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Have you ever seen a movie. . .

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. . . that made you cry only after you saw it?

I just saw Fanny and Alexander for the first time in my life.  It was beyond brilliant.  And I just wish I could find a way to write about it that does justice to a film that so “gets” childhood and our relationship to our parents.  But, maybe I need watch it again to be able to understand it.  Or think about it some more.  Or just sit with it.

All I can say right now is the strange way it has moved me.  Normally, if a film moves me to tears, it does so as I am watching it.  It’s the images themselves which provoke the reaction.

But, now as I sit down to write about the film, my eyes begin to water at that powerful closing image, the genius of way in which Bergman fused his insights into theatrical storytelling and this very story.  And the dominating image of the young boy, longing for affection, understanding and perhaps guidance and the nurturing Great Mother, er, grandmother.

Just watch this movie and be prepared to be moved, particularly if you ever had a grandmother or some wise old woman who was particularly dear to you.

Comments

  2. Can’t recall. Usually, I’ll remember the movies that were brilliant yet painful, and you just couldn’t watch it again, despite the fact that it was a terrific movie. Best example – The Mission – with Robert De Nero and Jeremy Irons. Great movie, but the inevitable ending…. you just want to scream “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” and pull your hair out.

  4. I saw it when it came out in the theaters and was very moved by it. As I think about it, there are a number of good movies about being a little boy, though I have never seen anyone bring them together to talk about them.

    I fear that the childhood we adults remember will soon seem museum pieces, as far removed from today’s reality as Tom Sawyer or “Old Yeller” were from ours. Which is all the more reson we ought treasure films like Fanny and Alexander.

  6. Loved The Mission! Most painful scene for me was when a mission was abandoned and the locals put the babies out in the rain to die. For all the problems with Christianity and Latin America – the Christians valued every life, clearly the natives had a very different view about humanity.

    A movie that really had me crying wasEast and West I guess it didn’t help that the Elian Gonzalez story was unfolding at the time. This is a French movie about the price one pays for freedom in relation to the Soviet Union.

  8. #9 – Torch Song is great for those of us who came of age during the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1980s, for the only reason being Harvey Fierstein’s response to his mother about what it meant for him to be gay. (His mother was played by Anne Bancroft.)

    Another moving part is in the cemetery, where Fierstein is reading the “Kaddish” prayer over his lover’s grave and his mother tries to stop him. Again, a powerful moment.

    Regards,
    Peter H.

  10. Well Shindler’s list led me to tears at the end, but I think you mean after the movie’s over (like Refrigerator Logic).

    Rocky Horror Picture Show might qualify, but I was crying because it was 2 hours of my life I couldn’t get back.