ando wrote:The portraits of character are brutally realistic so that events can be as fantastic as Bergman cares to paint them. The plausible is thereby irrelevant.
That's a really good point. On a kind-of related note: I often think that Bergman isn't that great at 'plotting', or pacing, which is more of a problem in some of the early, plot-heavy melodramas. For the most part it doesn't matter, because we get so absorbed in the authentic human story being told. The first part of
Fanny and Alexander, in particular, is quite bold in its disregard for 'story' and 'action'. When I watched it with my wife a year or two ago, she said that it captured that feeling you get in childhood where time passes slowly, you feel quite bored at times (the interminable Christmas meals, the reading from the Bible), and the stakes are always low - which is both comforting and frustrating. There's also a nice sense that the older characters are returning to a similar state, but weighed down by their lifetime of experience. It wouldn't be wholly inappropriate if, like Isak, you felt yourself almost nodding off while Helena rambles mournfully about her life, just as later on you might start to tune out during Isak's bedtime reading to the rescued children.
ando wrote:I think the narrative adopts an ambiguity similar to dreams though the fact of whether or not events are real seems secondary to the subject dreaming it - in this case, Alexander.
Yes, I agree about this ambiguity, although I don't think we see everything through Alexander's consciousness. One crucial idea in the first part is that the children experience Christmas in one way, the adults in another, and at that point the two realms are kept reasonably separate. Part of what makes the subsequent episodes so painful is the way that adult problems invade the children's lives (the gruesome apparatus surrounding the father's death-bed, for instance). We see this coming from the start, and Alexander has premonitions about it too, but he always has a limited perception and understanding of what's going on. So I think it's important to see the film operating on different levels, and from different perspectives - even including Edvard's, towards the end.
teddyleevin wrote:I first saw the film when I was maybe 16 and can only really remember one thing about the miraculous escape: the way Bergman is shown in the documentary (and on the artwork for same) to directly demonstrate to Erland Josephson what he wants to have happen. It's a moment of stark conviction from the filmmaker (who is already so intensely meticulous) and produces a gasp and a lump in my throat every time I see it.
That image of Bergman illustrating Isak's gesture is very striking. It's as if Bergman, as a storyteller, is expressing an intense frustration with the way the story is playing out: Edvard sees through Isak's trick, of course, because it's a dumb trick and he's a clever man, but why does life have to be like this? Why, in telling this story, do we have to let this happen - why can't it be easier to save these children from this monster? I also find it very poignant, precisely because it's a piece of wish-fulfilment. If only real-life families could be saved so easily. And of course that awareness of how real-life problems haunt you beyond childhood shapes the narrative from then on.
teddyleevin wrote:How about the title? I've always appreciated the misdirect inherent as it's clearly Alexander's story, but Fanny remains a compelling bystander and victim as daughter and sister.
You're right, but something would be missing if you left Fanny out of the title. As you say she's primarily a bystander, a witness to what Alexander goes through (some of it anyway), an ally for him (as when she refuses Edvard's embrace), and someone he has to take responsibility for when no one else does. So she's an important part of his life. Mainly, though, I think the point of the title is that this isn't just about one particular child. From the Ekdahls' point of view, it is 'the children' who are at stake throughout these traumatic events, and the film is first and foremost about children, or about childhood: in a way Alexander is, like Fanny, a kind of cipher through which the film can explore complicated themes. In other words the film isn't a character study of Alexander, even if it tends to focus on his experiences. I'm not sure if that makes sense - it's just an attempt to say what the title means to me, really.
