Word: bergman
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...FANNY AND ALEXANDER, veteran director Ingmar Bergman creates such a world as only a child could see. Ten-year-old Alexander, the narrator of Bergman's latest and purportedly last work, lives in a "little" world where his imagination makes fantasy merge with reality. In this richly woven dream world, proportions are distorted, colors take on an added significance, and magic transforms the relationships between people...
Focusing on one family occasion after another--Christmas, the death of a son, the wedding of the widowed daughter-in-law, and the birth of two babies--Bergman's lens breaks down large group scenes into intimate individual conversations. Laced throughout magnificently decorated scenes and richly furnished rooms in the grandmother's house are snow-covered streets and the racing torrents of a stream; in contrast with such plushness, the mundane home settings seem stark, cold, and isolated...
...Brattle Theatre is running two special movie series this summer. Playing through July is a "hunk" extravaganza with a different double feature every other night of favorite leading men such as Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, and Errol Flynn. In August, on a more serious note, will be an Ingmar Bergman series with the director's potpourri of films, including the Magic Flute and Persona. For a consistent series of famous golden oldies, the Brattle Theater will provide enjoyable film entertainment for the entire summer...
...other film maker has put these beliefs to such rigorous artistic tests as Bergman. Here, though, he has a merry time juggling his three weighty balls, maneuvering his characters and his audience from one house to another, from reverie to terror to awe. This is a movie where, as Isak says, "anything can happen." A nude statue can beckon to a wide-eyed boy; Fanny and Alexander can disappear from inside a steamer trunk; the ghost of Oscar Ekdahl can return home for a chat with his old, living mother. Such is the unique chicanery of movies, and Ingmar Bergman...
...worry: that leaves two hours of good movie from an old master. At film's end, one Ekdahl pays tribute to the power of the imagination: "a splendid force held in trust for us by all artists." Moviegoers can be grateful that the force is still with Ingmar Bergman...