Whenever I begin to talk or write about Ingmar Bergman’s work there is always a feeling that I can’t do him justice. When I read what others, way more eloquent than myself, have written about his work, the same thought haunts me. Then I begin to question why is this? One explanation keeps resurfacing – his films are to feel, not to talk about. Take for example, Fanny and Alexander (1982). It seems impossible (to me at least) to accurately describe melancholic feeling I get while I’ve been drawn into Bergman’s delicate memories.
When expressionless Alexander (Bertil Guve) is watching a statue move from underneath the table, at the beginning of the film, I can say - yes that’s young Bergman I’m looking at. But when it comes to expressing how and why I instantly have tender feelings toward that child-actor, I’m at loss with words. The same goes for the Christmas celebration sequence. Bergman carefully designed the set of his grandmother’s house on the Christmas Eve. Christmas trees, fancy dresses, and too much food on silver plates combined with children running around Victorian-style furniture radiate warmth and happiness. Still, behind each camera movement and cut I could feel Bergman’s presence.
Fanny and Alexander thoroughly follow Bergman’s life – both professional and spiritual. The first sequence in the film, aforementioned Christmas celebration, marks his childhood spent at his grandmother’s house in Uppsala, and his happy years directing theatre plays. The second sequence examines young Ingmar’s troubled years spent with his conservative and abusive father, a Lutheran minister. Bergman often admitted that his father’s teaching methods, like locking him in a closet as a punishment, left deep scars on his soul. In Fanny and Alexander, the children’s mother marries a conservative minister after sudden death of her husband, who was a theater actor. Even though no such thing happened to Bergman, he wanted to show clear distinction between his spiritual father (theater) and real father, who represented church (reality). The dark ages spent in the cold house with his stepfather also represent Bergman’s noir black and white films of the 1960s. Finally, the third sequence of the film is return to the magical, and breaking away with the rational constraints imposed on him by the world. Young Alexander and his sister Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) are magically saved from the house of their stepfather by Isak Jakobi (Erland Josephson). Isak is a Jewish curiosity dealer, who also happens to be their grandmother’s lover. Once they are safe in Isak’s oddity shop, far from reality, Alexander and his new friend Ismail imagine how Bishop will die, which in reality is exactly how Alexander’s stepfather dies.
Fanny and Alexander left many open questions – what did Alexander have to do with his stepfather’s death, or did the statue at the beginning really move? Rather than explaining further, Bergman ends the movie with words from A Dream Play by Strindberg, “… time and space do not exist. On a flimsy framework of reality, the imagination spins, weaving new patterns.”
To fully grasp Ingmar Bergman’s poetic soul, one must sit and watch his films. Reading about them is as silly as trying to smell a painting of a rose.
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