I recently read Bergman's autobiography "The Magic Lamp" and was impressed by a sentence in it.
"If we work hard, we can still distinguish between reality and fantasy. But is there really an absolute reality? Does God really exist? What about those legendary heroes? What about the story of opening up the Red Sea?"
The reality of our lives is wrapped in a coat of dreams.
There is also a passage in the book where Bergman was obsessed with a woman riding a horse in a circus as a child, and went to school to brag that he was going to the circus after this semester. The result was taken by my mother to see a children's doctor. Growing up, Bergman asked his mother, "Did none of you think I was imaginative when I said that?"
In the film, the bishop, who is never allowed to lie, is an extremely contradictory character. He believes in God, but does God just exist in fantasy. He is not allowed to lie and swear falsely because he believes that people should live in reality.
Bergman grew up in a pastor's family, and such contradictions and confusion are also the subject of discussion in many of his films. It seems that his films are all about religion, but every one of his films questions religion. Questioning whether God exists, questioning where people go after death. The dialogue with the god of death in the seventh seal, asking why God is only in fantasy. The knocked-down coffin in the wild strawberry dream, the clock without hands.
And Fanny and Alexander are the most straightforward. This film even has a bit of magical realism, and the gorgeous scenes even remind me a little bit of reminiscence of the past. Bergman's deeply hated pastor father, who he didn't even want to visit when he passed away, and Bergman's beloved mother, are all presented as parents in the film. Only in the film Bergman divides his father into two people. The dead father corresponds to the father Bergman wants in his heart, and the stepfather is the person Bergman hates. Probably because Bergman was in too much contact and too close, so he kept asking God.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Bergman's film. When you watch it, you will be immersed in it unconsciously, and the lines like a stage play make people want to watch it again and understand it again. Bergman asks again and again where the soul goes, whether truth and fantasy can coexist, and from time to time let people see the beauty of life.
Life is nothing but the pain of being addicted to imagination and unrequited love in childhood, the confusion of picking wild strawberries and dating a lover when you are young, the reputation left after everything is lost after aging, and the meaning of death that you want to know but dare not know. Throughout our lives, we have repeatedly questioned our "God", and when we finally closed our eyes and fell asleep, we only wanted to remember that when the sun was just right, we ran to the coast and saw the silhouette of our loved ones.
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