As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a stern bishop. The bleak situation gradually grows worse as the bishop becomes more controlling, but dedicated relatives make a valiant attempt to aid Emilie, Fanny and Alexander.
The result is one of Bergman's most haunting and suggestive films.
– Dave Kehr,
Chicago Reader,
1 Aug 2007
fresh:
Our young protagonist will be obsessed with death and see ghosts everywhere. Never has the prison of childhood seemed so inescapable.
– Melissa Anderson,
Time Out New York,
3 Jan 2008
fresh:
Sumptuous, haunting, and unusually tender... a nakedly psychological 'in' to [Bergman's] earliest artistic impulses; nothing else in his oeuvre addresses so directly his childhood escapes into fantasy as the by-product of a harsh Lutheran upbringing.
– Aaron Hillis,
Village Voice,
8 Jan 2008
fresh:
This premiere of the original cut, running at 312 minutes, leaves room for more than a story of one life.