The film documents the courtship and the difficult early years of their marriage, until the point when Anna becomes pregnant with their second son, who corresponds to Ingmar himself.

By then, Henrik is planning to go to Forsboda, a remote village in northern Sweden, to work in a parish whose head minister is aged and ailing.

The Bergmans have their first son, Dag, but Henrik becomes embroiled in the local strike action, as he refuses to endorse poor working conditions and lends his church for a socialist meeting.

He replies suffering is useless and God views the world with horror, and leaves the palace fuming at having to flatter the Queen.

The Bergmans decline the position, but the villagers are upset they did not hear of the offer except through rumours, and are disturbed by Henrik publicly humiliating Nordenson in church.

In despair, Anna decides she can no longer live in Forsboda and takes Dag to the Åkerblom house, while Henrik at first resolves to stay in the village.

[3] He wrote the screenplay based on the early years of the marriage of his parents, Lutheran minister Erik Bergman and Karin Åkerblom, between 1909 and 1918, attempting to see them less as "mythical giants who dominated his childhood",[4] and more as complicated people.

[4] Professor Rochelle Wright details where the film differs from history, noting that unlike Henrik and Anna, Erik and Karin in fact met as second cousins.

[3] August was facing budget difficulties with the Hollywood film he was working on, and abandoned it to travel to Stockholm to meet Bergman, whom he admired.

[10] Derek Elley of Variety wrote the film "packs a sustained emotional wallop that lightens its three-hour span," and Pernilla August "holds the screen in a series of throat-catching sequences.

"[3] Janet Maslin, writing for The New York Times, said that the second boy Anna is pregnant with at the end of the film is Ingmar Bergman, "whose screenplay looks back at the social, economic and personal forces that turned his parents' early years together into a tug of war," while Bille August's direction is "more decorous and less bold."

[11] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone panned the film as a "three-hour Swedish soap opera" that "fails to live up to its pedigree," while calling Pernilla August "wonderfully expressive" and Max von Sydow and Ghita Nørby excellent.

"[13] Kenneth Turan, writing for The Los Angeles Times, felt the film is missing Bergman's direction, but it has strength in his screenplay and an acting quality "uniformly quite high," with "special nods" to Pernilla and von Sydow.

[14] People critics judged the film to be "equally memorable" to Bergman's 1973 miniseries Scenes from a Marriage, filled with "vivid, literate confrontations" that Bille August gives "naturalistic fervor".

[18] Critic Vincent Canby also identified Sunday's Children (1992), directed by Daniel Bergman and written by Ingmar, as "a continuation" of Fanny and Alexander and The Best Intentions.

[19] Author Geoffrey Macnab wrote that whereas Ingmar's recollections of Erik are damning in his 1982 film Fanny and Alexander, his 1991–92 study of his father is "far more forgiving" in The Best Intentions and Sunday's Children.