I was not surprised that I was disappointed by this final Bergman film, so I hope the world won't care if I consider "Fanny och Alexander" to be his final
wait
that was made for TV too. Anyway. In any case I do disagree with the only other non-adulatory review on here, the person simply doesn't get why Bergman makes films as if it's some sort of mistake on his part, my advice is watch more of them and if you still don't get it then stick to Hollywood.
My main problem with this film is that there is a vital and crippling flaw in the characterization of the son. We are to believe that the deceased wife was a saint but our estimation of her worth must be in some way linked to her choice of a mate whether or not she could perceive that her husband was an out and out monster. By making him a disgusting, selfish, spiteful, violent, blubbering and incestuous pile of human waste much of the film's set-ups are squandered, because Erland Josephson's character (who is also written so differently from in "Scenes from a Marriage" that Bergman should have just chosen new names and begun again not to mention that the children's names are wrong and everything) is absolutely and infallibly right to despise his son and would be within reason to kill him with his bare hands. What is worse is that if they had made it so that Henrik was not such scum there might have been actual tension and ambiguity instead of just "She's gotta get away from this psycho." I was also very disappointed that Bergman threw the incest in, it felt exploitative and it hurt the plot.
Liv Ullman isn't actually given a lot to do except interview people and Julie Dufvenius, who looks an awful lot like Maria Sharapova, is called upon to do too much too often.
I'm not going to cry over it, however. I just saw Kurosawa's final film "Madadayo" which, apart from the transcendent ending was a boring disappointment as well. This film has the excellent flashback of Henrik's violence towards Karin, the small scene at the Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf) and the Epilogue to recommend it. Other than that it was nowhere near the quality of the average Bergman film. "Faithless" that Bergman wrote and Ullman directed was more faithful.
My main problem with this film is that there is a vital and crippling flaw in the characterization of the son. We are to believe that the deceased wife was a saint but our estimation of her worth must be in some way linked to her choice of a mate whether or not she could perceive that her husband was an out and out monster. By making him a disgusting, selfish, spiteful, violent, blubbering and incestuous pile of human waste much of the film's set-ups are squandered, because Erland Josephson's character (who is also written so differently from in "Scenes from a Marriage" that Bergman should have just chosen new names and begun again not to mention that the children's names are wrong and everything) is absolutely and infallibly right to despise his son and would be within reason to kill him with his bare hands. What is worse is that if they had made it so that Henrik was not such scum there might have been actual tension and ambiguity instead of just "She's gotta get away from this psycho." I was also very disappointed that Bergman threw the incest in, it felt exploitative and it hurt the plot.
Liv Ullman isn't actually given a lot to do except interview people and Julie Dufvenius, who looks an awful lot like Maria Sharapova, is called upon to do too much too often.
I'm not going to cry over it, however. I just saw Kurosawa's final film "Madadayo" which, apart from the transcendent ending was a boring disappointment as well. This film has the excellent flashback of Henrik's violence towards Karin, the small scene at the Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf) and the Epilogue to recommend it. Other than that it was nowhere near the quality of the average Bergman film. "Faithless" that Bergman wrote and Ullman directed was more faithful.