Fanny and Alexander

An epic series of scenes from the life of the bourgeois theatre family Ekdahl at the turn of the century in Sweden. The protagonists Fanny and Alexander, after their father’s death, suffer from their stepfather Bishop Vergerus’ strictness until they are rescued by the prodigious help of the old Jew Isaak. Bergman settles score with the past, his memories of joyful and fearful moments in childhood are not less bitter and sharp-sighted than in his earlier works, but they are presented in the shape of a splendid, sensual and detailed theatre play. Plenty of motifs and styles are interwoven to a cinematographic fresco with references to Shakespeare and Strindberg, Fellini’s “Amarcord” Bunuel’s logic of dreams and imagination. Bergman: „Dreams are more real than reality, reality is probably merely a desire.”