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Four of five episodes of Hagai Levi’s “Scenes From a Marriage” open with a handheld camera following stars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain as they arrive on set with crew members rushing in, geared up. for the stage. It’s somewhat reminiscent of a live performance in the way it captures glimpses of artists behaving like people getting ready for work, creating a divide between reality and entertainment.
For some, this will surely strike as a precious meta-flower meant to underscore the seriousness of this artistic endeavor, and on some level, this point of view has some merit. Levi’s remake of Ingmar Bergman’s influential 1973 series would work just as well without these sequences; it’s not as if anyone watching is mistaking Chastain for his character, Mira, or assuming that Isaac looks like Jonathan, Mira’s husband, despite being tailor-made for the actor.
But given the turmoil over a viral moment in which Isaac appeared to kiss Chastain’s arm on the red carpet during the series’ debut at the Venice International Film Festival, drawing a line between life and performance n maybe not the worst thing.
Nowhere is it more clear that these actors throw themselves into the shoes of fictional characters than within seconds of hearing someone shout “Action!” In “Scene I: Innocence & Panic,” Chastain seamlessly flips the switch to become Mira, whose exhausted uncertainty shines through as she furiously sends a text.
Chastain asks Mira to put on another mask as she sits next to Isaac, already in the role of Jonathan, in their living room. The couple agreed to interview a doctoral student. one candidate is writing an article on the impact of evolving gender norms on monogamous marriages. The resulting conversation reveals how Mira and Jonathan met, how they define themselves as individuals, and most importantly, the fact that they’ve been together for 10 years and have a daughter.
What Isaac and Chastain say without words explains a lot more about these two. Mira, a technical executive, is cold and out of touch for most of the interview, rarely making eye contact with the interviewer. Jonathan, a philosophy teacher, does most of the conversation for Mira, assuming he speaks for the two and elegantly explaining himself through every interaction.
Shortly after, they are seen sharing a dinner with another couple (played by Nicole Beharie and Corey Stoll) who opened their marriage, and whose relationship is visibly imploding. But every union has a timed explosive hidden in its guts. What each couple does with this bombshell tends to determine if they’ll go the distance. Reset the timer or deactivate it, it will still be there until it goes off.
Watching these situations unfold, one can come to another interpretation of Levi’s device and what it conveys about relationships in the context of this story.
He postulates that any partnership that survives the waning lust of a young relationship settles into some role-playing version. Everything that happens to Mira and Jonathan’s union after this first hour demonstrates our tendency to pounce on each other in these parts, whether the bonds we make stay intact or break. This also applies to everything around them, as Mira points out – people develop silly attachments to furniture and imagine the myth of a house. “Our whole relationship has become an object,” she tells Jonathan, delivering her diagnosis of their breakup, one of many.
It doesn’t make the witness to Mira and Jonathan’s marriage slowly dissolving any easier to see. On the contrary, it accentuates the sting of what is happening before our eyes because of the concentrated humanity that Isaac and Chastain evoke in their representations.
These actors excel at portraying two people who can’t help but hurt each other when they’re in the same room, whether intentionally or accidentally, just because they know each other so well. They also accomplish this while largely avoiding the trap of making Mira or Jonathan easily despicable, even the part that caused the separation.
Levi, who previously created “The Affair” for Showtime, approaches his “Scenes” employing American manners and personalities to the characters established by Bergman, much like his creation for Israeli television, “BeTipul,” was remixed in “In Treatment”. “
The cast shows it, capitalizing on the proven chemistry of Isaac and Chastain. (In addition to knowing each other from college, they once played a husband and wife in “A Most Violent Year” in 2014). together but cannot live fully without each other. As in the original, they oscillate between friendship, disdain, and physical outbursts in the same episode.
The main difference, perhaps in an effort to accommodate the feminist critics who followed Bergman in his time, is that Chastain’s character is one with a stressful career and a bigger paycheck. Jonathan d’Isaac is the primary caregiver of their child Ava (Lily Jane) while also demonstrating all the tendencies to grab the attention of self-glorifying male intellectuals.
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The majority of “Scenes From a Marriage” takes place in Mira and Jonathan’s busy house and features Chastain and Isaac alone, playing against each other. Through the scripts, Levi and his collaborator Amy Herzog, who co-wrote two episodes, create such a level of intimacy that, when placed hand in hand with the work’s ubiquitous cinematic realism, they sow palpable discomfort.
That’s part of the trick Bergman pulls into the original and Levi’s remakes for audiences today. We are made to feel the embarrassment that our central couple feels as they witness the breakdown of another marriage in their presence.
It’s over in minutes for the audience, and it’s as much a spectacle for us as it is for them. The rest of “Scenes” intentionally places us in Mira and Jonathan’s mess, capturing their growing angst through solemn tracking shots hovering behind them as they stagger from room to room and in eerie close-ups placing us breathlessly. ‘a muscle that contracts. The privacy of a bedroom covers all of the work, with the exception of the relaxation that this term usually implies.
Whether one experiences Bergman’s original as a six-part series or the two-hour and 49-minute film in which it was ultimately edited, his founding means of distilling marriage to its essence is unprecedented. Few films do not draw inspiration from it in one way or another; even filmmakers who pretend not to are probably influenced by those who do, like Woody Allen. Recent works like Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story are overt homages, while the recent Lena Waithe-centered “Master of None” chapter titled “Moments in Love” is a direct lift.
A main distinguishing element between the scenes of Bergman and Levi is the relative gelidity of the original, although its Scandinavian palette may unduly influence this impression. Yet the director emphasizes a sense of reserve in his presentation.
For this reason, Johan d’Erland Josephson’s clinical approach to breaking the heart of his wife Marianne (played by Liv Ullmann, Bergman’s former partner) allows the audience to adopt a position of distance while inviting her to examine his own love life.
Nonetheless, like a gesture of love that long years of a relationship transform from a passionate compulsion into a reflex, there are times when this adaptation feels like it’s going through the motions, albeit very nicely. You don’t have to have seen the original to feel like you already have this story, as there’s a good chance you’ve enjoyed or endured one of its descendants. HBO has made a few of them.
Just because a story is familiar doesn’t mean it’s worthless, of course. Watching Isaac and Chastain impressively dance, practice and trade carefully choreographed fireworks is reason enough to admire “Scenes From a Marriage”. Mira and Jonathan’s break-up house provides a great stage to show off their talents, especially in the third episode, by far the best of the series.
Before you do this, ask yourself how well you know your own partnership and yourself. A footnote in the legacy of the original series was that it was blamed for an increase in the divorce rate in Sweden around the same time as its debut, rather than reflecting what was already happening in the company.
The new “Scenes” come at a time when relationships are strained by a pandemic that has both shut us down and separated us from others. Some can see parts of themselves and their fragility in Mira and Jonathan’s cyclical pushes and pulls, sounding a warning they may not want to deal with just yet.
If not, at the very least, “Scenes From a Marriage” leaves no doubt that the viral red carpet moment of the stars was anything but platonic. No one will watch what’s happening onscreen between them and feel like there’s something brewing here, other than two people giving their all in the bittersweet tale of the painful end to certain love stories.
“Scenes From a Marriage” premieres Sunday, September 12 at 9 p.m. on HBO. Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 film version of “Scenes From a Marriage” is currently airing on HBO Max.
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