My eighteenth project by Ingmar Bergman. Like Fanny & Alexander, I chose to watch the television version of this for my first viewing, although I may eventually watch the theatrical version. I'm watching these films in Criterion's Ingmar Bergman boxset, and that boxset does not have those films in chronological order by release date. They are grouped thematically instead, and while I have not been reading the texts that accompany each film (revoke my Criterion card if you must), it definitely seems like the first group of films in this were centered specifically around relationship dramas, pulling them from throughout his career. None of them up through this point have had much in the way of like, agnostic/atheist existential meditation or mysticism to them, but this one definitely seems to be the culmination of that recurring thought in Bergman's body of work, the relationship drama to end all the others. No wonder it's five hours long.
It is, in my view, definitely the best film on that subject he has made, and one of the finest film's he's made period that I've seen. Erland Josephson gives a masterful performance as Johan, a man who feels trapped by societal expectations and distant from his wife. He feels as though all of their interactions are dictated by their parents' wishes and by what is expected of them and seeks a life with more spontaneity, freedom, and agency, and begins to view his wife as the embodiment of what prevents him from having it. Josephson's performance is superb, but even better is Liv Ullman's, who gives one of the most realistic, believable, and powerful acting performances I've ever seen in anything ever. She is Marianne, Johan's dutiful and obedient wife whose life is wrenched from its kind of blissful haze as Johan's discontentment manifests itself in a way that pushes them towards separation. Throughout the series, while Johan seems to stay about the same in his convictions (even if he does get a bit more deflated and defeated as it goes on), Marianne grows and changes radically and Liv Ullman does an incredible job bringing those changes to life. The majority of the miniseries really only has these two actors in it, although the first episode does feature Bibi Andersson in a memorable role as a friend of the couple who is already embroiled in a bitter, hateful ongoing quarrel with her husband.
Johan and Marianne's story feels so true to life and so thoroughly explored that it's the kind of thing that's easy to trick yourself into thinking it's predictable, because everything that happens makes such perfect sense and feels so accurate to our own lived experiences (not that we've all experienced what they have, but surely if we're old enough to be watching an Ingmar Bergman miniseries, we know, or know of, a marriage experiencing difficulties). It's a testament not just to Ullman and Josephson's acting but to Bergman's writing as well that such a powerful journey can occur solely from dialogue - there are three episodes of the series where we don't even see any other actors except for these two, and it often goes for ten, fifteen, twenty minute stretches at a time where they don't move from where they are. They're sitting in bed together, they're reclining on opposite couches, they're lying on the floor. I think there are definitely films out there where you watch it and you can tell, 'This started off as a stage play', and sometimes with those it seems like all the film director did is put a camera in front of them. We often think of the difference between films and stage productions in terms of all that films can accomplish in rapidly moving between sets, in special effects, that sort of thing, but even if this film consists 85% of two people talking in a room, I think a very special thing about Scenes From A Marriage is that it could only have been a movie. In a play, we would likely want our two characters that we are going to watch talk to each other for four and a half hours to at least walk around, gesture, emote, acting talents that rely on bodies and blocking, but this film is special because it is so observant and skillful at capturing intricate emotion as written on the actors' faces, something that just would not work nearly as well as an audience member watching a live person act on stage, even in the center of the front row, because plenty of this film was made with the camera right up in their faces - we can see every little movement of their mouths, their eyebrows, everything, a quality that emphasizes both the acting prowess on display and the masterful camerawork required to capture it.
This is a great film! One of Ingmar Bergman's very finest and if Fanny and Alexander didn't exist it would certainly be my favorite.