ipyg-[Movie] Fanny And Alexander

We Need Love and Peace

 Ingmar Bergman is a world famous director in Sweden. He is a movie director whom a lot of present movie directors express their respects and praises to. His movies always seem to contain questions about religion and God. His style like this was appeared well in his last directed movie ‘Fanny and Alexander’ that I will introduce today.

This movie’s running time is for about 3 hours. It can make audience feel quite bored in the beginning of the movie. But, in the latter half, there are a lot of thrilling and passionate scenes.


The background of the movie is Uppsala, Sweden in the early 20th century. The main character’s father runs a theater.  Characters’ class is various from the high to the lower.However, they are all actors so that the Ekdahl family treats them as precious guests.  Though a hierarchical society remains, the theater company shows classless democracy. So Fanny and Alexander, Oscar’s children get on with the members in the theater group.

This movie shows actual life of the Ekdahl family like a beautiful picture for about an hour. They live freely always with gratitude, enough tolerance and love each other. And then one day, Oscar, Fanny and Alexander’ father, fell down and died while he was performing his play performance. After that, their mother remarries. Since the day, the movie starts to face hardships.


After their mother remarried, Fanny and Alexander have lived in a Catholic church where a bishop lives. Anyone should obey the rules unconditionally in there. Their lives with bishop, such an oppressive and narrow self-righteousness, seem like a hell to Fanny and Alexander who had lived freely. Because the bishop shows us that only he is always right, I was wondered if he is a man who really serves God. He is described like a devil.  

However, a conciliatory gesture shows up in the latter part of the movie. First of all, the bishop bursts into tears because he didn’t know that someone hates him. He regrets being blinded by self-righteousness. After he was died from an accident, Fanny and Alexander were set free from the bishop’s bondage. Peace came back to them.

This movie doesn’t want to criticize religion. This movie says, “Look at the world kindly with full of peaceful smile.”

In fact, it is not matter whether people have religion or not. It is more important to have loves in order to have much better relationships with others. Furthermore, we should have loves in order to bring an end to war and bring about peace all over the world. What we, IPYG, also pursue is the love.

Even now, wars are constantly happening in the world because of religion, economy, the race, or ideology. After I saw this movie, I realized again how dangerous such a petty mind that I am only right is. And again, I was sure that IPYG and I are treading the path of virtue.