Fanny and Alexander (1982, Ingmar Bergman) (Patreon)

59/100

Second viewing, last seen 1993. That was the theatrical edit, whereas this time I watched the complete five-hour mini-series; hard to compare the two with any confidence, given a gap of nearly 30 years, but I very likely prefer the shorter (and more widely seen) version, which almost certainly elides a great deal of tangential family melodrama that represents what I most dislike about Bergman. The first episode, in particular, runs the length of an ordinary film all by itself and is of virtually no interest to me, though I acknowledge that Dad's chair story (which I'm afraid kinda bores me in the actual telling; the magic lantern sequences, likewise, are to my mind surprisingly devoid of magic) sets up an important contrast with the Bishop's anti-imagination crusade. Much of this ultra-leisurely introduction to the Ekdahl family winds up having no bearing on the evil-stepfather narrative that finally emerges; you need to appreciate the sprawl for its own sake, and it seems significant that trimming 40% of the work did no real damage. (Cut 80 minutes from Jeanne Dielman—a film in which "nothing happens"—and you'd be left with something close to unwatchable, I suspect.) All of the horniness involving Gustav Adolf and Maj plays like reheated Smiles of a Summer Night (my favorite Bergman by far, but that was freshly made), and there are few things I enjoy less—however one wants to define that verb—than utterly cruel (but ultimately pathetic) men like Carl who constantly spew such open bile as "Why did I marry you? You're ugly, poor and barren." 

Lemme put it another way. Here's how the film's Wikipedia plot summary begins: 

In 1907, young Alexander, his sister Fanny, and their well-to-do family, the Ekdahls, live in a Swedish town, running a moderately profitable theatre. At Christmastime, the Ekdahls hold a Nativity play and later a large Christmas party. The siblings' parents, Emilie and Oscar, are happily married until Oscar suddenly dies from a stroke. Shortly thereafter, Emilie marries Edvard Vergérus, the local bishop and a widower, and moves into his home where he lives with his mother, sister, aunt, and maids.

That's just the first paragraph of seven, constituting only ~80 of the summary's 550 words. It's also, no joke, the first three hours of the mini-series. (Which is to say, the theatrical cut's entire length.) Granted, you could play this game with the synopsis of many a masterpiece, but I genuinely don't think that Fanny and Alexander merits being any longer than, say, Sawdust and Tinsel or The Virgin Spring. There's a potentially terrific film here, but even in the "short" version, it's buried in nostalgic self-indulgence (which everybody else loves, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

Still, let me now acknowledge: The parts of Fanny and Alexander that are actually about Fanny and Alexander (albeit much, much more he than she) are among Bergman's finest work. Both child actors are remarkably self-possessed and entirely free of cuteness; Bertil Guve has to embody a frightened little boy one moment, a stubbornly courageous young man the next, and makes these seemingly contradictory sides of Alexander not just credible but complementary. It's Jan Malmsjö, however, who provides the film with its dramatic heft, turning in...well, I don't often break out the superlatives, but if there's a finer portrait of a tyrannical patriarch in all of cinema history, it's not leaping to mind. It's often said that playing a villain well requires the actor in question to think of himself as the hero, but rarely do you see such a loathsome character portrayed with such quiet, firm conviction, ready to make a maddeningly rational case for every uncharitable and/or abusive act. There's never any doubt that the Bishop believes himself to be treating his new family with the utmost care and compassion, insane though that perspective seems to us; there are even times—most notably when Carl and Gustav Adolf show up to engage in negotiation sprinkled with some light blackmail—when I involuntarily found myself respecting this martinet's commitment to his damaged moral compass. In a strange way, the utter implacability of Malmsjö's performance almost demands supernatural intervention, which is why it somehow doesn't faze me when Isak apparently projects an image of Fanny and Alexander onto the floor of their bedroom as he smuggles them out in a trunk, or when the Bishop's fate gets connected to events taking place in Isak's home (involving a long-dead mummy and an androgynous/non-binary(?) young man in a cage). Fanny and Alexander becomes so uncanny, intense and tightly controlled in the home stretch—which in this context lasts perhaps 90 minutes—that its abrupt re-expansion during the lengthy epilogue, checking in again on the Ekdahl family at large (plus the theatrical troupe), instead feels deflating. It'll probably be a while before I take another look at the theatrical cut, if ever I do, but it now seems as if that might be among my favorite Bergmans, alongside Smiles and Sawdust and Persona. 

Most distracting anachronism: A reference to the universe expanding, which I was pretty darn sure had not yet been discovered in 1908. (It had not. 1922.)

Best alternate phrasing of a common insult: "Kiss me where my back changes its name."