Sorry, this movie sucks

best movie i've ever seen.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The best part of the film is the end. Both really and ironically. I gave 3 points just because of the costumes. I liked theö.

It may sound strange, but my advice is to see the shorter version first in order to fully appreciate this. Being a "love it or hate it" type of movie, only then you can decide whether the longer version is worthy of your time or not. I've seen the shorter version first and it left me hungry; it clearly feels rushed and incomplete; there are many moments that don't seem to interconnect very well. I admit, the cutting could have been done better for the shorter version; it feels too abrupt and affects the overall pacing. Nevertheless, it fueled my interest for the four-part miniseries; I wanted more details! Just as I anticipated, the longer version is clearly superior because of the extraordinary character development and the inclusion of many key scenes. It really feels that Bergman gave the very best of him and "squeezed" all his inspiration into the making of this movie. Everything here is extremely colorful and rich-textured. Indeed, the cinematography and dialogues (especially monologue scenes) are very reminiscent of the works of Andrei Tarkovsky. I must add that there are many semi-horror moments throughout the movie.

I saw the 6 hour 20 minutes long super extended cut for this movie. Movie which I've been planning to watch for years, but have always pushed the box set further and further back behind the front shelves. Now that I finally decided to give it some 7 hours of my life and watch it, I can't do much more than feel sick due to how much I wasted my time watching this garbage, and how much shorter it could've been. This is basically Downton Abbey for people who prefer their movies "smart" and "tedious" so they can say the exact opposite from what really happened and act like there is something much deeper and complex and philosophical beneath the surface while the movie itself is actually so shallow and fragile even scratching its surface destroys the whole work because all it has is its shell. But wait, maybe this is why it is so smart and deep. It is so shallow and fragile, just like life itself. Very smart and deep and philosophical, would give 10/10 and call it a masterpiece because that's definitely what this movie is and not something I'd just use to justify my rating for it and call myself smart for liking it. In a way, this is the predecessor of the movie Boyhood (2014). That movie is known as the most mediocre movie ever made, but also has metascore of 100/100, just like this movie. The main difference between these titles is that Boyhood can even mildly make the viewer identify with the main character's life and his problems there were Fanny and Alexander live their life in completely different type of mediocrity in a different time period, in a different world, which, based to this movie, is so boring I can't help but wonder how these people managed to die off for natural causes and not just kill themselves during their depressive boredom.

In Fanny & Alexander, those two characters are basically side-characters. Or at least they feel that way because I still have no idea who they are. The same can be said about everyone else. Even though the viewer never really gets an idea who all these people are, we're supposed to care that one man bursts into a depressing rant all of a sudden, another man dies, a woman starts screaming in the middle of the night, the widow finds "true love" about 5 minutes later, a boy is haunted by his dead father... The movie is full of these events that have an extremely high impact on the young minds of these two children. But why should I really care when those two children are presented as empty shells throughout the whole movie? And why should I care when the whole movie is depressing?