Time and space do not exist.
Under the fragile framework of reality, imagination is like spinning threads, interwoven with new patterns.
Can Alexander sleep peacefully in his grandmother's arms?
As a young man he always saw ghosts: father, sister, bishop. Just like the slowly moving sickle at the opening, the skeletons in black robes loomed under the shadows of the branches.
No matter how beautiful life is, death always follows.
Slides and puppets, and Shakespeare's plays, were all Bergman's lifelong obsessions.
The scarlet drapery, thick and even suffocating, the walls are covered with oil paintings, walking through them, like a labyrinth, small and at a loss. This is true aristocratic style.
But the people living in it are still trapped in various spiritual cages and cannot escape. Gustav has a straightforward personality, but he is obsessed with eroticism. He is still hunting for beauty when he is over half a hundred years old. As a scholar, Carl is financially poor. He loves his wife and hates her immensely. He vents his hatred for his incompetence on his wife. The swearing in the bedroom is really the most brutal mental torture. Oscar was deeply loved by his mother and was in charge of the family theater, but died young, leaving behind a pair of children who were left unattended. Widow Elsa couldn't resist the devastation of loneliness and married the bishop, but she never thought it would be another strong and cold cage. She married an indifferent "god" that could only be admired. Abused and humiliated, Alexander was locked in the attic with scars, and how horrific he would have endured if his mother had not arrived in time. The two dead daughters of the bishop appeared in front of Alexander and told him the truth of their death. The ice water that he vomited at the end must be bone-chilling.
Bergman peers around through Alexander's eyes, to the deepest fears and human flaws in childhood. Everyone cannot escape being a prisoner of life. The struggle is nothing but an illusion.
Perhaps because of his old age, Bergman has compromised after all, and is much gentler. Alexander was saved, and was free to walk through the big house again, sleeping with his beloved bear.
Movies are dreams, movies are music. There is no art form that goes beyond the ordinary, reaches directly to our emotions, and penetrates into our soul world like film.
The soul world, really, a five-hour movie, is full of unspeakable mysteries.
The boundary between reality and fantasy disappears. If there really was a God, why didn't he show up and see him, instead, he was a ghost, a god of death, haunting Alexander all the time and driving him away?
In the silent mansion, the young man really saw a ghost.
View more about Fanny and Alexander reviews
