Fanny and Alexander Reviews

A masterpiece, summa bergmaniana, IB regressionates to his childhood and you have sametime the trembling and surprised point of view of a terrosized and sensitive child, and the intelligence, the wit, of a man enjoying big quiestions about moral and religion and society. I love the openminded Ekdahls and I hate, not, I pity, the bishop and his family.

This is now my fourth Ingmar Bergman film I have watched, I think this will be my last, as I have not become a fan of Bergman's work at all. This movie is how I expected it be be- Dull, Boring and very very off-putting. Well that's just one way of saying it. It still wasn't as bad as 'Persona', although not far off. First it already started off by having something I absolutely dread in a movie; A play, which went on exceedingly long for me, I was already half asleep, then when I semi woke up I had something even worse come after; a long long boring, tedious talk, which seems to be Mr. Bergmans way of showing his mark, which shows pretty much why I dislike his movies. I mean I guess the house was rather pretty and nice, but, it did not help that going on inside the house was boredom and silliness, and when it wasn't that, we had dullness.

Oh, and Bergman treated us to his "Oh, so unique skill of camera work", ehem' ehem', so basically it's Godard all over again, anyway, if you didn't like his other films dont bother with this- Simple as.

I already saw this movie but since it was a while back and since it is a classic, I was quite eager to give it a second chance. Well, even if I was able to enjoy it slightly more this time around, to be honest, I still had a hard time to care for the damned thing though. Fist of all, I was surprised by how little I actually remembered this movie which wasn’t really a good sign. It’s interesting that the only thing I did remember was when Alexander, Fanny and their mother went to live with Edvard Vergerus but, somehow, I think it does make sense. Indeed, even if Vergerus was definitely a dreadful guy, he was however the only fully developed character in this whole story and, therefore, the only one who made an impression on me. For example, at some point, Emilie made the decision to marry with Edvard but they never gave us any explanation why and, then, 5 mins later, she was complaining about her marriage and wanted out. As a result, it was rather difficult to root for her but it’s something that could be said about all the characters in this movie. Indeed, you spend more than 3 hours with them but you don’t really get to know any of them. At least, even he still remained an enigma, I was more able to appreciate the mysterious scenes involving Alexander who was an intriguing young boy. However, I still don’t get why his sister was mentioned in the title since she did so very little and had so little impact on everything happening around her. Anyway, this movie is obviously considered as a massive masterpiece, and, I guess, as far I’m concerned, it belongs to the category 'misunderstood masterpiece’. What I mean by that is that I was able to see all the craft behind it, I could see it was obviously a work of Art but I'm afraid I didn't really get it. Basically, there was a lot of symbolism that went just way over my head. I mean, during the whole thing I was scratching my head thinking 'What did he mean with all this?' and, honestly, at the end of the movie, I didn't get some answers. Still, such a challenging movie should always be praised when you see how simplistic and moronic are the movies produced by Hollywood and I will not a blame a movie because I just didn't get it. Anyway, to conclude, even though it is definitely an acquired taste, it is still a classic and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Ingmar Bergman's work.

Perhaps one of Bergman’s least known movies, this I consider to be one of his best.

This is an autobiographical tale of a brother and sister born in an aristocratic family in Sweden. The story is part Dickensian drama, part mystical fairy tale.

Yes, it is long and slow, and may put modern action viewers off, but every image is worth seeing. The entire film has a dreamy sense of the unreal, a relief during its more tragic moments.