Fanny and Alexander [Fanny och Alexander] (Bergman, 1982)

[madali]

Fanny and Alexander [Fanny och Alexander] (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)

One of my favorite directors is Ingmar Bergman, but I will be the first one to admit that his films sometimes can get a bit tiring. What kind of experience would "Fanny and Alexander" be for me? Would I fall in love with it, or would it's length overshadow its Bergman brilliance?

The shortened theater version is 3 hours and 8 minutes, already much longer than my preferred 90 minute golden rule. But the version I sit down to watch is the director's cut, 312 minutes, 5 hours and 12 minutes. And it's 12 midnight and I'm not in a particularly good mood. Am I to punish myself? Or to force myself to start it, go to bed, and since it is started, to finish it the next day?

I start. And lives later, it is 6 am, the sun is out, and the film is over. I sleep, and the film is on my mind, and I wake, and wander through my day, and I feel the film within me. Between midnight until dawn, where I usually dream by myself, this time I outsource my dreams, and let Bergman's film dream for me. And it is a big dream, a big film, with big ideas, but all revolving around the biggest concept of them all – Life. For while "Fanny and Alexander" is about many things, religion, family, love, and while it has many different characters in it, it is ultimately a big masterpiece about people trying to live and what living means to us all.

An overwhelming film, one wonders how a director could fit so much, in the measly duration of 312 minutes. Because the movie contains contents enough for ten times that. This is Bergman's masterpiece.

5/5

[X.]

You're right: I too saw the TV version (or, director's cut, as you say) about two years ago at an art museum, and the film has lived inside me since. It's about childhood after all; the best period of our lives.

[madali]

When you watch many movies, they soon stop impressing you that much. This one was one in a while which shook me.