Sentimental Bergman

...Oscar), self-parodying (Gustav Adolf), or embittered (Edvard and Carl, whose part seems to have been left on the cutting-room floor) The women are loving and indulgent, not to mention the cartoonlike pathos of that lame maid All lack credible motivation We never find out why Emilie marries Edvard when everyone can see what a cold fish he is, or why the beautiful young actress ever took up with the much older, much less talented Oscar Unexplained, too, are the reasons for Alma's accepting Gustav Adolf s philandering, for the hostility of Isak's son Aron toward Alexander, and for having his other son, Ismael, played by a woman And how come the female half of the title pair is so passive and poorly developed...

...Magic, for example, plays a large role in Fanny and Alexander, as it has in many of his movies Nevertheless, we cannot grant the supernatural any credibility because Bergman invokes it at odd moments without providing any context, much less a foundation At the very beginning, Alexander, hiding from the family, watches the statue of a nude woman come to life without disrupting the otherwise naturalistic flow of events If the story had continued from his point of view, that moment might have made some sense, suggesting the fine line between fantasy and reality for children Kael's special pleading notwithstanding, though, the film shuttles between the boy's perspective and omniscience with no discernible logic...

...Pauline Kael has an answer to that question The problem, she has proclaimed, is that the film is a "boy's fantasy " (As a result, Kael goes on to tell us, she doesn't feel "the tingle of recognition that the material might have for men ") That is a ridiculous analysis The film suffers most from not being anyone's fantasy, except the director's Bergman is, as usual, working out a private vision that seems arbitrary on screen because it is not sufficiently dramatized...

...In case we still do not comprehend the point about the role of the imagination in a realm of existential strife, Bergman throws in a leaden bit of Strindberg at the end, along with an inane and pompous speech by Gustav Adolf ("We must be able to grasp the world and reality, so that we can complain of its monotony with a clear conscience") 1 suspect his lines are supposed to be taken seriously, since they are delivered at a dual christening of Mat's daughter by him and Emilie's daughter by Edvard (vv ho is by then conveniently out of the picture) Nothing like babies to signal hope for the future...

...More insufferable are Bergman's meditations about the theater, in the form of Oscar's address to the cast at the Christmas party "My only talent," he says, "is that I love this little world inside the thick walls of this playhouse Outside is the big world, and sometimes the little world succeeds for a moment in reflecting the big world, so that we understand it better Or is it perhaps that we give the people who come here the chance of forgetting for a while the harsh world outside " Sure, and all the world's a stage, too...

...to remove from the downstairs hallway of the Bishop's house Seconds later, seemingly without leaving the hiding place, Fanny and Alexander materialize upstairs when Edvard, suspecting the escape plan, checks their room Bergman isn't obliged to supply a literal explanation of Jacobi's sleight-of-hand, but it should be believable, and it is not I suppose we're meant to take these doings on faith...

...Virtually every scene of Fanny and Alexander degenerates into ghastly cliches Helena sighing while reminiscing with her former lover, Isak Jacobi, about the time they were surprised by her late husband, the adulterous Gustav Adolf fornicating so vigorously with Maj that her bed collapses, flowing water to indicate the passage of time, Helena mulling over a scrapbook to show that more time has elapsed, lightning flashing and thunder clapping at the right moments By the time Oscar dies, laughter is the only possible response (He is struck down while rehearsing the ghost in Hamlet, later, his ghost reappears when Alexander-like Hamlet-is having difficulties with his stepfather...

...A few members of Bergman's familiar repertory company provide living links to his past Erland Josephson plays Isak, and Harriet Andersson is the Vergeruses' none-too-subtly named maid, Justine The cinematographer is Bergman's old collaborator Sven Nykvist, whose lush compositions would be just right for a soft-focus perfume ad on television The new performers, though, are inadequate to their tasks As Alexander, the director's semiautobiographical stand-in, Bertil Guve is a near-catatonic cipher In the key role of Emilie, Ewa Froling smiles too brightly and pouts with an ineptitude that is comical But the failure of Bergman's vision is so total in Fannv and Alexander that the bad acting ultimately makes little difference No more damning criticism could be made of a director w ho will be remembered, I believe, tor nothing more (and nothing less) than having elsewhere elicited so many splendid performances-even in his less than splendid films...

...Equally forced are the arch self-references Bergman seems determined to close his career with a spate of trivial allusions to his life and previous movies the recurring name of Vergerus, for instance, or Alexander's blatantly symbolic puppet theater and magic lantern (the director's favorite toys during his own youth) In addition, Fanny and Alexander appears to be Bergman's hommage to his longtime copyist, Woody Allen Like A Midsummer Night's Sex~ Comedy, it is a falsely wide-eyed attempt to reclaim the" innocence" of the turn of the century...

...That phony note of optimism is a clear indication of the willful quality of Bergman's nostalgia for those good old days when brothers and sisters stuck together in their "little world," with magic and friendly ghosts on their side, safe from the storms of the "big world" (and from religion, a bete noire for the director, himself the son of a clergyman) His sentimentality, moreover, has paid off The most expensive film ever produced in Sweden, Fanny and Alexander is also Bergman's first box-office hit in his native country...

...the screen Yet it is clear in retrospect how much he has benefitted from a widespread condescending appreciation of the medium No self-respecting literary critic would praise a novel that was as silly in its symbolism as The Seventh Seal, as muddled in its metaphysics as Wild Strawberries, as absurd in its allegory as The Virgin Spring Or, one must now add, as sappy in its sentimentality as Fanny and Alexander, Bergman's most unabashedly romantic work The romance in question is not so much between the sexes as among the members of a family, the Ekdahls, aristocrats whose frequent parties and nonstop hugging and kissing are apparently the only bright spots in an otherwise bleak and unidentified Swedish town (probably Uppsala) during the years 1907-09 There is Grandmother Helena, a widow and former stage star, her eldest son, Oscar, the manager of the family theater, his wife and leading lady, Emilie, and their eponymous children, ages 8 and 10, Carl, the second son, a professor, and his wife, Lydia, Gustav Adolf, the third son, a restaurateur and businessman, his wife, Alma, and their children, Petra and Jenny, and a-half-dozen affectionate servants, including the beautiful, lame MaJ, Fanny and Alexander's nursemaid...

...The film is like an unhappy marriage of Upstairs, Downstairs (part one, a fantasy of life among the ruling class) and Dynasty (part two, a Gothic tale of relatives feudin' and fussin') As in the BBC and ABC shows, the squabbling parents and siblings live under the same extravagantly maintained roof, where they are waited on hand and foot by adoring retainers Some doctoral candidate in sociology should write a dissertation about the recent rise of dynastic soap operas after the much-publicized decline of the traditional family over the past two decades No real-life clan would have any difficulty staying together if its every whim were satisfied in such palatial surroundings...

...On Screen SENTIMENTAL BERGMAN BY ROBERT ASAHINA Ingmar Bergman has announced that Fanny and Alexander will be his last movie, although he will continue to direct operas and plays for television and the stage I must confess, I do not find his departure cause for much regret Never an admirer to begin with, I think the latest film epitomizes his wildly overrated career Even his fans will find it disappointing...

...The characters are sillier than their situations the men are self-pitying...

...No one can deny that parts of The Naked Night, Smiles of a Summer Night, Winter Light, and Persona are extraordinary But few of his 38 other films are worthy of serious attention Consider such earnest mediocrities as Cries and Whispers, Face to Face and Scenes from a Marriage (which does not rise above its limitations as a made-for-Swedish-TV movie) Or try to recall those numerous forgettable failures The Devil's Eye, All These Women, The Silence, Shame, Hour of the Wolf The Touch, The Serpent's Egg...

...what we are not asked to swallow whole Bergman garnishes with cloying banality Trust Kael to get everything wrong Fanny and Alexander, she claims, "is at its strongest when it's most theatrical " Actually, the play-within-the-movie sequences are as boring as they are trite a mawkish Christmas pageant that offers no clue to Emilie's renown as a great actress, an amateurish rehearsal of Hamlet that ends, to our relief, with Oscar s demise...

...Much of Bergman's reputation (like Michelangelo Antonioni's) rests on his handling of modernist themes-man's fundamental alienation, loss of faith, despair at the inability to communicate-notions that have been found more often on the page than on...

...As a crude foil to the genial Ekdahls we have the icy Vergerus clan, into which Emilie unfortunately marries after Oscar's untimely death halfway through the film This gang of Nordic nightmares includes Bishop Edvard Vergerus, her new husband, Elsa Bergius, his crippled aunt, Henrietta, his spinster sister, and Blenda, his battleax mother They wear black and smile with a sneer to let you know they represent the dark side of the sunny Swedes who are lionized in the first half of this epic-length (over three hours) soap opera...

...Later, to free Fanny and Alexander from then tyrannical steptather, Jacobi abducts them in an utterly incoherent sequence One minute he stuffs the children into a cupboard that he plans...