SEPARATION ANXIETY (SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE)

 

As sacred texts go in film and television, Ingmar Bergman's Swedish six part drama 'Scenes from a Marriage' is pretty much up there.

Broadcast on SVT in 1973 with Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson in the main roles, it was edited into an acclaimed cinematic version for international audiences that landed Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for its stars.

In another incarnation, Bergman's masterpiece has often been performed in theatres around the world.

It has been aped too by many, many filmmakers - most notably Woody Allen, Paul Mazursky and Richard Linklater and most recently in Noah Baumbach's 'Marriage Story'.

Now the Golden Globe winning Israeli writer and director of HBO's 'In Treatment' and Showtime's 'The Affair' has returned to Bergman's text.

Hagai Levi has also reunited Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac in the lead roles after their electric performances as a couple whose livelihood is under significant threat from organised crime in JC Chandor's excellent 'A Most Violent Year'.

Changing the gender dynamics to a degree from Bergman's original, Chastain's tech professional Miri is the main breadwinner, while Isaac's academic Jonathan remains at home.

Like Josephson's Johan in Bergman's version, she also has an affair - setting in train the spectacular disintegration of their marriage.

The first episode, though, finds Miri and Jonathan taking part in an academic study about their marriage of over 10 years which is being conducted by Sunita Mani's Danielle.

The couple juggle answering Danielle's questions with catering to the demands of their young daughter, Sophia Kopera's Ava.

However the sequence, which mirrors a magazine interview in Bergman's original, is a way of enabling the audience to get to know Jonathan and Miri and detect signs that all is about to go pear shaped.

Later the couple host some friends, Nicole Beharie and Corey Stoll's couple Kate and Peter for dinner at their house.

Just like Jan Malmsjo's Peter and Bibi Andersson's Katarina in Bergman's version, Peter and Kate look much more dysfunctional as they bicker at the table about Kate's feelings for a lover she has just broken up with during their open marriage.

Peter is so tetchy, in particular, if you were to put money on which couple's marriage will crash first, if would unquestionably be on his to Kate.

After the dinner ends suddenly and acrimoniously, Miri reveals to Jonathan she is pregnant.

However as the episode wears on, doubts creep in about whether they want to go through another difficult pregnancy and they mutually agree to an abortion.

From there on in, Miri and Jonathan's relationship goes into a sharp decline.

In the second episode, Miri reveals she is having an affair with Michael Aloni's Israeli startup entrepreneur Poli and announces she wants to leave Jonathan.

Devastated by the news, Jonathan wants to explore what went wrong with their marriage but Miri is less keen and just wants to move on.

Acquiescing to her wish, Jonathan fumes down the phone at Kate but especially Peter for concealing Miri's affair from him.

Subsequent episodes see the couple flirt and bicker as they go through the tortuous process of separation and divorce and deal with the mess they have created for themselves and their daughter.

There is a real "will they, won't they get back together" element to the drama and just when you think things are getting back on track, the rug is suddenly pulled.

Like Bergman's original, the new version of 'Scenes from a Marriage' is very theatrical, with a lot hanging on Chastain and Isaac's screen chemistry.

Interestingly though, Levi begins nearly every episode with a behind the scenes peek into his leads arriving on set before transitioning straight into the scene they are about to undertake.

It's as if the writer director is desperate to remind us of the show's television roots and not regard it merely as a five act play.

For much of the five episode miniseries when Isaac and Chastain do launch into their emotionally draining scenes, they deliver compelling performances.

Like Bergman's original, HBO's version is mostly a two hander, with Miri and Jonathan engaging in verbal jousting in their comfortable Bostonian bourgeois home.

If the first episode scripted by Levi and the US playwright Amy Herzog feels like a ponderous scene setter, it's the second where 'Scenes from a Marriage' really comes alive with Miri's revelation about her affair.

Audiences invested in Levi's version may well pick sides.

Others might find themselves getting frustrated with Miri and Jonathan's self-absorption and their disregard for those around them who they treat as bit part players in their lives.

However as good as Isaac and Chastain's performances undoubtedly are - and it has to be said Beharie and Stoll too when they appear - Levi never really quite manages to completely justify why he has decided to remake Bergman's masterpiece.

Nor does he manage to eclipse it.

In order to justify its existence, he tinkers with the dynamics of Bergman's original.

Not only does Miri follow bits of Johan's story arc and Jonathan follows Marianne's but he retains other elements like the husband mostly dominating the introductory interview with Danielle.

But whereas in the original this reveals the power dynamic between Marianne and Johan with the latter the dominant figure, the more subdued nature of Miri in Levi's version hints that she doesn't agree with her husband's depiction of their marriage as a great success and is about to pull down the whole edifice.

With each episode cataloguing the stages of grief around the disintegration of the marriage, Levi does a very good job letting his leads loose on the script as their conversations roll from the mundane to full blown angst.

But as good as Chastain and Isaac are, the shadows of previous American movies that have done a good job recreating the magic of Bergman's classic also loom large.

Jonathan and Miri's tempestuous relationship seems no different from Mia Farrow's Hannah and Michael Caine's Elliott's woes in Woody Allen's 'Hannah and Her Sisters' or Judy and Gabe Roth's in Allen's movie 'Husbands and Wives'.

Nor does the sudden marital decline feel any different or less painful than Julie Delpy's Celine and Ethan Hawke's Jesse in Linklater's excellent 'Before Midnight' or Adam Driver's Charlie and Scarlett Johansson's Nicole in 'Marriage Story'.

Those viewers unfamiliar with Bergman's 'Scenes from a Marriage' will just dismiss it as the latest in a long line of angst ridden dramas about middle class, east coast intellectuals emoting the pain of their marital breakup.

What you get in the end is a handsomely made, decently scripted, impeccably well acted TV series.

Andrij Prekeh's cinematography and Evgueni and Sacha Galperine's minimalist musical score are exactly what you would want.

Beyond that, there's not much else.

As good as it is - and at times it is very good - you find yourself wishing there was a whole lot more.

In fact, you may well find yourself hunting down Bergman's original, if only to find out why his less glossy, more theatrical 1973 original still remains the high watermark for this kind of drama.

As we have said before, no sacred text in film or television should ever be immune from a fresh interpretation.

And as fresh interpretations go, Levi's 'Scenes from a Marriage' comes a lot closer than most remakes to recreating the power of the original.

But if you are going to remake classic, you have to really work hard to give it a fresh spin and justify your remake's existence.

Levi's 'Scenes from a Marriage' does plenty of the former but it doesn't quite manage the latter.

('Scenes from a Marriage' premiered on HBO in the US on September 12-October 10, 2021 and on Sky Atlantic in the UK and Ireland on October 11-November 8, 2021)

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