See It Big: Fanny and Alexander

Fanny and Alexander is equally occupied with looking forward and looking back: it’s an aging filmmaker’s attempt to reinhabit the way of seeing he knew as a child, but also to peek in on adult life through that child’s eyes. Bergman had an acute eye for the way people come over time to distinguish themselves from others, how they sculpt, knead, and condense their childhood selves into well-defined grownup ones. His film is accordingly obsessed with social role-playing and mask-wearing, from Oscar’s (prophetic) part as the ghost in Hamlet to the bishop’s tortured confession to his much younger wife: “You once said that you were always changing masks, so that finally you didn't know who you were. I have only one mask—but it is branded into my flesh.”