Fanny and Alexander, Ingmar Bergman’s ostensible valedictory film, is most clearly and obviously about the pleasures of family — even the farting, adulterous and shame-faced family that’s so often exposed here. In that respect, I suppose, it’s an old man’s film. Bergman may identify, to some degree, with the matriarch of the Ekdahls, who is seen early on gazing out her window as her relatives stumbling noisily through the snow outside toward home. She murmurs happily, “Here comes my family.” What surprises, then, is the way the story becomes a sort of fairy-tale-cum-horror-movie – this is a ghost story whose subjects are the living and the dead, magic and imagination and the nature of God.
Tideland
Terry Gilliam has made a living out of movies that dance along the line separating the physical world from that of the imagination, serenity from hubbub, and sanity from madness. In a career that sprang from the organized chaos that was Monty Python, he has slept with the surrealists, danced with Jan Svankmajer, and kissed the sweaty brow of Tex Avery. His pictures have ranged from whimsical fantasy and uneasy science fiction to startling takes on the dementia that devours the very edges of our reality, occasionally swallowing human beings whole. While his missteps may well outnumber his outright triumphs, the Gilliam stalwart (and I do count myself among them) will find something effective and admirable, and likely something over-the-top brilliant, in almost every outing.