☆"How can you discuss what you can't find words for?"☆

My Journey into the Films of Ingmar Bergman -- Part 39 of 62

I don't watch a lot of television. Movies? Apparently so, as I approach 5000 seen. But there are two television series in this Criterion set, and it appears like I must watch them both. First up is what many call one of the greatest things to ever air on TV, Bergman's landmark series Scener ur ett äktenskap ["Scenes From a Marriage"], five hours among six episodes, featuring Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson.

We begin as lawyer Marianne (Ullmann) and professor Johan (Josephson) are being interviewed for a women's magazine, just having "renewed their marriage contract" after ten years wedded. They seem to be the perfect pair, with two lovely daughters, and are well off with a very nice home. When the article is released, it paints them as nearly perfect and deeply in love, though the two have stark differences, namely Marianne's deep empathy and worldly compassion contrasted with Johan's individualism and narrow focus.

Soon, they invite their married friends over for dinner, Katarina (Bibi Andersson) and Peter (Jan Malmsjö), who immediately cannot hide their fracturing partnership. They run a successful business and feel the need to stay together for that reason only; during the dinner the two joke and prod at first but soon are at one another's throats, metaphorically, and announce a decision to divorce. Marianne and Johan are mortified to have witnessed this breakdown, but worse is that they feel like they caused it, and bit by bit sense that some of Katarina and Peter may be inside their relationship as well. Complicating things soon is Marianne announcing she's pregnant. Over a bedroom conversation they decide to keep the baby. Yet the next scene sees her at the hospital after an abortion, first relieved and then tearfully regretting this procedure as Johan consoles her.

Time moves on, and we see more scenes from the marriage and private conversations. Small quibbles turn to brief arguments, but often end quickly with a reconciliation and a smile and a kiss, swept under the rug, only to come up again at a later hour. We see Marianne in her family law office, discussing divorce with a woman (Barbro Hiort af Ornäs) in a two-decade loveless marriage; and we see Johan talk with his colleague and longtime friend Eva (Gunnel Lindblom) about his very personal poems he's kept secret from his wife. The summer trip abroad for which Marianne desires never seems to pan out, as they suffice for the summer cottage yet again. Things are content, and continue on autopilot, yet we only witness these brief moments of their marriage. That is, until one day, when Johan confesses that he's "gone and fallen in love" with another woman, and is leaving with her to Paris. Nothing will ever be the same again.

Bergman blindsides you with this devastating reveal, such that much like Marianne you're left to ponder how the hell you couldn't have seen it coming. So coldly it's announced that it's over and nothing can alter that. It is fair to expect a marriage to last forever? If one spouse truly does meet someone else with whom he or she feels closer, more in love, is it right to just brush that aside? Or should one confess their true feelings? It's not the first piece of media filmed about a failed relationship, but it may be the most honest.

It's quite something you watch this heartbreaking dissolution, but not in the way the Swedish audience first viewed it, spaced out over five weeks. Film historian and professor Phillip Lopate wrote about that initial presentation, including Bergman's introductory recaps and unusual readings of the credits aloud after each episode:

A TV mini­series, broadcast over several nights, has the ability to intersect with and form a quotidian relationship to viewers’ lives; its characters become members of the family, and their resilience over time, regardless of incessant crises called for by the script, induces a more good-humored, forgiving atmosphere. Bergman’s awareness of the buoyancy that repetition and length can bestow, and his stylized exploitation of it, show up in the TV version’s drily witty, detached voice-overs, which summarize the story so far at the head of each chapter and invite the viewer to look at some footage from Fårö during the end credits. The fact that these credits are also read aloud conveys a jaunty, Wellesian self-reflectiveness, calling attention to the film’s artifacted quality and implicitly mocking its protagonists’ self-seriousness.

Everything about this is different from anything Bergman had done before. Long emotional takes heighten the drama, filmed by Sven Nykvist with almost a cinéma vérité style, moving from close-ups to quick pans between the two, as if he didn't know where the conversation was headed at all. There is nothing flashy in this presentation, just a stripped-down drama and a work which features two actors on screen for over 90% of the runtime. But of course that 16mm footage is only more intimate because of the way Nykvist constructs the framing here.

Needless to say then, this is an acting clinic by these two sensational performers, each with a roller-coaster of emotions from bliss to denial and from severance to reconciliation. Like Linklater's Before trilogy, we pick up with these two at various points in the relationship, though not quite separated by that much time. And in this linear tale, albeit with large gaps, each time we're back with the pair it's another piece either built or removed from their lives.

The last two episodes are the ones that, to me, evoke Noah Baumbach's A Marriage Story the most, which utterly wrecked me last year (and this year). Obviously deeply inspired by this film, it's different for many reasons which I'm sure a million people have already pointed out. A stark one is that the couple's children in this series appear for all of two minutes, in literally the first scene, then never show their faces again. This is a film about a marriage, not a family. However, finally -- and probably only because they're legally forced too -- they get back to talking about their children. It's another sad turn for an emotionally taxing story.

There are a great deal of other themes to discuss in Scenes From a Marriage. Masculinity and misogyny, femininity and feminism, fatherhood and motherhood, fidelity and infidelity, truth and lies, sexuality and impotence, love and lust, desire and need, pragmatism and impracticality. I'm going to expand on those in another review, probably a much more personal one.

Like every review of this television miniseries, I have to point out that I cannot imagine how Bergman cut almost two hours of this for the theatrical version, which I will watch on Wednesday night. (A brief break for a PBS doc tomorrow.) Every scene feels essential. If this is five stars, how could that version be? I will find out in a couple days.

The biggest surprise: this did not make me cry. I assumed it would. That doesn't mean it isn't exhausting and brilliant, and along with Krzysztof Kieślowski's untouchable Dekalog, probably the best scripted show I've ever watched.

Added to Ingmar Bergman ranked.
Added to My Subjective List of the Best Films from Every Year I've Seen Them.