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Sitting through watching Fanny and Alexander for the first time, I couldn’t deal with the whole thing at once just before going to sleep, so I stopped it about half way through when it started getting really dark.

Going through the remainder, I’m glad that I waited.  But before even finishing it I was amazed by a scene enough to stop watching and start thinking.  The film dialog makes mention that the events take place in 1907 (in Sweden).  Grandmother is sitting at a table sifting through a photo album, and her son jokes about how she is sifting through thousands of photographs.  In 1907.  To think that in that era with the great effort that went into taking even a single photo, and someone is already depicted overwhelmed by the mountain of memories:

And I know people today who have been taking digital photos vigorously for at least 10 years now, who have stacks of DVDs each of which contains hundreds of photos.  My own collection, assembled mostly since 2004, taken with what I thought was some critical eye to avoiding taking unnecessary shots, is well over 8000 photos.

Thinking about the meaning or lack and weight of all of those images.  Glancing over in the room as I type this I can see the three physical photographs that I brought home with me after my Grandmother died: one of her as a child in her mother’s arms, one of her father standing proudly by a car in pre-war Cuba.  One of her future husband standing on a ship at sea.