The three-hour movie took me several times to finish watching it. To be honest, I wasn't fascinated at all. It can even be said that the content of the movie did not attract me as much as I imagined. I dare not say that I understand the film, maybe not even half. I've always been very dumb when it comes to such imaginative and childhood memories.
I believe this is a film by Bergman with a strong autobiographical color. In the mind of the master in his later years, imagination and reality are already blended together, and life experience and artistic accomplishment are integrated into it. In the eyes of people who are not familiar with the world, the film may seem like a dream, or it may not be understood, but in fact I am shocked by the dialogue from time to time, and sometimes I can't figure it out.
When I saw Oscar's soul appearing, I regarded this film as a movie with a magical reality theme; and when I saw the end, Alexander was lying on grandma's lap, and grandma read aloud: Anything is possible/Everything is possible Can happen/Time and space don't exist/Under the fragile frame of reality/Imagination is like a spinning thread interwoven with new patterns. I also felt that the whole movie was a fantasy of Alexander's half-asleep.
In the eyes of children, everything has life, there are countless ghosts around us, there are various unknown but powerful supernatural forces in life, and God may not be all-powerful or all-right; In the eyes of a very active thinking artist, the world is not like this. Children have different understandings of life and death, family, and God than adults; and as adults, we have more experience than them, but may not have a more correct understanding. If Bergman is telling all this from the child's point of view, can we see it all from the child's point of view?
Although the protagonist of the film is Alexander, in fact, it depicts everyone in this big family lifelike, with their own characteristics and their own troubles and temperaments, especially the pillar-like old grandmother Helena. The bishop's personality is very complicated. We can't say that he is a heinous villain, and of course we can't say that he is a good person. So in the end, his fate really made me struggle.
After watching the movie, I kept thinking about what Bergman wanted to convey to the audience in the movie, or what he had put so much effort into creating this movie for. What I have is only a few scattered experiences. If this film is a magnificent art treasure, then I have only seen a few beams of light.
In addition to the content that puzzled me, I have to sigh that the film depicts a small Swedish town like a paradise. Whether it is Christmas Eve when the city is closed by snow, or the beautiful spring and summer seasons, there is a kind of fresh and quiet beauty. As for Helena's home, the gorgeous atmosphere, the furniture and rooms with classical style, and the sumptuous Christmas dinner are undoubtedly a visual feast.
For Alexander, in my mind, he was the Bergman of childhood. Precocious, intelligent, lonely, somewhat timid, with all kinds of whims and questions. Such a child may have a big family, but he may not be able to find someone who fully understands him. He will grow up slowly, and may always be a little out of tune with this society, and may eventually become a Bergman-style character.
View more about Fanny and Alexander reviews
