Wednesday, January 18, 1904
Daily Nebraskan
A pensive look at childhood
Review by Eric Peterson
Seen through the eyes of Alexander,
the circumstances of life in a Swedish
town are as pure and alarming as a
fairy tale. Fanny and Alexander, three
hours long and very rich, is Ingmar
Bergman's most recent film. It shows
at the Plaza 4 Theatres at 5:15 and 8:45
p.m. daily.
The most persistent images in the
film, which recur with fitness and
delight, are those of the theater and
other illusions. The first shot we see is
of elaborate and colorful paper houses
which lift to reveal the listless eyes of a
small boy, Alexander. There is a Christ
mas play near the start of the film
we might at first take the actors for
cardboard figures and Alexander's
family are theater people.
Even God turns out to be a puppet
towering among other puppets, with
blazing painted eyes and fiercely-carved
eyebrows. The heads of the house (there
is a change when Oscar, Alexander's
father, dies) make two sentimental
speeches about theater which form
part of the beginning and the end
Alexander's father is very near tears at
the start when he speaks of how theater
has meant everything to the Ekdahls,
his family. "Sometimes the little world
reflects the big one for a few moments,
forgetting the harsh world outside.
Our theater's a small world of orderli
ness, routine and love."
Home life for the Ekdahls is sup
posed to be the same, to fill the same
need for orderliness, routine and love
that art can. Christmas in their house
is the fondest picture of childhood
imaginable: splendid decorations fill
the place, as do the warm and large
family and circle of friends. Through
the house the grandmother moves with
grace and authority. Christmas is the
only meal for which the servants join
the family at the table; and there is a
lovely view of people carrying torches
to light their way to church (which in a
surprising and significant shift turns
out to be the theater during the middle
of the miracle play).
There is in this continuing stress on
theater and illusion a gentle acknowl
edgment that human living is an exer
cise of trying on masks and an
expression of the desire for aesthetic
fulfillment even in the actions of daily
life and a realization that people
often find their lives turning into plays
or fairy tales.
The texture of the film and of Alex
ander's experience in it has very much
the look and feel of a fairy tale, in fact.
There is the idyllic and serene begin
ning, the entrance of the wicked step
l father, the moment of peril and des
pair, the sudden (and improbable)
z
Bergman Lest Film
Fanny end Alexander, directed
by Ingmar Bergman; screenplay
by Ingmar Bergman; produced
by Jorn Donner. At the Plaza 4,
12th and P streets. Rated R.
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with radiant twin babies, Alexander's
new siblings. And there are ghosts
his father's self-effacing and melan
choly figure appears at crucial moments
after his death, to watch his wife's
remarriage, for example. Even in the
midst of the happy ending happily
ending, the wicked stepfather, a dead
bishop, comes to knock the boy to the
ground and snarl, "You can't escape
me."
Alexander thinks of his mother's
remarriage to the insufferable minis
ter as a betrayal to his father, who in
fact was acting the role of Hamlet's
father when he collapsed on stage, and
died soon after. "Don't act Hamlet, my
son " Alexander's mother gently tells
him. "I am not Gertrude, the bishop is
not Claudius, and this place, though it
is gloomy, is not Elsinore."
And so we naturally think of the
bishop's house as Elsinore from that
moment, with its gray stone walls and
bars on the windows, and river which
courses like a moat just in front of the
house. The contrast between the warm
and mysterious childhood home that
Alexander's grandmother presides so
beautifully over and this ascetic and
cruel place gives us some of the strongest
visual images in the film the cheer
less light and pain coarsened faces at
Elsinore placed in the mind beside his
grandmother Helena's face in its joy
and sadness, and the splendid place
she has made.
Bergman makes an extraordinary
confrontation between the boy and
the minister. In his love of dramatic
expression, Alexander tells a story
which might as well have been true,
though everyone else called it lies
how the bishop's dead wife and child
ren drowned while trying to escape
Elsinore and its grim lord. The scene
where the bishop beats the boy into
admitting he told a lie is extraordinary
and painful the bishop always hid
ing his power lust and unloosed res
entment behind pious lies of how his
cruelty is kind.
"I think the bishop hates Alexander,"
the boy responds with an even and
slow gaze, and his eyes in their reserve
and detachment are the most haunt
ing thing we see in the film.
( a ;
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