he_hate_me-1 Reviews

Fanny and Alexander (1982)

Perhaps the Greatest Film Ever Made

[10/10 · 17 April 2005]

I absolutely detest making distinctions like this, but I would rate this the best movie of all time purely on the way it affected me. Viewing this film for the first time left me with the feeling that I would never again experience the world in quite the same way. The second time only deepened my appreciation for the simplicity of the story and the depth and precision of every detail. The third time I viewed the five hour Swedish Television version and realized that I was watching the equivalent of a Tolstoy novel on film.

The highest compliment I can pay to this movie is that in being a child of the eighties, an adolescent and young adult in the 90's, and well, now venturing towards middle age in this young century, few works of media or "art" escape my mind's deconstruction of them, or my generation's greatest blessing (or greatest curse:) a very well developed sense of irony.

Fanny and Alexander (along with a few of Bergman's other films including 'The Virgin Spring" and "Wild Strawberries") is the exception to this rule. There is no way to simply break down how Bergman casts the spell he does. His work gathers you in, completely envelopes you, and at the same time is utterly impenetrable to any form of rational criticism. In the end you are left with a pure emotional response to what you just experienced with little idea of how Bergman took you to that place. You believe television, media, advertising, the constant bombardment of images into your brain has desensitized you to pain, agony, regret, violence, disappointment, dreams, longings and questions of God and death, and then Bergman gets a hold of you. I can only say this work is what one would call truly "spiritual" art, and Bergman's films are the only place I have ever experienced this phenomena.

If cinema is the closest we have to a truly "magical" experience, then Bergman is and perhaps forever will be the greatest magician of them all. Fanny and Alexander should be preserved along with the works of the greatest masters of art in any medium. Every time I see this film, no matter what state of mind I'm in, it somehow makes me fall in love with movies and life all over again.

Thank you, Mr. Bergman, for spending your life sharing your dreams, visions and nightmares with us. You have made this world an infinitely richer place for your efforts.

Pixote (1980)

Brilliant and Brutal

[12 April 2004]

Perhaps the most brutal filmic portrait of youth ever made; Charles Dickens meets Hieronymous Bosch in this tale of a group of boys struggling to survive in the reformatories and mean streets of Brazil as the cycle of prey transformed into predators is documented.

The saddest detail is to realize that this film, made almost twenty five years ago, documents a world that in terms of its poverty and depravity, has apparently changed very little. A brutal reality captured here but with some of the most layered acting I've ever seen in the history of film by a group of amateurs picked from the streets of Sao Paulo with no previous experience. Not one or two good performances, the entire cast is quite simply remarkable, and even sadder is the fact that most of them have probably now been swallowed by the street life they portrayed.

Not as sophisticated a vision as Bunuel's 'Los Olvidados' or as sensational as Clarke's 'Kids,' but in this genre of 'children growing up in the streets' it is easily the most emotionally powerful film of them all.