Birth of a Career

Film: Roger & Me
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I have something of a love/hate relationship with Michael Moore. When he first started, I was a big fan, which means you can expect that I’m going to end up reviewing this film favorably, since it is his first. However, as his career progressed, it became evident that as a documentarian, Moore was often less than honest, and sometimes edited events to suit his narrative rather than for truth. Eventually, I started to look at Moore as a liberal version of Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly: an ideologue with little to really add to the conversation.

But, boy! was he different when he first started. Roger & Me is clever, pointed, and sardonic as well as uncompromising. Moore goes straight for the throat and scores, and spends the rest of the film essentially jumping up and down on a damp patch where a dead horse once lay. So, while the film may well be overkill for the point that Moore is trying to make, the dark, bitter humor carries it through to the end.

Roger & Me is the story of Moore’s attempt to bring General Motors Chairman Roger Smith to Flint, Michigan for a day to meet with the people. Why? Because Smith closed the auto plants in Flint, putting 30,000 people out of work and devastating the town. Moore addresses this immediately in the film, suggesting that the plant closings were not to rescue a dying company but to build new plants in Mexico where workers would perform the same tasks at a fraction of the pay. Essentially, then, this film is one of the first media looks at the problem of outsourcing and loss of American manufacturing.

To tell the story, Moore splices in several attempts to meet with Smith in the GM headquarters in Detroit, as well as attempts to blindside the man at various other spots around the country. Moore spends some time speaking to other wealthy people in the Flint area, and to a person, they seem completely out of touch with the reality of the lives of the former GM workers. We see a local sheriff who is forced to evict dozens of families per day around the area interspersed with scenes of Smith discussing the meaning of Christmas at a yearly GM event. We see a woman forced to sell rabbits for meat told she could no longer supplement her income in this way due to health laws while the wealthy play polo. It’s powerful stuff.

And herein lies the problem. I’m aware that Moore played with reality on a number of his films, moving particular events in time so that they would conform to the narrative he wanted to present rather than the truth of the event he purported to be depicting. It forces me to wonder if he hasn’t done the same thing here. When he sneaks into a GM shareholders’ meeting, for instance, and attempts to ask a question only to have Smith immediately shut the meeting down, I’m forced to consider the possibility that this isn’t really what happened. Perhaps Smith really did answer his question. Perhaps Moore’s question and the response we are shown happened half an hour apart. I can’t know, and therein lies the problem here. Like a cop accused of evidence tampering, the future bad behavior taints everything that came before it. It throws everything into question.

The first rule for a documentarian should be that the truth is inviolate and something with which one should never tamper. Of course, that’s an ideal; even the first documentary (Nanook of the North, for those playing along at home) bent the truth and planned particular shots in certain ways for a specific effect. But that is significantly different from forcibly altering a chain of events. I’m left to wonder if Moore actually had enough of an impact to force Smith to shut down a shareholders’ meeting or if that’s more or less a trick of editing and an example of Moore’s hubris. The aforementioned eviction cut in with Smith's Christmas speech almost certainly didn't happen simultaneously, but we're certainly led to believe the two events are simultaneous.

All of this leaves me in a quandary.

The truth is that I like this movie a lot. The narrative that Moore gives us is beautifully edited to present this particular story. We see a wealthy class of people completely out of touch with the reality that most of their fellow citizens deal with on a given day. We see a company so devoid of humanity that it happily destroys a major city to save some money. We see a man so unwilling to communicate with anyone questioning him that he has the filmmaker forcibly removed from his building at all times.

It’s effective. It’s infuriating and funny and dark and brutal, but mostly it carries with it a sort of gallows humor that plays extremely well throughout. I just wish I could trust it, because the movie I loved the first time I saw it a few decades ago no longer has the assurance of complete truth that it once did.

Why to watch Roger & Me: Moore’s signature style in its earliest incarnation.
Why not to watch: Knowing his editing “tricks” in subsequent films, it can be difficult to trust.

No Ticket, No Money

Film: Le Million (The Million)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I’ve been trying to watch something from the earliest years at least once a week, a goal that I sometimes succeed at and sometimes simply do not. Films like Le Million (The Million) are the reason that I sometimes do not watch one of these early films and also the reason why I’m really happy to have most of the first 100 films done.

Anyway, Le Million is the story of Michel Bouflette (Rene Lefevre), a poor artist who is in debt to just about everyone he knows. Just as his creditors come to call on him and demand payment, his friend Prosper (Jean-Louis Allibert) shows up and tells him that one of them has just won one million florins in a lottery. Just before they determine who has the winning ticket, Michel offers a 50/50 split regardless, which Prosper declines. As it turns out, Michel has the ticket.

Unfortunately, the ticket is in his old coat, which is in the apartment of Beatrice (Annabella), his fiancé. What he doesn’t know is that Beatrice has given the coat away to a thief named Granpere Tulipe (Paul Ollivier). Naturally, the coat doesn’t stay with him, either. So what follows is a grand chase for the coat around Paris. The police are after Tulipe and think that Michel actually is Tulipe. Michel and Beatrice want the jacket back. Prosper wants Michel out of the way so that he can claim the ticket as his own. And, as the saying goes, hilarity ensues.

Except that it sort of doesn’t. The biggest problem with this film is the opening several minutes after the credits. We discover these characters whose story we will soon learn about in the middle of a celebration. We’re told that they are celebrating something wonderful that has happened and that everything has turned out perfectly. So there’s not a bit of tension in this story—we know from the beginning that whatever problems we are going to encounter on the way to the finish are going to come out fine in the end. Michel in jail? We know he won’t stay there. The jacket stolen? We know it will come back.

Okay, it could easily be argued that with musical comedy we know going in that it’s all going to come out right in the end anyway. But a good musical comedy will keep that tension ratcheted up and put us in a position in which we don’t know how we’ll get to a happy ending. Or it will play with the ending and give us the happy ending we didn’t know was there. Lots of possibilities even though we expect the happy ending. Here, not so much.

Additionally, the entire plot and the success of our characters depends entirely on luck, and in several cases, the sort of luck that would make a Charles Dickens character blush. Michel is difficult to root for not because he is poor, but because he is successful in everything he does purely by chance rather than skill, determination, or any other positive quality. Better lucky than good, I suppose, but this film takes that to a ridiculous extreme.

I suppose that the songs are decent, but they’re not really anything that special. I found it interesting that many times the songs were not being sung by the characters in the context of the film, but appear more or less as a given character’s thoughts or conscience. That, at the very least, was an interesting difference from what I expected.

As it turns out, though, there’s not a lot here to recommend. The film is guilty in a large respect of equating personal value with bank account. Michel is a bum until the moment he has a winning lottery ticket, where upon he becomes a man greatly respected and to be taken seriously. The fact that this is disturbingly true to life doesn’t change the fact that this opinion seems to be fully endorsed and encouraged by this film.

And finally, for a musical comedy, it’s remarkably unfunny. I barely cracked a smile.

On a positive note, it’s only about 81 minutes long, so at least the pain is fairly brief. I was surprised at one point to check the time and discover that I had only about 10 minutes of the film left. So I guess that’s a good thing. At least I tell myself that that’s a good thing.

Why to watch Le Million : A very early look at musical comedy.
Why not to watch: There’s no tension and it’s not very good. Mostly, it’s not very good.

No, Lucy, You Can't Do the Show!

Film: Dance, Girl, Dance
Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television.

A great deal of my life for the past few years has dealt with the fact that my older daughter is extremely involved in the ballet. Gail dances a dozen or so hours every week, and I spend a good deal of my time sitting on a couch outside of her rehearsals and classes. So when a film has a ballet component (The Red Shoes, Black Swan), I take more of an interest. And seeing as how I bought a copy of Dance, Girl, Dance a couple of years ago, knowing that it would come up on this list eventually, well, here we are.

The sell on this film is the director, Dorothy Arzner. Arzner was the only mainstream female director in Hollywood’s Golden Age, a feat in and of itself. When you add to that the twin damning facts (at least of that day) that Arzner was also an ardent feminist and a lesbian, well, her sitting in a director’s chair is all the more amazing. In short, Arzner is a blow for women, albeit one that didn’t have a huge impact until much later. Women directors are still pretty scarce in the industry, but at least these days no one looks cross-eyed when they discover a woman in charge of a picture.

Anyway, Dance, Girl, Dance follows two dancers in particular. The first, all-American named Judy O’Brien (Maureen O’Hara) lives to dance, and wants nothing more than to be attached to a real ballet. One of her dance partners and roommates is “Bubbles,” (Lucille Ball) who is in many ways Judy’s opposite. Where Judy loves dance for itself and is serious about it, Bubbles likes men, money, and everything that goes with them, and sees dancing as a way to get what she wants.

Eventually, thanks to the fact that she has little in the way of shame, Bubbles goes full burlesque, adopts the new stage name of Tiger Lily White, and begins taking over on Broadway with a risqué musical act. She brings Judy in as a stooge; Judy’s job is to perform a ballet number and incite the crowd to both anger at her and greater desire to see Tiger Lily. It’s a thankless job, but the pay is good, and Judy sticks with it.

Of course, because this is essentially a musical from 1940, there have to be men in the picture. And there are two of them. Jimmy Harris (Louis Hayward), married but unhappily, has a thing for both girls. He meets both early in the film, ditching Judy to spend time with Bubbles. And then later, he returns into their lives, ditching Bubbles for Judy. Also important in all of this is Steve Adams (Ralph Bellamy), who is in charge of an important ballet company. He pursues Judy as well, both from a romantic and dance angle. On several occasions, Judy shoots herself in the foot with him, either from a lack of confidence or a desire to spend more time with Jimmy.

What is interesting here is that we’re given flawed characters. Perhaps only Steve Adams lacks a significant flaw, other than he’s a bit dreamy-eyed throughout. Judy continually deals with the fact that she has no confidence in herself. Witnessing a rehearsal of a ballet company, she simply walks away, deciding that she doesn’t have the talent to make it. In fact, at this point she almost gives up dance entirely. Bubbles doesn’t lack in confidence, but she does seem to lack a bit of humanity. She helps her friends out on the sly at one point, but otherwise acts entirely in her own self-interest and damn the cost. She’s quite obviously a gold digger, and more importantly for the narrative of this film, she’s ridiculously competitive with anything else wearing a skirt. Her job offer of stooge to Judy is part because she feels sorry for Judy, but mostly because it allows her to constantly ridicule a dancer who is, ultimately, a better dancer than she is. And then there’s Jimmy, who wants only a good time and someone else to pay for it.

For that, this movie is pretty interesting. Unfortunately, that’s also the only reason this film is pretty interesting. It has the pedigree of a film that should be giving its audience something real, or significant, or different. And it doesn’t. Ultimately, this film is no different than anything else that came out of the musical films of the era. It’s pretty much the same damn thing despite the possibility for something more. Ultimately, the women in the film can’t amount to anything without a guy there for them. And that’s just sort of depressing from a lesbian feminist, regardless of the era. The speech at the end doesn’t really make up for it, especially when it’s followed by an on-stage catfight.

Why to watch Dance, Girl, Dance: A feminist vision from before World War II.
Why not to watch: Despite its feminist background, it’s not much different from other films of the period.

Not Much of a Honeymoon

Film: Die Ehe der Maria Braun (The Marriage of Maria Braun)
Format: VHS from personal collection on big ol’ television.

It feels like it’s been awhile since I’ve found a film that is new to me that I’ve really been captivated by. Oh, there have been a couple in the past week or so that I’ve liked, and I certainly remember Der Himmel uber Berlin very fondly, but that one feels like it was months ago instead of just a couple of weeks. I’m not sure what it is. I don’t know if I’ve been choosing poorly or if I’m somehow starting to burn out a little bit trying to punch through 25 movies or so every month, plus films for podcasting. Burnout is possible, of course, and sometimes it does feel a bit like this is work. But I don’t think it’s that. I think my pushing myself to find more obscure films is paying a particular dividend—many of these films are obscure for a reason.

I suppose if I really needed to recharge myself, I’d pick one of the multiple dozens of films on the list that I’ve already seen and watch it again, something mindless and entertaining and fun. I wouldn’t, in that situation, select a dense German film that I’d never seen before. I picked up a copy of Die Ehe der Maria Braun (The Marriage of Maria Braun) when my local library started trying to slough off their stock of films on VHS. When you can fill up a bag for a dollar, it’s hard to resist, even if it’s a film you plan to watch only once.

I had some hopes for Die Ehe der Maria Braun, but those hopes found it a too difficult task to generate any real interest in me. It isn’t that the story isn’t any good or that the film is poorly made; on the contrary, the film is very well made (although it does smack a bit of Lars von Trier’s Dogme 95 style in places), and the story is an interesting one, up to a point. The problem is that it very much feels like I’ve been here before, like this is a film that belongs as the third film in a Lifetime marathon of films about troubled women.

Let me break it down for you. In the waning days of World War II, Maria (Hanna Schygulla) marries Hermann Braun (Klaus Lowitsch) before he goes back to the front. After the war, Hermann doesn’t return home, and Maria walks around carrying a sign with his picture on the back, hoping for anyone who might have seen him and who might have news. Eventually, she begins to believe that Hermann is dead, and she takes a job in a bar. It is here that she meets Bill (George Eagles, credited as George Byrd). Despite the language barrier and their racial differences (Bill is black), the two become something of a couple, and soon Maria is pregnant. This is all okay with Maria when she is told that Hermann is definitively dead. But of course he’s not.

Hermann comes home, finds Bill and Maria in flagrante, and all hell breaks loose. Hoping to stop the fighting, Maria clubs Bill over the head, accidentally killing him. At the military tribunal, Hermann takes the rap for her and goes to prison. She attempts to build a life for herself and for him in the hopes of his eventual release. She takes a job with a French company, working under Karl Oswald (Ivan Desny). She soon becomes his mistress and becomes wealthy enough to buy a house. She tells Hermann everything, saying that when he is released, their life together will truly begin.

But of course it won’t be that simple (After all, no Lifetime movie could resist further complications). Oswald finds out about Hermann and goes to him. He tells Hermann that if he will abandon Maria, he will make the pair of them wealthy. Hermann agrees and emigrates to Canada upon his release. However, he still sends a flower to Maria every month to remind her that he still loves her. And then, when Oswald finally dies, Maria finds out about this arrangement at the reading of the will. How she reacts to this essentially defines the movie, so I won’t spoil it.

And that’s it. We enter the world of a woman who really only had a single day with her husband, and the rest of her life was spent essentially waiting for that marriage to restart. It’s not a terrible idea for a film; it’s just really, really boring. That’s not something I say about a film too often, but it fits here. I didn’t care about the lives of any of these people. Maria is enough of an ingénue to be attractive, but not compelling enough for me to care that much about what happens to her. She seems more than willing to jump from bed to bed as it suits her, which makes her devotion to her husband almost ludicrous. In a more compelling character, I’d be willing to look at this as a sort of fascinating conflict, or a hypocrisy made interesting by the character. But not here. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about what happened to her.

And so it goes. Another day, another movie, and I’m still waiting to be wowed by something.

Why to watch Die Ehe der Maria Braun: A realistic depiction of a true survivor.
Why not to watch: It’s really hard to care.

Noir Avec la Comedie

Film: Tirez Sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

Film noir is an American film style, perhaps the only truly American film style in existence. This isn’t to say that Americans filmmakers don’t create innovative, interesting films in different genres, but film noir is a decidedly Yankee creation. It’s also the only accidently genre of film ever created—it wasn’t until after noirs fell out of fashion that they were determined to be their own thing. The French discovered film noir (hence the French name of the genre), so it comes as no surprise that some French directors might try to duplicate this style of film. Francois Truffaut’s Tirez Sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) is one of the finer examples of a non-American noir in existence.

We start with Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour), a honky-tonk piano player in a dive bar run by Plyne (Serge Davri). Charlie is a pretty good player—good enough to be on the bar’s sign at least. We soon discover thanks to Plyne that one of the servers, Lena (Marie Dubois) has a bit of a crush on him. Also, almost immediately, everything goes to hell. A man named Chico (Albert Remy) rushes into the bar and begs Charlie for protection. It turns out that Chico is his older brother and Charlie is actually Edouard Saroyan, a noted concert pianist who is now hitting the ivories in the dive bar for some unknown reason.

And so Lena and Charlie/Eduoard (Edouard from here on out just for convenience) pick up a couple of new “friends” in the persons of Momo (Claude Mansard) and Ernest (Daniel Boulanger), the two thugs who were chasing Chico in the first place. The outwit the pair on the night in question, but are sort of kidnapped the next day. Some quick thinking by Lena gets them away from the duo and she leads Edouard back to her place where we discover that she has known his identity all along.

It’s here that we get a long flashback that tells us really what is going on with Edouard and why he plays the piano where he does. Edouard was married once, but as soon as he started having some success as a pianist, his marriage started to fall apart. His wife, Therese (Nicole Berger) and he grow apart, and it seems there is nothing he can do. And we learn that his success actually came from Therese giving herself in the Biblical sense to Edouard’s impresario, Lars (Claude Heymann), and thus she resents all of the success because of what it cost her. She confesses, he leaves, but returns immediately. It’s still too late—she has flung herself from their apartment. And thus, Edouard becomes Charlie and gives up his success as a sort of penance.

This takes us through the first half of the film. From here, we have a number of plots to be resolved. Edouard has to deal with his new-found romance with Lena; Clarisse (Michele Mercier), the prostitute across the hall; Momo and Ernest, Chico; and Fido (Richard Kanayan) his kid brother who lives with him. It’s quite a bit of plot to charge through in what amounts to about half an hour, and it’s compounded by the fact that Fido gets kidnapped and Plyne and Edouard get into a scuffle that ends with Plyne dead.

A great deal of the film takes place inside Edouard’s head, a sort of stream-of consciousness narration. Much of this deals not only with his past, but with what is going on around him as the film progresses. His first walk with Lena, for instance, is filled with his own self-doubt and a sort of constant mental anguish about his own desire for her and to not appear to forward with her. He is very much like a young boy in these moments, while in others, he speaks like a man almost at the end of his life, given over to despair and a little self-loathing.

This is a supremely strange film in many ways. While the overall tone of the film is bleak and despairing, as befits film noir, quite a bit of what happens is done strictly for comic effect. One of the two kidnappers, for instance, boasts to Fido about his scarf, saying something to the effect of “If I’m lying, may my mother keel over.” We’re quickly given a shot of an old woman suddenly stricken and dying. It’s obviously comedic and silly, and ultimately feels a bit out of place, as does much of the rest of the humor.

And so Tirez Sur la Pianiste is a film of multiple parts and multiple intents that never quite gels. It’s interesting for what it is, in part interesting because it is Truffaut early in his career when he was still figuring things out. It’s worth a watch for that reason if no other, but it’s a difficult film to recommend on its own merits.

Why to watch Tirez Sur le Pianiste: The French have an affinity for film noir, and this film is proof.
Why not to watch: It never really decides what sort of film it is.

I Have No Words

Film: Heaven and Earth Magic
Format: Internet video on laptop.

It’s not often that I find myself so completely flummoxed by a film that I have nothing to say, but such is the case with Harry Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic, alternatively titled No. 12. When I say that I can make no sense of this film, it seems like I’m just being lazy. I understand that. To give you an idea of what I mean, though, I’m going to use Smith’s own words to define his film. I found this on Wikipedia. I know Wikipedia is not always reliable, but damn me if this description doesn’t at least somewhat cover what I watched.

According to Smith, this film’s story is this: “The first part depicts the heroine’s toothache consequent to the loss of a very valuable watermelon, her dentistry and transportation to heaven. Next follows an elaborate exposition of the heavenly land, in terms of Israel and Montreal. The second part depicts the return to Earth from being eaten by Max Muller on the day Edward VII dedicated the Great Sewer of London.” Got that? Yeah, me neither.

When I was a kid, I was a huge Monty Python fan. I still am, really. I love Python stuff. I have all of the shows on DVD and own most of the films. I remember watching the show every Sunday night on public television (WTTW, channel 11, Chicago). Every Sunday, it was Python at 10:00 followed by Dave Allen at Large, which I claimed to like despite the fact that much of it was too adult for me to really understand. Anyway, when I’d watch Python, my mother would comment on how stupid she thought the Terry Gilliam cartoons were. I secretly loved the cartoons—they were some of my favorite things from the show.

I promise this isn’t a tangent. Heaven and Earth Magic is essentially a 66-minute-long Gilliam cartoon. Actually, Gilliam’s animations on Python come after Smith’s film, which means that Gilliam may well have gotten inspired by Smith’s work. What we have here are cut-out photographs that sometimes animate. Most of the animation is simplistic, often two-step animation. Little cut-out photographic people walk in herky-jerky motions across the screen. They give each other fish. A cow appears and is hit with a mallet, turning into a map of the various cuts. The woman of Smith’s alleged plot merges with her dental chair.

Yeah, it’s pretty damn avant garde. This impression is in no way changed by the bizarre soundtrack, which is essentially sound effects rather than any sort of music. Parts of the soundtrack might well be considered music—that is if you call a ceaselessly ringing bell accompanied by the sound of several clocks and a steam whistle to be music.

Seriously, this is one messed up film. I have no idea what any of it means. Even if we take Smith’s description of his own work at face value, I still have no idea what any of it means.

Look, I’ll make this really simple. I like Terry Gilliam’s animations. I think they are often funny. But when they go full-on avant garde with intentionally obscure meanings and last for more than an hour, I have enough of them quickly. By 20 minutes in , I was very much ready for this thing to be done. At the 40 minute mark, I was wondering how much more I could take.

Ultimately, avant garde cinema just makes my head hurt. I don’t gain anything in my life or in terms of valid meaning for my existence when I watch a skeleton and a machine essentially play jai alai with a cooing baby that turns into a watermelon. It is beyond me to see how I could have been enriched by such an experience, even on the best of days. Heaven and Earth Magic is not a challenging film; it is a punishing one.

I’m not going to pretend to make up a meaning here, folks. I have not a clue what any of this is about or is supposed to mean. I’m certain there is meaning here; I just seem incapable of fathoming what it is. And I have a genuine desire to soak my head in Epsom salts. Further, I’d suggest that you could show me a clip from this film from virtually any point in its running time, and I wouldn’t know which part it came from.

In the final analysis, I’m just glad it’s done.

Why to watch Heaven and Earth Magic: It will put skid marks on your brain.
Why not to watch: Because at 66 minutes, it’s 33 times too long.

You Can't Choose Your Family

Film: Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass DVD player.

Family is one of those words that’s difficult to define. Who you consider a part of your family differs from person to person. Generally speaking, we don’t get to choose the members of our family. We’re stuck with them, like it or not. Everyone has those people in their families who they wish they didn’t need to claim, but that’s not the way it works. Family is family, regardless of how you classify it.

Bergman’s Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander) is a film about family and all that that word entails. It’s also a film by Ingmar Bergman, which means you can expect existential pain and suffering a lot of it expressed oddly in Bergman’s style. Lots of austerity. Lots of self-inflicted emotional trauma. Oh, Ingmar.

The film concerns the Ekdahl family, particularly the two eponymous children, Fanny (Pernilla Alwin) and Alexander (Bertil Guve). They live in a large, loving family happily ensconced in the upper middle class of turn-of-the-century Sweden. Their parents Oscar (Allan Edwall) and Emilie (Ewa Froling) run a playhouse and enjoy a sort of magical existence. They have kooky uncles, a nursemaid devoted to them, and a grandmother who adores them.

And then, tragically, their father dies. Seeking comfort, Emilie relies on the local bishop (Jan Malmsjo) for spiritual guidance and comfort. At least at first. Eventually, the bishop asks Emilie to marry him and she agrees. One of his conditions of the marriage is that she will leave her entire life behind—and so will the children. No clothing, books, trinkets, jewelry from their old life. And no contact with their old family. Essentially, the children are to be plucked out of their old lives and dropped wholesale into the world of the austere and harsh religious man. That they see visions of their dead father is not surprising. That others see him as well is perhaps a bit more.

The bishop seems to spend most of his punishments and his harshest behavior for Alexander, who is as defiant as most young children. His greatest sin is the telling of lies, each of which comes with a punishment—generally a bare-assed whipping witnessed by the rest of the household and evidently enjoyed by the bishop’s mother. Emilie sees what she has wrought with her children, that in selecting her family, she has perhaps chosen too quickly, too much in earnest, and thus poorly. Pregnant but not caring, she asks him for a divorce and he refuses, telling her that should she leave, he will take her children and raise them as his own, depriving her of them. Such a nice, upstanding, holy man, that bishop.

All of this takes us to the third act, and Emilie’s decisions regarding the welfare of Fanny and Alexander. It’s not something to spoil, so I won’t.

For all of the pain and misery that Bergman gives us in this film, it is very much a meditation on the power and value of family. The Ekdahl clan is one that, for lack of a better way to put it, is what a true family should be. They get angry with each other, frustrated with each other, and are constantly dealing with the foibles of one family member or another. And yet, at every turn and every problem, there is always the sort of unconditional love that creates a true family.

Bergman, of course, made his career creating the kind of movies that made Woody Allen concerned about his position in an uncaring universe. For all of the pain and suffering, all of the existential crises, and all of the people doomed by their own decisions he filmed in his career, he ended his career in the cinema with a movie that is, ultimately, incredibly uplifting.

(Yes, I’m well aware that Bergman made other films after Fanny och Alexander. However, this film is the final full-length feature of his career that was released in theaters. While not particularly his swan song, it was his last go-around with the venue that had been his mistress for so long. So no complaints.)

Fanny och Alexander is, like life, filled with both joy and pain, happiness and sadness, triumph and tragedy. I’ve not gone too far in Bergman’s filmography, but it would not surprise me if no other film of his felt as genuinely human, accessible, and natural as this one.

Why to watch Fanny och Alexander: A meditation on family, both good and bad.
Why not to watch: It’s long and pretty Bergman-y, even if it’s not quite as depressing as you might think.