Let’s Start at the Very Beginning: How revisiting our childhood memories can unlock our present.
How do we remember our childhoods? There is no time in human life that is said to be more formative, more important to the psychological makeup of an adult than their childhood. Modern psychology, or at least popular perceptions of it, seem to link every internal problem a person faces to their childhood. Whether someone has a rough childhood or a smooth, happy childhood, the influences of the world on a child stay with them forever. The idea of childhood being the foundational experiences for how you perceive yourself and the world and the relationship between those two makes sense. We enter the world a blank canvas and the first brushstrokes, in one way or another, have long lasting effects on the direction of one’s overall direction and method of navigation through life.
The most well-known examples of this are the observed effects of childhood trauma on adults, many years after the trauma has taken place. Unprocessed trauma is most commonly found in childhood, since most children aren’t communicating with a psychotherapist regularly or even communicating with other adults in a manner that’s deep enough to address any traumatic incidents in a way that will result in any kind of positive resolution. Most children think that whatever traumatic incident occurs is their fault and thus, an impactful vein of shame and pain is introduced to the child’s psyche. And it’s proven that the effects of these events last for a long time after childhood: if you endured some kind of traumatic event in your childhood, you’re many times more likely to be depressed and anxious as an adult.
But one’s memory of childhood is not the same as one’s childhood. A person who has never processed childhood trauma probably still holds onto the belief that it was their fault; since they’ve likely never talked about this incident with anyone, the distorted vision of the child, which simply results from inexperience and disconnection from the adult world, remains as the memory of the adult.
We can only accredit childhood its importance and influence insofar as we can remember it; these memories that we believe to be the most influential are, ironically, also the most sparse and the rarest because they are always the furthest from our current moment in time. The distance in time between the present and our childhood memories mean that they are also probably the least factually reliable. They are the oldest and therefore the most prone to mutate over time, the hardest to corroborate, which is why reflection on childhood memories, with time and distance from the memories, often is the source of breakthroughs for adults in their present lives. As we revisit and reinterpret our childhood memories through the lens of the more knowledgeable adult, things about the past become clear, things that weren’t clear or visible to us as children.
Reflections on childhood memories are subsequently the source of inspiration for many, many artists. They’re often vivid and poignant because they occurred during the most impressionable time of our lives and seem to unfold new truths to our adult minds years later. (For two fantastic essays on childhood memory and writing, see “writing autobiography”, chapter 22 from Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black by bell hooks and “The Site of Memory” by Toni Morrison.) Today, I want to go to cinema, where two fantastic, epic reflections on childhood recently inspired me to think about this subject.
Fanny and Alexander (1982, dir. Ingmar Bergman) and Roma (2018, dir. Alfonso Cuarón) share a lot of similarities: they’re both films that fall into the category of art cinema; they are each the magnum opus of either’s respective writer-director; they both take long, reflective looks at the director’s childhood and the world in which they grew up, which both happen to be within upper-middle class bubbles, surrounded by dedicated working class servants; they both focus either somewhat or wholly on the class division between the bourgeoisie family of the director and their servants; they both have lavish, ironic depictions of Christmas that further the feeling of atmosphere and presence in the film’s setting, etc. The two films are the most personal films by their respective writer/director and provide fascinating looks not only into their rich childhood, but provide insight into different retrospective visions of the artists.
There are a few obvious differences between the two films that must first be addressed, however. F&A is in color and Roma is in black-and-white, which is ironic, considering that most of Bergman’s known work revels in its grayscale beauty and that Cuarón has never worked in black-and-white until now. But this difference highlights another similarity: both films’ color palette marks a departure from their vast body of previous work. Significant Bergman movies that were shot in color before Fanny and Alexander include The Passion of Anna, Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage, and Autumn Sonata. While Cries and Whispers is arguably the best and most artistic work of these four, its use of color is primarily an expressionistic study of red, which is used to great effect throughout. None of Bergman’s color films embrace the wide spectrum the way Fanny and Alexander does. In making the film, which was supposed to be his final movie, Bergman desired to create something totally unlike anything else he had previously done and the use of effusive color in exquisitely designed sets and costumes. He spares no expense in making the world as immersive as possible, transferring the vivid quality of his childhood memories to the screen.
Alfonso Cuarón strives to do the same in Roma, to go to great lengths to make the world of the film feel as authentic and immersive as possible. The long takes that sweep across neighborhoods, the elaborate set pieces involving droves of extras, the intensive surround sound design all create an experience and effect that is as monumental and engrossing as the art direction and color photography of Fanny and Alexander, but in order to root the film in antiquity, Cuarón shoots his story in the monochromatic medium of the past. In both cases, the director wants to give the audience the experience of being with them, in the past, in their childhood. Yet, each chooses to jump to either end of the cinematic spectrum: one relishes in the wonderland of color and the other dives firmly into the look of the past.
Another difference between the two films will help elucidate this last point: Bergman centers his autobiographical film on himself, with Alexander having the lion’s share of the narrative’s attention. Bergman wrote from his memory and, in a wider sense, from his mind’s eye throughout his career. His journals and autobiographies illustrate how simple images or dreams were the inspiration for his prolific body of work, but Fanny and Alexander is the only time that Bergman expressly writes and centers his story around himself (Bergman made a notable number of his films with females taking the lead, and a number of his personal manifestations are through his actresses).
Cuarón, on the other hand, centers his tale on the woman largely responsible for raising him, Cleo, based on Liboria “Libo” Rodriguez, his real-life nanny and to whom the film is dedicated. While he claimed that 90% scenes were written, in some way, from his memory, the film relies on the intersection of childhood memories and adult understanding of the present. Cleo’s story is one that is heartbreaking, but mostly shielded from the children she takes care of. Without spoiling anything of the plot, Cleo’s connection to the children are beautiful and essential to the film, but are only a piece of her depicted life. The point of Roma is to celebrate this woman who was close to Cuarón and it succeeds in this celebration through a thorough exploration of Cleo, both inside and outside the family she serves.
Thus, Fanny and Alexander centers itself around the perspective of a child, while Roma takes us through an adult experience of the artist’s childhood. This difference has an effect on the moods and atmospheres of the two films: F&A drips with nostalgia commonly associated with our childhoods. The elaborate decorations and traditions of Swedish Christmas fill us with the excitement and wonder of a child, mirroring Alexander’s experience as he moves through this wonderful holiday. These elements and scenes from the film prove that Fanny and Alexander couldn’t exist as this nostalgic portrait without the exuberant, almost excessive color — the nature of the tale demands to be presented in this specific manner. The film as a whole is remarkably Dickensian and while the longer version of the film explores the extended family, the main story remains a bildungsroman. Alexander replaces Alice as he traverses the magical realist Wonderland filled with ghosts, a cruel step-father, and other moments of (otherwise unexplainable) supernatural people, places, and events. The film resembles, funnily enough, Francis Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess… which Alfonso Cuarón adapted in 1995.
Cuarón, possibly having already explored the nostalgic childhood in tale in his 1995 film, eschews the rose-tinted lens when accessing the past. On the specific filmic language of the camera, its movement, and the blocking of the actors in relation to it, he said, “I would say it’s the ghost of the present that is visiting the past, without getting involved, just observing, not trying to make a judgment or commentary. Everything there would be the commentary itself.” To tell the story of an adult in a way that does justice to that person, Cuarón must use the lens of an adult, one that can remain objective, one that can understand the complexity and depth of this figure’s struggles. While Roma’s wide scope and meticulous examination of social divides and conditions technically resembles a Dickens novel, there is a lack of sentimentality, even in the most intense or emotional moments, that has come to define the feel of Dickens and which certainly finds its place in F&A. Cuarón’s moments are mostly quiet and quotidien, which doesn’t preclude a sense of grandeur, but does infuse the entire work with a sense of realism.
Bergman’s memories on screen in F&A are focused on himself, seen through his eyes. This ownership of memory is possibly what gives him the liberty to depart from reality, littering the story with visions, ghosts, a mummy, a moving statue, and other magic. Fanny and Alexander feels like the tale of a child because of its imagination. Cuarón’s tale is an adult one, given its dedicated depiction of reality as one sees it. Perhaps telling another’s story restricts the imaginative liberties one takes in writing a story like Roma. Bergman feels no obligation to do justice to anyone other than himself and his childhood, while Cuarón feels the need to depict reality, in dedicating his film to Libo, to accurately convey the power, pain, and importance of this person who existed. Cleo’s reality, her struggle, her isolation and relationships aren’t filmed with the childlike perspective of Alexander, they are, as Cuarón said, “observ[ed]” by the camera of the present (which can also be seen in the choice to shoot digital black-and-white, rather than celluloid, which would give the more familiar grainy, retro look).
But why does all of this matter? I started this article talking about general facts of childhood memories and, in particular, childhood trauma. I planned to talk both about these two gems of cinema and about our own experience of remembering our childhood. The point of discussing the similarities and differences of Fanny and Alexander and Roma is to notice how there are different ways of remembering and reflecting on the past. The two perspectives presented in these films, and the infinite others, ring true, whether sentimental or not, realistic or fantastic. We all have narratives about our childhoods that probably feature a variety of genres. Some of our memories are certainly nostalgic and classical, some are romantic (in the literary sense), some are realistic, some are tragic or horrific.
Bergman brings out the trauma of his harsh, preacher of a father and contrasts it with the love and comfort of his mother and grandmother. Cuarón allows us to watch the erosion of the film’s family and the love from his mother and nanny that binds it together. We experience the tumultuous and traumatic events that occurred in Mexico City in that period alongside the characters. The point of these reflections on a personal past is to process, express, and externalized all that otherwise remains locked away in memories.
Sharing memories and stories of the past is an important part of making sense of how we got to where we are, how we became who are. These two men travel within themselves and bring us along, immersed in their memories, in order understand them, ourselves, and the world around us. Perhaps indirectly, these two works of memory inspire us to examine our own pasts and consider what types of stories lie waiting for us. Storytelling from the self is therapeutic both for the speaker and the audience and is the way to create that which is true and beautiful. Like the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament, the past must be recorded and interpreted in order to understand the future. The prophets did so for their people, but we can do it for ourselves: examine what environment, people, and events made us in order to comprehend that which is to come. And you’ll find that stories from your personal past not only define you as an individual, but connect you to everyone around you.
