fanny and alexander

ill learn swedish best from the mouths of the dying and lucid. they take their time, ready to freeze eternally on a syllable. though stroke victims aren't the best with their paralyzed muscles, one can't enunciate so well with a frozen cheek.

i'm disappointed to suspect that a big part of bergman's directing was telling actors to not blink and keep their damn eyes as open as they could because those eyes, god dammit, were why they got cast

i can't stop paying attention to the master-servant relationship, it's all i see in every shot, and how flammable everything is. i'm the dullard, the worried parent at christmas celebration because of the candles swaying in the tree.

and the religious step-parent is such a theme in horror movies, like robert mitchum in the night of the hunter. except whereas mitchum's an almost comically evil charlatan, who at least sings, this fucking bishop actually seems to believe. his bible is well thumbed, anyway. and his flute is as much a weapon as his carpet-beating thing. what a dense ball of evil


also, alexander has my haircut, modern stockholm boy haircut. nothing changes. ingenting

last night watching this movie was interrupted by my parents return from nova scotia. we were to discuss the future about how much money they'd give me to fly places and be happy but they'd been driving for a long time and they were cranky. fanny and alexander is such a little world, alexander's eyes contain so much depth and sensitivity that it was difficult to not feel myself a persecuted alexander when i was told that i had to do a few small things before they'd give me hundreds of dollars. when they said "it's because we love you" i heard the bishop explaning how his love is not "blind and sloppy but strong and harsh." there are lots of characters to identify with in that movie and i wonder if one day i will stop seeing myself in children. falling asleep, i realized that rather than alexander i could be carl, the wretched carl with the german wife who weeps so his face is like a fist because his mother won't give him any more money. i hope i grow up to be gustav adolf. to feel so gluttonously; his bib is spattered with emotion. he feels like a baby eats, and he does it wearing polka dot bow ties. i don't know what that speech about the "little world" was but i think bergman was getting old and happy.