Birthmarked

Year 13, Day 23 - 1/23/21 - Movie #3,725

BEFORE: This was going to be the slot for "The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales", with Matthew Goode doing a voice, and I'd be back on animated animals, but I'm tabling it for a few reasons.  I almost tabled it because I'd recorded it off cable, and the on-screen guide listed only the actors from the French version, so for a brief moment I thought I'd perhaps recorded the wrong version, a subtitled one instead of an English-dubbed one.  (This happened a couple years back with "My Life as a Zucchini")  But no, I had the English version on my DVR, that wasn't the problem.  

My remaining January schedule is too packed, thanks to adding extra Bergman films last week - so I either had to double-up again tonight, or cut something, and the middle film of a Matthew Goode trilogy was the most obvious choice, if I cut "The Big Bad Fox" the rest of my plan for January could proceed without any changes.  Then I found out that one of the three stories in "The Big Bad Fox" was Christmas-themed AND the film shares an actor with another film on my Christmas list, so that sealed the deal, that film is rescheduled for Christmas time.  It's a bit weird because it's still January, way too early to be thinking about my Christmas schedule.  But I think we get two Christmases this year, to make up for last year's being cancelled due to the pandemic - so I'd better have some films ready to go.  

Seriously, though, I can't aim for a specific Christmas film now, there are just too many twists and turns coming up in the 2021 schedule, I'm sure.  But I can keep a few holiday-themed films in mind, and try to land on two or three of them in December, that's worked out well the last couple of years.  So I've got something of a target list for Christmas, and right now it includes "The Big Bad Fox" and a few other tales.  

Matthew Goode carries over from "Official Secrets" - and since I first noticed this actor in "Watchmen" he's turned up in some of the oddest places, plus each time he looks almost completely different, or is that just me?  He turned up in three films last year, and I nearly didn't recognize him in "The Lookout". I think he's one of those chameleon actors, like Michael Stuhlbarg, who's like a visual blank slate and maybe tries to sort of disappear into each role.  

THE PLOT: Two scientists raise three children contrarily to their genetic tendencies to prove the ultimate power of nurture over nature.  

AFTER: This is an odd little film, but I think it just might be a great film for a January during a pandemic - I already dealt with zoo cages this week being an appropriate pandemic metaphor, but this one shows a character, late in the film, after everything's turned to crap and this family experiment has essentially failed, alone in his house, with no furniture, just staring into space, and he's probably been like that for days, if not weeks.  When his wife returns to update him, he suddenly wants to look like he's doing something, so he begins bouncing a basketball against the wall.  Right, that should make him look productive.  She soon deduces that he clearly hasn't left the house, or done much of anything, in a very long time - and I know that feeling.  We're all going to have setbacks in life, and some of them may bring us down to the point where we just want to spend a week in bed - but what's unique about the world right now is just how many people are going through that feeling at the same time.  

But let me back up a bit - this story is set back in the 1970's, and two really geeky scientists fall in love with each other - during long nights together in the lab, sure, I could see how that could happen. Together they attend a lecture where they are encouraged to keep pushing the scientific envelope, think outside the box with their experiments and this hits home - so they decide to turn their lives into one giant experiment, raise their child and adopt two more, while nurturing them in directions that are contrary to their "genetic tendencies", whatever that means.  I certainly don't believe that back in 1977 they could look at someone's DNA and predict what occupation they would have, genetic science was still in its infancy then.  It's only recently that they can parse through your genome and tell you what diseases you might be more susceptible to.  What they're talking about here is the theory that if everybody in your family is a scientist, you're likely to become a scientist, too.  So the couple raises their biological son to be an artist instead of a scientist, and the girl from the low-intelligence heritage to think like a scientist.  

The problem is, there are just too many variables here to really think of this as a coherent experiment.  We are our DNA, sure, but we're also a collection of experiences and events that happen to us. A girl in 1977 might have several struggles to overcome on the road to being an adult scientist, not just her heritage and her family's economic status, but also a gender bias in what we now call STEM education, science teachers who are male and might favor the males in his classroom.  Plus there's no one specific set of events that puts someone on the road to a particular career, many, many other factors could be involved that would encourage curtail that path, a family could be forced to move to a better or worse school district, something could happen in the scientific field that would increase or decrease job opportunities or scholarships, etc. 

But again, this is an experiment, and scientific advances were never made without a bit of trial and error.  Emphasis on error here, because the couple and their three children are sent off to live in a remote house, somewhere where it always seems to be snowing, and the kids are home-schooled in this endless winter environment.  (See? Perfect film for this month, kids getting home-schooled during wintertime...)  For a very long time everything seems normal to the kids - I guess however weirdly you're raised, to you it seems normal, because you just don't know any other way.  Plus, how are you supposed to tell if your parents are making you part of some grand scientific experiment, or if they're just strange or unusual people?  For all these kids know, every family has a strange rich uncle, who's not really their uncle, who flies in via helicopter to give them intelligence tests every few months.  

One reviewer compared this to a Wes Anderson film, possibly because it fits into that "quirky" vibe, or maybe it reminded that person of the teen awkwardness of "Moonrise Kingdom", mixed with the educational situation seen in "Rushmore", or something.  Maybe you could imagine these kids growing up to become the screwed-up adults played by Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow and Luke Wilson in "The Royal Tenenbaums".  I got more of a Bergman vibe off of this one, not directly, but maybe that was due to the winter setting and depicting a family living right by a lake, like in "Through a Glass Darkly".  Both films also depicted kids putting on a home-made play for adult parents.  To me this is the type of childhood that Bergman's characters would think back on when they're older, with much regret, of course, while they sit around and drink tiny glasses of port and discuss whether God hates them.  

But no, this one comes from Canada, not Sweden.  It only got a limited release and doesn't seem to have many fans out there, but I'd say give it a go if you can before it disappears from Netflix.  What's funny is that I ended up bookending the week with "Fanny and Alexander" and this film, and they have a lot in common, in a way.  That Bergman film contrasted the different ways that two kids were treated by their father and their stepfather, and Alexander developed an interest in theater and filmmaking, much like Luke here.  Both films sort of ended up making the same point, that we're born into a particular family and situation, and then there will be changes along the way that help determine who we become and what we end up doing later in life. 

Also starring Toni Collette (last seen in "Hearts Beat Loud"), Andreas Apergis (last seen in "Death Wish"), Jordan Poole, Megan O'Kelly, Anton Gillis-Adelman, Michael Smiley (last seen in "The Lobster"), Suzanne Clément, Fionnula Flanagan (last seen in "The Others"), Vincent Hoss-Desmarais (last seen in "RED 2"), Tyrone Benskin (last seen in "Bad Santa 2"), Owen Bruemmer, Anik Matern.

RATING: 6 out of 10 Archie comics  

Official Secrets

Year 13, Day 22 - 1/22/21 - Movie #3,724

BEFORE: OK, I've had enough of politics for a while - time to stop watching MSNBC and learning about the new Biden administration goals, to counter the failures of the Trump administration, and watch a movie to take my mind off of it.  Only darn it, look what's come up in the rotation, a film about politics.  Even worse, it's like a re-run, because we're flashing back tonight to the start of Gulf War II in 2003.  Or "Operation: Enduring Freedom", or "Viking Hammer" or whatever it was they called it back then to disguise their little irrational war. 

Indira Varma carries over from "The One and Only Ivan". 

THE PLOT: The true story of a British whistleblower who leaked information to the press about an illegal NSA spy operation designed to push the U.N. Security Council into sanctioning the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  

AFTER: OK, stop me if you've heard this one, a Republican President stretched the truth just a bit when convincing the American people what was in their best interests.  But this one served TWO terms, and started two wars which we now realize were unjust, and also his Vice-President had financial connections to the main defense contractor who benefited from those wars.  In retrospect, the whole thing stinks to high heaven - yet Bush and Cheney were never called out for their lies and B.S. and the fact that American soldiers died for no reason, except for Bush to get revenge on Saddam Hussein and Cheney to own more valuable stock in Halliburton.  

(Don't let my opinion of Bush/Cheney distract you from how bad Trump was, though - by comparison, Trump was much, much worse in so many ways, had ten times the scandals, wasted more money on the border wall, lined his own pockets in ways we don't even KNOW yet, and caused the death of more people through his lack of pandemic response than in any war we've ever had.  But I just don't think Bush and Cheney should have ever been let off the hook, they should have been charged with war crimes at some point.  I don't think they've ever been pardoned, so technically, it's still not too late.)

But the main thing that the two situations have in common - when the President lies, people die.  Whether that happens in a war or a pandemic, it scarcely matters.  More people died because those two Presidents lied - and in 2003 that meant more Iraqi and Afghani people, along with U.S. soldiers.  Quick update - did anyone EVER find "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq?  Nope, and to this date, Republicans maintain that's because they were on trucks and were being moved around in the desert.  Well, we had satellites and drones, didn't we?  If we had eyes on those trucks at some point, why didn't we follow them around?  

At the same time, a little thing called the Patriot Act allowed the U.S. government to spy on its own people, record phone conversations and the like, in the hope of finding out where any Al Qaeda agents or collaborators might be. This horrible invasion of privacy has not even been revoked yet, and it's like 17 years later.  So for all we know, somebody's still listening to everything we say, which is why certain ads keep popping up in your Facebook feed, I think.  Just for fun, my wife and I like to talk about exotic vacations on the phone, just to see what ads pop up when she goes through Facebook.  

This film is about the U.K. being basically railroaded into supporting the Iraqi invasion, because the U.K. was a member of the U.N. security council, that has to officially approve wars and stuff.  One woman working for the U.K. equivalent of the NSA - over there they call it the GCHQ and it's not in a pentagon-shaped building, but a round one nicknamed "The Doughnut".  All of the transcribing work that Katharine Gun does for the GCHQ allows her to sit at home and watch the news and point out whenever a politician is lying.  Meanwhile, in America, we all learned to do that every time Trump talked about anything.  

Katharine is aware that the NSA is looking for "dirt" on member states Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, in order to influence them to support the Iraqi invasion, and she leaks this information to a reporter at the National Observer.  The memo is from a mysterious CIA agent named "Frank Koza", and it's difficult to even prove this man exists, because the operators at the CIA are very, very good.  They won't confirm someone works there, like even if you call and say you're returning Frank's call, they'll say like "Frank who?" and "Can you spell that last name?" and then "Can you tell me the nature of your call?"  One little slip-up and you'll be given the dreaded, "I'm sorry, there's nobody here by that name..." or worse, "Oh, sorry, he's in the bathroom again, you just missed him."  Clever, clever operators...

The Observer reporters eventually confirm the source of the memo, and they run their exposé, only to have it pointed out that the memo couldn't POSSIBLY have come from an American agent, because he spelled "favourable" with that extra "U" and "recognise" with a British "S" instead of an American "Z".  So the memo gets discredited as a fake, and it's too late to point out that a well-meaning staffer had run the whole article, including the quoted memo, through Spell Check, which I think in the U.K. is called Spelle Cheque.  Damn those British, why can't they all speak good old American English?  

Meanwhile, Katharine confesses to leaking the memo, to stop the persistent investigation of her colleagues.  Even if she had the best intentions, even if the actions described in the government memo were illegal, even if the U.K. leaders knew they were approving an unjust war, there's still a little thing on the books called the Official Secrets Act, and therefore Katharine still gets prosecuted, for violating that. Since she's married to a Turkish Kurd, it's assumed that she had another motive for trying to stop the war, perhaps something silly like saving Kurdish lives in Iraq.  Boy, how misguided would THAT have been?  

With the help of the NCCL (boy, the Brits love their acronyms, don't they?), Katharine's lawyers are able to argue that at the time the memo was leaked, high-ranked U.K. officials were still speaking out against the war, so technically her actions were not out of line with theirs.  In a twist worthy of a "Law & Order" episode, the charges are dropped, presumably because evidence presented in the case would have revealed that Tony Blair's government did lead the U.K. into that war under false pretenses.  

But if you're wondering where the philosophies behind so many of Trump's lies originated - classics like the non-existent Mexican caravan, the China tariffs, the Bowling Green Massacre and even the Ukraine "quid pro quo" scandal, take a look back at the "Saddam Hussein has WMD's" falsehood that justified the Iraq invasion. Nobody really knows for 100% certain, but come on, probably no WMD's, and no direct link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. Therefore no connection between 9/11 and the reactionary Iraq War and Afghanistan War, though they may have made Americans FEEL better for doing something.  

By the way, this is why Trump was like Bush/Cheney cubed, and clearly the worst President ever - on Wikipedia, the page "Trump Administration Controversies" isn't just a page, it's a CATEGORY, with 16 sub-categories, and 186 PAGES of scandals in all.  If you're still supporting this man, for whatever reason, may I suggest that you've got some reading to do.  But it feels like most Americans now have little interest in past events such as the Iraq War, because this film made less than $2 million in U.S. box office, and just over $10 million worldwide.  To be fair, in 2019 we all had pretty full plates with all of Trump's ongoing scandals.  Starting an unjust war while in office was probably the only thing he DIDN'T do.  

Also starring Keira Knightley (last seen in "Greed"), Matt Smith (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"), Matthew Goode (last seen in "A Single Man"), Rhys Ifans (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Adam Bakri, Ralph Fiennes (last seen in "The Chumscrubber"), Conleth Hill (last seen in "Whatever Works"), Tamsin Greig (last seen in "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"), Hattie Morahan (last seen in "Mr. Holmes"), Ray Panthaki (last seen in "28 Days Later..."), Angus Wright, Chris Larkin (last seen in "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"), Monica Dolan (last seen in "Eye in the Sky"), John Heffernan (ditto), Jeremy Northam (ditto), Jack Farthing, Clive Francis (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Kenneth Cranham (last seen in "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool"), Darrell D'Silva, Janie Dee, MyAnna Buring (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Niccy Lin, Chris Reilly (last seen in "Allied"), Shaun Dooley (last seen in "The Woman in Black"), Peter Guinness (last seen in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"), Hanako Footman, Lindy Whiteford, Will Barton, Katherine Kelly, Raad Rawi (last seen in "Spy"), Raquel Cassidy and archive footage of Tony Blair (last seen in "Vice"), George W. Bush (last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Colin Powell (last seen in "Quincy") and Ari Fleischer. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 barristers in powdered wigs (still?)

The One and Only Ivan

Year 13, Day 21 - 1/21/21 - Movie #3,723

BEFORE: I probably should have mentioned, this week's going to be a weird combination of crime/spy films and animated animals.  That's the linking for you, I can't work completely thematically right now, so I'm kind of bouncing around my list, and these two topics ended up being intertwined.  Couldn't be helped.  

Danny DeVito carries over from "Dumbo".  

THE PLOT: A gorilla named Ivan tries to piece together his past with the help of an elephant named Ruby as they hatch a plan to escape from captivity.

AFTER: Obviously there's a lot carrying over from "Dumbo", as this film features both a baby elephant and an adult elephant character, at least for a while.  And they're both Disney films that set out to make the point that circuses and zoos are generally bad places for animals to be, but this 2020 film manages to deliver that message more clearly and succinctly.  Of course, this one cheated and allowed its animal characters to talk. "Toy Story" rules are in place here, the animals can talk to each other and all speak the same language, plus they can understand the humans, but the humans can't understand them.  The little girl character probably comes the closest, she's got almost a psychic link with them.  

Ivan can't remember much of his time in the wild, after all, he's not an elephant.  But then later he is able to relate the story of how his family was killed by poachers, and a human family adopted him, almost like a baby.  It's a bit of a discrepancy, how he can't remember and then suddenly he can, when he needs to tell a bedtime story to Ruby, the new baby elephant at the Big Top Mall circus show, outside Tacoma, just off Route 8.  

Perhaps Ivan is suffering from too much time in captivity, and these days, who isn't?  It's very easy to draw a line from the plight of a gorilla in a cage, albeit it a spacious one in a mall, to everyone these days who's working from home, having everything delivered from Amazon, and ordering too much take-out.  I'm going more than a little stir-crazy myself, I'm home now four days a week out of seven, and there's just too much same-ness.  OK, great, we've got the vaccine now, but it's apparently going to take two months just to vaccinate senior citizens, and that's assuming we don't run out of doses, which we almost certainly are about to do.  (I'm shaking my fist at Trump for his lies and inaction, for what probably won't be the last time...)

Ivan also made a promise to the elder elephant, Stella, that he would find a way to get Ruby back into the wild somehow.  That's when this talking animal film sort of morphs into a prison-break story of sorts, and Ivan knows how to lure the stupid animal handler into his cage, with the aid of stray dog Bob, while pretending to be sleeping, and then it's just a matter of opening the door from the inside and making a break for the forest, which is just across the highway.  And since Ivan's recently had this revelation that all animals should be free and not held in captivity, that means bringing along the whole gang - Murphy the rabbit, Henrietta the chicken, Thelma the parrot and Frankie the seal.  Only Ivan didn't really have a plan for what to do when they all GOT to the forest.  

So the question is therefore raised - should all animals be released back into the wild?  I'm not prepared to go that far, not when we've taken in several stray cats who probably lived longer under our roof than they would have out in the wild.  Plus, even in Ivan's case his memory of poachers killing his family should logically lead to thinking that, whatever downside there is to living in the Big Top Mall, at least he's not being hunted or threatened in any way.  So I think this is a complex question with no simple answer, even though the movie sort of jumps ahead in suggesting that there is one.  Are circuses and zoos inherently bad, even if they're run by people with good intentions?  Again, I'm not sure. 

Look, cages come in many different forms, and for people a house can be a cage, an office definitely can be one, and some people might come to view a relationship as a form of cage.  In those cases, even if your way of thinking goes in that direction, you have to ask if you're better off in the cage or out in the wild, trying to survive.  Maybe "three hots and a cot" isn't so bad when the alternative is worse.  

This story is based on a real-life account of a gorilla that did live and perform in a mall outside Tacoma, and after public protests he was sent to live at the Atlanta Zoo - which I'm sure has an amazing gorilla habitat, but at the end of the day, isn't that just another form of cage?  Bigger and greener, for sure, but still a cage.  Just saying. 

Also starring Bryan Cranston (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), Ramon Rodriguez (last seen in "Battle Los Angeles"), Ariana Greenblatt (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Owain Arthur, Hannah Bourne, Eleanor Matsuura (last seen in "Justice League"), Indira Varma (last seen in "Exodus: Gods and Kings"), and the voices of Sam Rockwell (last seen in "Jojo Rabbit"), Angelina Jolie (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Helen Mirren (last seen in "State of Play"), Brooklynn Prince (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Chaka Khan (last seen in "Standing in the Shadows of Motown"), Ron Funches (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Phillipa Soo, Mike White (last seen in "Chuck & Buck"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 yogurt raisins

Dumbo (2019)

Year 13, Day 20 - 1/20/21 - Movie #3,722

BEFORE: I swear I didn't program a specific movie for Inauguration Day - I wasn't even thinking about it when I drew up plans.  So no jokes tonight about politics being "a circus" of any kind, no references to Republicans (even though the elephant IS their party's symbol) and no connection between the name "Dumbo" and any particular politician of note should be inferred.  You can draw connections if you want to, just be aware that this was not my intent, not at all.

Since it IS Inauguration Day, many people are invoking symbolism - it's the "dawn of a new day" and all that. OK, fine whatever helps you sleep at night and maintain some semblance of positivity, you hang on to that.  Just let me know when I can go and sit in a restaurant again, or line up to get a vaccine in my arm - then maybe I'll start feeling a little more cheery.  But right now, I still can't adult properly, I'm too busy sitting on my bed with the blankets over my head and rocking back and forth.

Look, I'm a pragmatic person, a realist - when somebody says, "Oh, look, the sun's coming up..." my first thought is, "Umm, no it's not, the sun's staying in one place, just doing what it does, it only APPEARS to rise and move through our sky.  The earth is turning and creating the illusion that the sun is moving, relative to our individual position on the Earth's surface."  This was all covered way back in the Renaissance, didn't you get the memo?  We rejected the geocentric version of the Universe and all agreed to a heliocentric solar system. 

The changing of the President, for me, right now anyway, is much the same. I'm hearing, "Oh, things have changed, it's a new era and everything can be better now."  Again, I'm saying, "OK, maybe not, maybe it's just more of the same log jams and B.S. for the next four years."  I'll admit that a change has occured, but it may also be a form of an illusion - in the past two weeks, the entire world has turned upside-down, and may have created the illusion that things are changing, relative to each individual's position in the political spectrum.  The country is still radically and racially divided, domestic terrorists are still out there planning stuff, and a certain percentage of the population still believes that the election was rigged.  I hope there is some massive change coming, and I'm proved wrong.  Your move, Biden.

Consider how close the election was - we had the worst President in history, this is now confirmed by the double-impeachment and his absolute lack of class concerning a peaceful transfer of power, and STILL he got 47% of the vote.  That was way too close - if not for the pandemic and cratering economy, Trump might have won the popular vote (for the first time).  I'm not going to rest easy until Congress bars him from holding office again, for the sake of all the people who were dumb enough to vote for him twice and seem incapable of learning.

Alan Arkin carries over again from "Spenser Confidential".  

THE PLOT: A young elephant, whose oversized ears enable him to fly, helps save a struggling circus, but when the circus plans a new venture, Dumbo and his friends discover dark secrets beneath its shiny veneer. 

AFTER: OK, so I was made to watch all of the Disney animated movies when I was a kid - not that I'm complaining, many of them are fine films, however times have certainly changed, and certain movies like "Song of the South" have fallen out of favor because we simply can't show any racial stereotypes any more.  The original "Dumbo" is sort of lumped into that category because of the crow characters, which were given voices that some people consider to be stereotypically Negro.  Also, there are some very outdated tropes in the original "Dumbo", like showing storks delivering babies to circus animals, which is just ridiculous - but in the 1940's there were no adults who wanted to tell kids the truth about where babies come from, so there you go. Storks. I'm face-palming right now.

Also in that 1941 Disney film, Dumbo is cruelly treated and mocked because of his giant ears, but a talking mouse named Timothy convinces him he can fly, with the aid of a magic feather from one of those crows.  Really, it's the size of his ears which Dumbo can flap like wings that enables him to fly - and eventually he comes to realize that it's not the feather, he had the power within him all along.  What's really great about animation as a medium is that you CAN depict the impossible happening, as long as it can be drawn, and in this case you can discount the reality in which birds are able to fly because their bones are hollow, and therefore, by extension, since elephants do not have hollow bones, their weight ratio simply does not allow flight as an option, no matter HOW BIG those ears are. 

Obviously, to do a re-make of "Dumbo", a lot had to be changed.  None of the animals talk here, for one thing, so Timothy the Mouse is gone, as are the mocking adult elephants, and more humans needed to be added to the story to fill those gaps.  In this version, Dumbo is trained and taught to fly by two children, Milly and Joe Farrier, whose parents had an act in the circus until he had to go fight in World War I and she had to go and die from the flu.  (Timely, but probably accidentally so!).  Also a number of prominent circus owners and operators had to be added to run things, and a fair number of performers, sideshow freaks and general carnies.  

The feather is still important in enabling Dumbo to fly, but in an extremely confusing way.  I wasn't sure if it was sneezing that launched Dumbo off the ground, or inhaling the feather into his trunk, or chasing the feather and then flapping his ears?  I give up, which was it?  And then if it was inhaling the feather that made him fly, how did this work, or was it just Dumbo's belief that inhaling the feather would make him fly?  Very, very, clunky writing here. Eventually we get to the same place, where Dumbo learns that he had the power within him all along, but it takes SO DAMN LONG to get there, and the plot had to bend itself over backwards a few times to make it possible.  The original film ran just over one hour, and this remake is nearly double the length, so it feels like a painful slog by comparison.  The 1941 film made a more concise anti-bullying, "being different is beautiful" message in half the time!

Also, since the original film was released, society got together and decided that circuses are no longer culturally appropriate.  OK, so between this one and "The Greatest Showman", why are we still making movies about them, then?  The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus folded in 2017, after many animal rights-related criticisms, and you have to think that maybe that was for the best.  Even if they'd managed to hang on a couple more years, the COVID-19 pandemic would have shut them down anyway.  (There's a chain of brewpubs in NYC that I last visited around Christmas 2019, when I found out they were closing up two of their three Manhattan locations.  I'm still wondering how they saw the pandemic shutdowns coming.)

I actually know the answer, because "The Greatest Showman" went a little overboard with its blatant message of cultural acceptance, for all people who are differently shaped or slighty abnormal or bearded ladies everywhere.  "Dumbo" goes much, much further in this direction, and piles on one now-culturally-acceptable message after another, from the war veteran who's now missing an arm, to the young girl who wants to study science, to the plus-sized mermaid, the cruel animal trainers, etc. etc.  It's one thing to depict being on the right side of history now, where these issues are concerned, but it makes no sense to have characters in 1919 who think like today's liberals or animal activists.  It's doubtful that a young girl back then would have such an interest in the scientific method, because probably her whole life she'd been trained to think of herself as little more than a future wife, mother and homemaker.  Just saying.

But as I always say, a movie released today probably reflects the cultural thinking of today, regardless of the era in which it is set.  So there's a vast divide here between the way these characters think and act, and the way they probably would have acted in 1919.  By the end, when the Medici Bros. circus has morphed into the "Medici Family Circus", with no animals being forced to perform, a "future cowboy" with a bionic arm, and a teen girl giving scientific lectures, it's supposed to feel refreshing from a modern viewpoint, but it just doesn't make any rational sense. 

Before that, though, there was another attempt to amplify the "Dumbo" storyline, because here they had the small, traveling Medici Bros. Circus get co-opted, bought out and incorporated into a larger entity called "Dreamland", which looked suspiciously like a Disneyland-type theme park (supposedly located in NYC, but I didn't pick up on that...).  The genius behind Dreamland is one V. A. Vandevere, and I couldn't help but think this person might have been loosely inspired by Walt Disney, himself. (Disney and perhaps Trump, but let's put aside the Trump thing for now, and just focus on the Disney comparisons.)  If this was intended, it's a bold move for Disney Corp. to put out a film that pokes fun at their own founder.  Confusing, but also bold. Disney was known as the master of the binding contracts, and here when Vandervere buys and essentially dissolves Medici circus, he's really only after the flying elephant.  He promised to hire the entire circus staff, but he never said for how long, so after a month they're given their walking papers.  Tricky, but technically legal, and I'm not sure that this devious move is a valid enough justification for Grand Theft Elephant.  

We all eventually end up in a good place, and for Dumbo it's (more or less) where he ended up in the previous version.  But why the hell did getting there have to be so damn complicated? And why were the kids always so dull and expressionless? 

I do like that this is something of a "Batman Returns" reunion, with Tim Burton directing, and the actors who played Batman and The Penguin appearing in key roles - only with Michael Keaton in the villain role and Danny DeVito as the more heroic (?) ringmaster. 

Also starring Colin Farrell (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Michael Keaton (last seen in "Spotlight"), Danny DeVito (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Eva Green (last seen in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"), Nico Parker, Finley Hobbins, Roshan Seth (last seen in "Proof"), DeObia Oparei (also last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Joseph Gatt, Sharon Rooney, Miguel Munoz Segura, Zenaida Alcalde, Michael Buffer (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Ragevan Vasan, Frank Bourke, Phil Zimmerman (last seen in "Dracula Untold"), Zelda Rosset Colon, Benjamin French, Jana Posna, Jo Osmond, Jewels Good, Lars Eidinger, Douglas Reith (last seen in "W.E."), Sandy Martin (last seen in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 firefighting clowns

Spenser Confidential

Year 13, Day 19 - 1/19/21 - Movie #3,721

BEFORE: Alan Arkin carries over from "Havana". I suppose I could cut this one and make my January chain fit better into 31 days, because it's the middle part of a 3-day sub-chain with Alan Arkin, but I couldn't fit this one into December, though it shares two actors with "Instant Family", plus it doesn't link to anything else on my list but horror movies right now, so I'm inclined to keep it here and burn it off.  Everything on Netflix has an expiration date, after all, and this one's been on Netflix since March.  I think maybe they keep the Netflix originals around longer, but for most movies, two years seems to be the max.  So let's deal with it now.  

THE PLOT: When two Boston police officers are murdered, ex-cop Spenser teams up with his no-nonsense roommate, Hawk, to take down criminals. 

AFTER: There's a lot for me to like here, even though this is a re-boot of Robert Parker's "Spenser" character, which varies greatly from the way the character was portrayed in the 80's TV show "Spenser: For Hire", and also from the books, or so I'm told.  This is loosely based on a Spenser book called "Robert B. Parker's Wonderland", written by another author as a continuation of a popular book series, much as they've done with James Bond in the last decade.  By now, all that remains of the original series are the main character names and the Boston setting, it seems.  I'm still curious, so I'm still in.

Back in the day, when Robert Urich played Spenser, they did film much of the TV series in Boston, unlike, say, "Cheers", a much more famous Boston-set show that was obviously filmed on a studio set in L.A.  (Yet tourists for years searched downtown Boston for the "Cheers" bar, even though it was commonly known that the fictional "Cheers" was based on the real-life Bull & Finch Pub, and so it came to pass that somebody had to build a REAL version of the FAKE bar, just so people visiting Boston had a place to go where everybody knew their name, only how could they, if they'd never been there before?)  Urich was rumored to have bought a house (or maybe he rented, I don't know) in my hometown, which was a semi-respectable Boston suburb - that was the gossip around my high school, anyway.  But there was also a fancy mental hospital/rehab center in my hometown, and over the years every famous rock star from Steven Tyler to "that guy from AC/DC" was rumored to have spent time there. Either way, filming "Spenser: For Hire" around Boston is said to have generated $50 million for the Commonwealth between 1985 and 1988, so kudos for that. (EDIT: The internet is a wonderful and terrible thing, because it turns out the rumor was NOT true, Urich bought a house in Andover, MA, and NOT my hometown, so those kids in high school were full of crap. But we didn't HAVE the interwebs back then, so it was a lot harder to disprove something.)

Anyway, back to "Spenser Confidential", which opens with our hero in prison, after beating up an apparently dirty cop.  A flashback shows Spenser ringing his doorbell, confronting him, then pulling him outside (and away from beating up his wife), to pummel him in the front yard.  More on this in a bit, we assume, but first Spenser has to fight off three other inmates in the prison library, while Boston's "Foreplay/Long Time" plays in the background.  OK, you got me - the use of that song totally worked.  And this was supposedly set at MCI Walpole, aka Cedar Junction, which, unlike Robert Urich's house, WAS very close to my hometown.  I don't know if they really filmed in Walpole or not, for that matter I don't know where exactly the prison is, but I do like hearing Walpole name-checked at the very least. One of the combative prisoners is played by Post Malone, and after Spenser gets released, Post is still in jail - I think that's for the best, don't you?  

Spenser survived five years in jail, as an ex-cop, which probably wasn't easy, and transitioning back to regular life isn't going to be easy, either.  His former boxing coach and mentor picks him up, before his ex-girlfriend can arrive to do the same.  Spenser just wants to live in a room in Henry's house, see his old dog Pearl, and learn to drive a truck so he can deliver long-haul freight and make his way to Arizona.  But when that superior officer he beat up in the flashback at the beginning soon turns up dead, Spenser's at the top of a very short list of suspects.  Fortunately he's got an alibi, but he's also dragged into figuring out who DID kill him, because it probably wasn't the second dead cop, as there are obvious holes in the murder/suicide theory.

Perhaps this reboot is set very early in Spenser's career, because he's not a P.I. yet, and then we learn how he meets Hawk in this incarnation.  Hawk's his de facto roommate, also bunking at Henry's house, and he's training to be an MMA fighter, but he needs to learn better punching techniques and some anger management in the ring. (Call-back to "Warrior" from a couple weeks ago...) But he's also got some valuable skills in computer tech, which Spenser doesn't have - five years in jail and he doesn't even know what The Cloud is.  I guess he only studied truck driving and legal loopholes?  The team of Spenser, Hawk and Henry go to work tracking the dirty-money deals up the chain, from the nail salons to the drop-man to the dirty cops and finally the drug suppliers.  The Feds are on the case, too, but Spenser explains to Hawk (and to us) why the FBI will tend to just keep going around in circles and collecting "not enough" evidence in the hopes of someday making a major deal that somehow never comes to pass. So it's up to "private citizen" Spenser to cut through the red tape, take the bull by the horns and do the FBI's job for them.  

A note about Boston women, they don't really come off well here.  The wife of the dirty cop, after being interrupted by Spenser during a beat-down from her husband, jumps into the fight to defend her husband.  Does this make sense?  Spenser's girlfriend, Cissy, is seen after finding out he's going to prison, throwing all his electronics and clothes out the window of their third-floor Southie apartment.  Meanwhile, she's hysterically screaming, "I love you!" to him.  Perhaps this is why I never dated a woman from Boston - OK, so I moved away before I ever got the chance.  Either she's bi-polar, or this film has tapped into something about the dichotomy of relationships - how someone can love and hate their partner at the same time.  Relationships are complicated, later Cissy keeps trailing her ex because she hates him so much, but still wants to have sex with him in a public bathroom.  Go figure, it's a head-scratcher, but who's to say that isn't happening to somebody, somewhere, right now? 

As I did with "Instant Family", upon finishing this film, I watched an Iliza Shlesinger comedy special on Netflix as an immediate follow-up.  There were FOUR to choose from, so clearly she's got a lot to say, I just can't take it when she makes fun of other women with that "bleating sheep" voice.  Tonight I watched her special "Freezing Hot" from 2015. But for someone born in New York City, she did a fine Boston accent here.  Of course Wahlberg's made a name for himself playing characters from Boston, not just here but also in "Patriots Day", "Ted", "The Fighter" and "The Departed".  When my wife and I were in Las Vegas in October 2019 we ate at a Wahlburger's for the first time, and every napkin and tray cover in the joint was filled with tales of the Wahlbergs growing up in Southie and eating "government cheese" - it may be a true rags-to-riches story, but it also gets tiresome after a while. 

I can't find any news about a sequel to "Spenser Confidential" being planned, but if there is one, I'd probably be fine with watching it.  The major complaints against this film seem to be that it deviates greatly from the source novel, but since I never read that book, I don't really mind.  "Motherless Brooklyn" varied from the novel it was based on, and that one worked out OK too.  I hope all the actors here enjoyed their celebratory lobstahs.

Also starring Mark Wahlberg (last seen in "Instant Family"), Iliza Shlesinger (ditto), Winston Duke (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), James DuMont (last seen in "I Saw the Light"), Bokeem Woodbine (last seen in "The Host"), Marc Maron (last seen in "Frank and Cindy"), Post Malone, Michael Gaston (last seen in "Far From Heaven"), Colleen Camp (last seen in "The House with a Clock in Its Walls"), Hope Olaidé Wilson, Kip Weeks, Rebecca Gibel, Big Shug, Donald Cerrone (last seen in "The Equalizer 2"), Brandon Scales (last seen in "Patriots Day"), Ayana Brown, Dustin Tucker (last seen in "Chappaquiddick"), Alfred Briere, Alexandra Vino (last seen in "The Gambler"), Kevin McCormick (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Jeffrey Vincent Thompson and the voice of director Peter Berg.

RATING: 7 out of 10 machetes

Havana

Year 13, Day 18 - 1/18/21 - Movie #3,720

BEFORE: I had two choices of linking coming out of the Bergman chain - OK, actually I had three but I didn't see the one that would connect to the 2009 version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo".  The two that I was aware of were Lena Olin and Peter Stormare.  It turned out that Peter Stormare had a very small role in yesterday's film, he was just a guy who lifted up a box and helped carry it.  It would have counted, but that also would have felt a little cheap, and maybe desperate - so I'm kind of glad that I'd already decided not to follow that path. Both paths would have led me to where I want to be in late January, which is to watch "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" on January 28, and then from there I know I can link to my February movies.  So it really didn't matter, I could choose whichever path had more movies I wanted to see sooner.

So, Lena Olin carries over from "Fanny and Alexander". 

THE PLOT: In 1950's Cuba, a professional gambler falls for a woman heavily involved in the revolution movement.  

AFTER: It's strange, though I went from a Swedish Bergman film to a Hollywood film directed by Sydney Pollack, and a film set in 1907 Stockholm to one set in Cuba in 1958, the films do share something in common - they both begin during the Christmas season.  "Havana" runs until New Year's 1959, though, and the story in "Fanny and Alexander" plays out over a year or two.  

I put this film on the schedule months ago, though, without knowing about the January tie-in, also I couldn't possibly have known that it was about the Cuban Revolution that put Castro in power, or that the U.S. would come as close as it did to having a violent revolution of its own, as it did on January 6.  I can't really compare the two, because one was successful (history is written by the winners, it seems) and the other was not.  But maybe that's the only real difference between the two terms - a revolution can result from a successful coup?  I'm going to have to check up on that.  For that matter, let me stop here and read up on the 1959 Cuban Revolution, because that took place a bit before my time.  I lived my whole life with Castro in charge of Cuba - not that it mattered that much to me as a kid growing up in Massachusetts.

OK, I paused and read up on the Cuban Revolution, and there aren't that many parallels to the Trump coup attempt, if anything Trump fits the Batista template more than the young Castro one. President Batista was known for being more dictator-like as time passed, plus he had developed a taste for exotic foods and elegant women.  Plus he was elected as President of Cuba in 1940, then got a second term through a military coup and overthrew the election in 1952.  Hmm, it is sounding a bit familiar, I'll admit.  Cuba was then plagued by high unemployment and crumbling infrastructure, while Batista had links to organized crime and took money from foreign countries at the expense of his own country's economy.  Again, sounds familiar, it's all typical behavior for a tyrant or despot.  

Fidel Castro, along with his brother Raul and Ché Guevara, were the leaders of the rebel faction, and the U.S. supported Batista at first, but slowly shifted support over to the rebels, by way of the CIA due to various arms embargoes.  Long story short, on December 31, 1958 there was the Battle of Santa Clara, and the rebel victory caused Batista to flee to the Dominican Republic.  Cuba was somewhat divided at first, a Cuban general took over the Presidential Palace and appointed Carlos Piedra as President, but then by January 8 Fidel Castro had arrived in Havana and appointed someone else.  

(This is where the comparisons to the failed Trump coup really end, because Castro's rebels seemed like a bunch of well-armed, well-trained, organized rebels with a plan, and the Trump bunch was just a crowd of dumb, misguided rednecks with zip-ties.  Even if they had taken over the Capitol building, which they didn't, what was their next move?  Burn the electoral college votes?  There were back-up copies.  Start lynching Democratic senators?  I'm pretty sure that would have led to the army taking back the Capitol by force.  Most of these Trump insurrectionists just walked away after they lost interest, I guess because they realized that taking over a government, which they didn't, would then mean they'd have to run it, and that sounded too much like work.)  

But when I saw the crowds at the end celebrating the Cuban revolution breaking in to the casino and tearing up the joint, tipping over the gaming tables, I couldn't help but think about the recent break-in at the Capitol building.  Different time, different country, different situation though.  But had Trump's coup worked, it would have put another dictator in power, similar perhaps to the way Castro became a dictator over time.  Notably, Redford's character here contrasts a dictator with a poker player here, pointing out that a poker player might lose a small hand now and again on purpose in order to win a bigger hand later, and a dictator would never do that, he would only play to win power now, and then to try and retain it.  I believe this to be true.  

Redford's character, Jack Weil, is a poker player, always looking for the next big game, and for a casino to back him in a game so he can win a bigger pot.  He's also got an eye for the ladies, and here he helps out a beautiful woman who he meets on the ferry over to Havana, she pays him to switch cars as they drive off the boat, because she's smuggling something.  Everyone's up to something, it seems, but she's got supplies for the rebels hidden in her car.  (NITPICK POINT: Weil finds the hidden walkie-talkies inside the car door, but he doesn't notice the two very prominent boxes on the back seat?)  When Weil finds out that the mystery woman is married to Arturo Duran, one of the leaders of the revolutionary movement, he backs off, and goes back to setting up his big poker game at the casino and plying American tourist women with daiquiris and mojitos and sleeping with two of them at a time.  Well, that kind of is why THEY came to Cuba in the first place.  (Merry Christmas!)

The next morning, there's a report of Arturo Duran's death in the newspaper, and during his poker game (which happens to be with a number of Cuban military personnel), Weil asks about Mrs. Duran, which is not really a bright idea.  Still, he persists until he finds where she's being held and tortured, and uses his poker winnings to bribe her military guards and secure her release.  Somehow, for him, two American women can't possibly equal the one mystery Cuban rebel of Swedish descent.  Bobby Duran crashes at his apartment, cleans up real nice, but she's gone back to the rebels before the Cuban officials track Weil down.  

It's no good, Weil's in love and drives through a war zone in his Cadillac convertible to find her - she's hiding out in her husband's childhood home, they shelter in place there for a while and he tells her that after one more big poker game, he's going to arrange for both of them to leave the country by boat, and go wherever she wants.  Things seem all set, until Weil is beat up by two Cubans who seem to imply that Arturo Duran is still alive somewhere, somehow, and now Weil's got a terrible choice to make.  Should he sail off with the woman he loves, or work to find her possibly-alive husband and step out of the picture?  Or should he just go and play in the big poker game that he spent so much time and effort to arrange?  

No spoilers here, but I'm satisfied with how it all shook down.  It's a good, twisty plot with more and more revelations as things progress.  Who hasn't gone to a lot of trouble to land a job, only to find after a few days' work that they've sort of lost interest in it?  Who hasn't sat back and watched a regime change in a government and been stressed about whether there's going to be a peaceful transfer of power, or if things are going to get violent instead?  This sort of thing is all too timely right now, I'm afraid.  

Four years later, in 1963, we see Jack driving down to Key West once a year, even though he knows that the ferries are no longer running.  Still, hope springs eternal.  The U.S. has a new President, it's a new decade, sort of, and things are looking up.  (Sorry, Jack, but things don't turn out very well for JFK in 1963...)

For a long while, this was the only Robert Redford film that I hadn't seen.  My first wife was a big Redford fan, and made me watch a bunch of his movies, and then as a part of this blog I managed to fill in most of the gaps, and this was one of the few hold-outs.  Last year I caught up with some of his newer films, like "Our Souls at Night" and "The Old Man & the Gun", but I think by now there are another few newer ones that I haven't seen, like "The Discovery" (2017), "A Walk in the Woods" (2015) and "The Company You Keep" (2012), but I'm not really in a rush to see those.  I think over the years I've covered the vast majority of his filmography.  

Also starring Robert Redford (last seen in "The Old Man & the Gun"), Alan Arkin (last seen in "Stand Up Guys"), Raul Julia (last seen in "One from the Heart"), Tomas Milian (last seen in "Amistad"), Daniel Davis (last seen in "The Prestige"), Tony Plana (last seen in "Bombshell"), Betsy Brantley, Lise Cutter, Richard Farnsworth (last seen in "The Outlaw Josey Wales"), Mark Rydell (last seen in "The Long Goodbye"), Vasek Simek, Fred Asparagus, Richard Portnow (last seen in "Desperately Seeking Susan"), Dion Anderson, Carmine Caridi (last seen in "Some Kind of Wonderful"), James Medina, Owen Roizman, with a cameo from Dennis Farina (last seen in "What Happens in Vegas"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 roulette wheels

Fanny and Alexander

Year 13, Day 17 - 1/17/21 - Movie #3,719

BEFORE: This is it, the end of the Bergman chain - this ran in December 2020 on TCM, and really was the last piece of the puzzle, in several ways. (If TCM hadn't run it, I would have had to watch on iTunes or work something else out...).  Bergman's last significant work was made as a five-hour miniseries for Swedish television, and the episodes were cut down and stitched together to make a long film for theatrical release in other countries.  But if I can make it through this three-hour epic, then I'm done with Ingmar and his filmography, I covered the important films, I think, so I'll never have to come back this way and watch them again.  It's been a struggle, but it's also a relief now that it's over.  And I won't have to watch another Swedish film with subtitles for - well, not for another 10 days at least.  I'm going to circle back to more modern Swedish films again before the end of the month.  

(I've realized too late that there are a couple of connections between Bergman's filmography and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" - one actor from "Scenes From a Marriage" also appears in that 2009 Swedish film, and one key actress from today's film also has a role.  It seems no matter how much research I do on cast lists, I still miss connections sometimes.  So I could go straight from here to there, but then I'd miss the 11 films in-between, and my January schedule would come up short.  Still, I should have caught this - I blame the Swedish language and all its little umlauts and other strange symbols...)

Erland Josephson carries over again from "Autumn Sonata".  This is Erland's fifth Bergman film, meaning he's tied with Liv Ullmann somehow.  But they both got beat by Gunnar Björnstrand, who appeared in 6 of the 9 Bergman films I watched.  I'm lucky that at the end, Bergman still cast a few of his old regulars, because this film contains, mostly, a ton of actors with no previous Bergman credits.  I guess when he suddenly went from small, intimate films with just four or five actors to something with a cast of hundreds, that's to be expected.  It couldn't possibly be that Bergman was thinking "Hey, just in case 40 years from now, if some guy is watching all of my significant films in chronological order, and he's obsessed with linking them by actors for some strange reason, I want to make things really difficult for THAT guy."

THE PLOT: Two young Swedish children experience the many comedies and tragedies of their family, the Ekdahls.  

AFTER: This is a gigantic story with a lot of moving parts - in some ways it's very much like the antique shop seen late in the film, with rooms and rooms full of just STUFF, most of which is not important in any way but is just taking up space in the shop, and then once in a while you might something important in there, that speaks to you personally, but those things might be few and far-between. Then there's just this room full of Japanese mannequins or giant puppet heads and that just leads to more questions.

But let me back up a bit - the first third of this film is set in a big Swedish multi-level house with an extended family of Ekdahls, and they all seem pretty well off.  Oscar Ekdahl manages the local theater in Uppsala, his wife Emelie is an actress and his mother Helena is a former actress.  It's Christmas time, and the extended family hosts a big Christmas dinner to be delivered to the actors after the big Christmas pageant, then of course a party that goes on until the wee hours of the morning, and through this we learn about the various relationships and goings-on, like Oscar's brother Gustav has a regular illicit relationship going on with Maj, one of the family's maids. His wife, Alma, seems pretty OK with it, though.  

Everything seems rather idyllic for a while - this is perhaps semi-autobiographical, as Bergman is probably represented here by Alexander, and I've seen reports where he's quoted as having grown up as a child of privilege, but spending a lot of time by himself, with a similar "magic lantern" as a toy - also a gateway drug of sorts to the art of filmmaking.  There's about a dozen kids growing up in this big house, or was this just visiting family members crashing there after the Christmas party?  I'm not sure. Either way, it's a big family with a lot of people to keep track of, and a lot of servants, too.  

But since this is a Bergman film, the good times can't last - I suspect they're only there in the first place to provide contrast.  Oscar the theater manager collapses on stage during a "Hamlet" rehearsal, it seems he's had a stroke, and he's brought home to circle the drain.  The doctor visits and says it's "just a matter of hours" - what a sad state of medical care there must have been in 1907.  Oscar's children, Fanny and Alexander, are brought to his bedside so he can say goodbye to them.  

Shortly thereafter, Fanny and Alexander witness their dead father in a white suit, playing the piano in the drawing room.  It's unclear if this is a dream sequence, or a ghost, or what - but it won't be the last time we see the deceased Oscar.  Emilie makes plans to marry Edvard, the local bishop and a widower, and everything changes for Fanny and Alexander. (It's really all about Alexander, Fanny is superfluous, more or less.)  The children move into the bishop's house, which is quite austere, there are no luxurious furnishings, no lavish parties, very few toys and zero fun.  Also living in the house are the bishop's mother, sister, obese and immobile aunt, and three maids, one of which seems friendly at first, but is really very cruel.  

The contrast between the Ekdahl house and the bishop's house is really stark and overblown, plus this is no place for kids to have fun, and then when Alexander invents a ghost story, he's severely punished for it, because the maid takes it to mean that he thinks the bishop murdered his wife and daughters.  Plus, as we all know, there are no such things as ghosts - or are there?  Oscar, who is deceased, puts in another appearance to visit his mother.  

Emelie soon realizes she can't change the bishop, she can't make his house more fun and cheery, and she's made a huge mistake.  But the bishop won't grant her a divorce, and if she leaves that's desertion under Swedish law, so the bishop would get custody of her children.  To make matters worse, she's pregnant with the bishop's child.  While Emilie is away, the bishop takes the opportunity to verbally entrap and physically punish Alexander. 

It's with the help of a rabbi (who's got some kind of relationship with the Ekdahl matriarch?) that the children are smuggled out of the bishop's house.  He pulls a kind of scam/magic trick that I didn't fully understand - like the whole ghost thing, I'm not sure this was properly explained.  (If the kids were in the chest, then how did the bishop also see them in the locked bedroom?)  But this leads to the third stage of the film, where Fanny and Alexander live with the rabbi and his two nephews in that giant antique store.  Emilie has to resort to desperate measures to be able to leave the Bishop's house, otherwise he would simply never let her go.

This can't be completely autobiographical, of course - I've learned that Ingmar Bergman's father wasn't a theater manager, he was a Lutheran minister, married to a former nurse.  So Bergman's father is probably the template for the step-father here.  Ingmar lost a taste for religion when he was eight, though, which is about when he discovered theater, and put on his own puppet-show versions of Strindberg plays. Obviously there was a rift between him and his conservative/strict father, and this is reflected in Alexander dealing with his father's death, and then wishing that his step-father would also die.  

Wikipedia says the themes here are about magic and reality - at one point, Alexander's mother clearly states that "There are no ghosts", but this is in conflict with Alexander and Helena both interacting with Oscar's ghost.  Or dreaming about it, whichever.  Or maybe this is just the way that Bergman/Alexander remembers things, many years later, it's tough to say.  Ghost Oscar wears white and the step-father wears black, so that could represent good and evil, but then the dead man is "good" and the alive minister is "evil".  A bold statement, but so be it.  There's also a bit of a tie-in with "Hamlet", as Oscar played the ghost of Hamlet's father on the stage, and then of course the scenario is similar, with Emilie/Queen Gertrude getting married again to an evil man, while the ghost of her dead husband is still hanging around.  Emilie plainly states, "I'm not Queen Gertrude, your kind stepfather is no king of Denmark..." which means, of course, that she totally is.  "Fanny and Alexander" borrows a bit of its framework from "Hamlet", as did "Strange Brew", which starred Max von Sydow, and that's just about where I came in on this chain a week ago.

Then there's religion, obviously, and the Bishop's stark, austere Protestant living style standing in such sharp contrast to the Ekdahl's extravagant Lutheran (?) Christmas celebration.  (You can think of the Ekdahl's Christmas as the one you celebrated in 2019, and then the Bishop's house maybe represents all the fun you didn't have in 2020.) Then there's the "magical Jew" being used as a plot device when the Rabbi helps free the children from the Bishop's house.  

But less seems to be written about the fact that one of Isak's adult nephews is played by a female actress, and the Bishop's obese aunt is played by a male actor.  What are we to make of this, in a story set in 1907?  Was there some androgyny even back then in Sweden?  When I was a kid in the 1970's, I remember that Sweden was recognized as the place people would travel to if they wanted a sex-change operation, so maybe they've always just been ahead of the curve on this topic?  

On a personal level, there are some things I did identify with here - my father became a Catholic deacon while I was growing up, so the church was always forced on me as a big part of life.  My parents belonged to a secular Franciscan order, too, so the second Saturday of every month was always "extra church" in downtown Boston for us.  I managed to get through it by sitting at the organ with my mother and turning the pages of music for her.  But like Bergman, I also broke with the faith as soon as I could, to start thinking for myself, and it was around the time that I discovered theater and then film as a substitute for religion.  Bergman had his "magic lantern", and I had a little Fisher-Price personal movie viewer that played cartoons on loops in little cartridges.  I'd watch the film frame-by-frame so I could figure out how Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse was made to move the way he did.  Then "Star Wars" came along and my little kiddie head exploded.  Sure, I ended up working in filmmaking, but why wasn't I ever as successful as Bergman was?  I guess because NYU film school taught me that I didn't really have the big narrative inspiration, or the work ethic, necessary to push my own ideas and projects forward - besides, I was always copying other filmmaker's ideas, anyway.  

This film represents a magnificent achievement, however, it's still much too long for a feature film. Anyway, I'm done with the Bergman marathon, 9 films in 7 days and honestly, it's a big relief now.  I'll never have to watch these again unless I want to, and right now I sure don't.  Instead I'm going to take a break and watch the first two episodes of "WandaVision" on Disney Plus before my next movie.  I can't really stop, because I'm still planning to cram 34 movies into the month of January (hey, what else do I have to do at this point, to pass the time?), but I can at least break for some TV.  

Also starring Gunn Wallgren, Jarl Kulle, Mona Malm, Angelica Wallgren, Maria Granlund, Kristian Almgren, Emelie Werkö, Allan Edwall, Ewa Fröling, Bertil Guve, Pernilla Allwin, Börje Ahlstedt, Christina Schollin, Sonya Hedenbratt, Käbi Laretei, Majlis Granlund, Svea Holst, Kristina Adolphson, Siv Ericks, Inga Alenius, Eva von Hanno (also carrying over from "Autumn Sonata"), Pernilla August (last seen in "Filmworker"), Lena Olin (last seen in "The Reader"), Gösta Prüzelius, Hans Straat, Carl Billquist, Axel Düberg, Olle Hilding, Jan Malmsjö (last seen in "Scenes From a Marriage"), Kerstin Tidelius, Hans Henrik Lerfeldt, Marianne Aminoff (also last seen in "Autumn Sonata"), Harriet Andersson (last seen in "Cries and Whispers"), Linda Krüger, Pernilla Wahlgren, Peter Stormare (last heard in "The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature"), Stina Ekblad, Mats Bergman, Gerd Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand (also carrying over from "Autumn Sonata"), Heinz Hopf, Sune Mangs, Nils Brandt, Per Mattsson, Anna Bergman, Licka Sjöman, Ernst Günther, Hugo Hasslo.  

RATING: 6 out of 10 whacks from a cane