried mother for two seconds, yeah, I went through the same thing.  And my stepfather also didn't care for me. So can I stay in any way objective about the value of this story?  I don't know.  It's a bit much when I feel like this movie is about me, which is entirely self-centered.  I feel like, in order to write anything of substance, I have to comment on things that didn't relate to me.

I suppose that means that I should write a few words about the Ishmael Ratzinsky stuff.  Now, Alexander is the perfect age for looking at the world in the way that he does.  He's a little too old to act the way he does, which, ironically is what makes it perfect.  There's an expectation placed upon Alexander to process all of this garbage in a mature way.  But Alexander is in this liminal place where he can both absorb the reality of what is happening around him and also have a need to tie the world around him into the spiritual / supernatural.  (Fun fact: I was convinced of a bunch of supernatural things involving my dead father in the years that followed his passing.  This stuff all rang true when watching the film.)   But the Ishmael Ratzinsky stuff?  Man, I have a hard time wrapping my head around it.

Fanny and Alexander always dances a little bit in a bigger world than the grounded stuff we can easily process.  Using Hamlet as an allusion is smart.  Yeah, the easy read on the whole thing is an angry young man angry at his mother for remarrying a tyrant.  But Oskar, when he collapses, is playing the ghost of Hamlet's father.  The fact that Alexander interacts with his father's spirit for the rest of the film (including the father that abused him) reminds us that "there is more in heaven and Earth" than the completely understandable.  That night, when he explores Isak's home, is almost a trip to Neverland.  I can't help but view Ishamel as androgynous, someone akin to David Bowie.  I struggle with this scene a lot, until the guardian angel confession.  Maybe it is a cop out for some viewers, but I find that guardian angel thing comforting.

Bergman has an interesting relationship with religion.  Alexander's father's death is a formative moment for Alexander.  Alexander finds himself not disbelieving the existence of God, but questioning why this God who abandoned him could be so cruel. When he has a very uncomfortable time with someone claiming to be guardian angel, it's forcing the issue to a head.  And it's not something that has a clear answer.  Bergman would probably disagree with that read. But Alexander's faith is not dictated by Vergerus.  Instead, it exists as something else.  It's interesting.

Still, I would always take the television cut of this movie.  It's still very good, but it also reads as wildly unbalanced compared to the television version.