Fanny & Alexander was Ingmar Bergman's supposed but not actual swan song, the culmination of his talents as a filmmaker. It was a challenging and personal story to tell, epic in both its length and execution, yet the film is light, unencumbered by its morality.
Centering on the Corleonesque Ekdahl family, Fanny & Alexander is about young ten year old Alexander (Fanny is like John Oates in this regard, a glorified backup singer) and how he deals when his father, the head of a theater troupe, dies and his mother is remarried to a strict bishop. Where Alexander's imagination was once cultivated, it is now squashed.
One doesn't have to look to hard to see Bergman in Alexander, who acts as megaphone for Bergman's love of creativity, art, and imagination and his distrust of anything that gets in the way of those pursuits.
Out of the venerable masters of cinema, Bergman has been the one I’ve avoided. His work seemed bogged down, bleak as a Swedish winter. It was this quality that pushed me away from Bergman, yet there is much joy and whimsy in Fanny & Alexander.
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