Fanny and Alexander

I think the biggest privilege I have ever received in regards to cinema is getting the opportunity to see Fanny and Alexander on a big screen. I really do love this film on a level I can’t quite express. The first hour or so of it is just pure joy, whirling around these characters and engrossing ourselves in their beautiful imperfections, gaining a deep understanding as to their troubles and toils, but never once losing that overarching atmosphere of playful lightheartedness. For a director who spent his entire career wallowing in cynicism, Bergman’s last film and indeed his masterpiece is not in the least cynical. And following this, we are thrust violently into the unadorned and overbearingly empty abode of the evangelical bishop Edvard. Bergman’s study on the relationship between God and man and past and present assumes a Hamlet-like narrative where Alexander stubbornly thwarts the bishop at every turn at the expense of cruel punishment. But even then, I don’t think the character of Edvard is irredeemably evil. If there were one thing that Bergman approaches this film with, it is empathy, and it extends even to him. And then you have the technical elements of this film. It’s perfect, it’s completely refined, I don’t know what else to say. The framing is intimate and intelligent, the mise en scène is on a level of intricacy and detail that is nearly unrivalled, and the way it is used relative to framing is perfect. The way Bergman moves his camera contains such nuance that it might go unnoticed, but its effect is boundless. Nykvist’s cinematography here is one of its greatest achievements in the history of cinema without doubt, and to see that notoriously Bergman-esque use of close-ups on a cinema screen is a pleasure beyond pleasure. The editing is perfect as well, I don’t think the issues I cited in my old review hold much water. This is just one of those life-affirming films that instils you with a love for humanity itself. There is a small handful of directors who got better as they aged: Mizoguchi, Ozu, Dreyer, Yang - it’s a small list - but Bergman’s late career is unparalleled. To have been an undisputed cinematic master for twenty years before and to have had a body of work that already cemented him as one of the greatest of all time, and then to come out with the kind of films he did at the end of his career is an incredible feat, and Fanny and Alexander is its greatest component.