The story begins at Christmas: it is the very early part of the 20th century and the Ekdahls are coming together to celebrate under the roof of the family's matriarch: Helena. As they do so, we see the surfacing of the complexities, buried resentments and background tensions which exist within all large families. Amidst this set up, we are presented three brothers: Gustav, a burly, emotional man who is having an affair with his brother's nanny; Carl, an intellectual, petty individual who is experiencing a crisis of confidence as well as a crisis in his finances; and Oscar, the eponymous Fanny and Alexander's father, he is the owner of a local theatre who has dedicated his life to the world of make-believe. He has also inculcated in his children a reverance for imagination and story-telling. The family celebrations are immoderately festive: there's copious amounts of eating, there's dancing, illicit sexual encounters, an oedipal-esque menage a trois, which includes Alexander, and, for him and the rest of the children, there's ample space for imagination and play. As the film progresses, these events become something of a nostalgic ideal. Very soon after, the children are forced to contend with the illness and death of a loved one. They are whisked away from their world of family and theatre into a life of privation and austerity. Many twists and turns will have to occur before they can return to the place they once were. Of course, the truth is that they will never be able to fully return and, yet, neither will they fully be able to leave. The joys of their childhood will forever remain buried within their memories. It will be the treasure trove they can dig for in the midst of the vicissitudes of their future existence.
This epic film operates as a humanistic reflection on life and human nature. Bergman, along with Jean-Luc Godard, is the foremost name in existentialist cinema and he often deals with powerful themes such as the silence of God, the limits of love, and the pervasiveness of despair. This film operates as a weaving together of his observations and experiences of life as an artist but, first and foremost, as a human being. His writing is immaculate, he takes the time to make his characters genuinely rich and well-rounded. He tells a story in which there are no heroes or villains, just clumsy human beings, striving for but never quite reaching ultimate balance and wisdom. In the character of Alexander, he tells a coming-of-age story, a story of defiance, vulnerability and resiliance. The film, as a work of art, is a celebration of art itself. The tools needed to create are the tools many of the characters, especially the children, use to survive and make sense of their world. He uses long takes with naturalistic dialogue and centres the viewer within the confines of multiple sets, hardly any of the action takes place in outside locations as if to make it abundantly clear to the viewer that, despite the naturalism of the piece, this tale also is a tale of the imagination, taking place within a world created by its director. In telling this tale, he is both using and allowing his audience to experience a form of escpaism in order to evaluate the meaning and value of existence. This is cinema which unites its creator with its audience in order to produce a dense shared experience. It's a gift from one human being to another which says: this is how I have lived and sometimes prospered, may you also live, may you also sometimes prosper.
