“Marriage is a multi-million dollar industry become,” laments Jonathan (Oscar Isaac) in the first episode of Scenes from a Marriage. He, an academic, and his wife, the career-minded Mira (Jessica Chastain), are interviewed by a sociologist who studies marriage in the 21st century, and in a way that is what Israeli director Hagai Levi, along with his two protagonists.
He is inspired by that scenes from a Marriage, the famous miniseries created by Swedish great Ingmar Bergman in 1973. The new Scenes from a Marriage fairly faithfully follows Bergman’s blueprint: the five episodes of the HBO series broadly follow the scripts of five of Bergman’s six episodes, and even the names of the characters give a nod to their predecessors from the 1970s: Johan becomes Jonathan, Marianne becomes Mira .
But Levi deviates from Bergman’s scenario in a number of important details. I’m not talking about how smartphones and Airbnb make their way into Levi’s story, but about the fact that it is no longer Jonathan who puts a bomb under the relationship, but his wife. Scenes from a Marriage is a perfect remake: the essence and quality of the original are taken, but the context is updated. It highlights the lasting relevance and timeless value of Bergman’s work.
crackling chemistry
However, the biggest stars are not Bergman or Levi, although his subtle but penetrating direction, with long shots, slow camera movements and thoughtful editing, is indispensable for the way in which Scenes from a Marriage crawls under your skin. No, it’s Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain who carry this five-hour marital crisis. Except for the world’s most graceful wearer of a Putje in the Chin – sorry, Kevin Janssens! – Chastain is one of the most impressive actresses of her generation. Isaac can also put such an epithet on his business card – just below the caption ‘bottomless barrel of charisma’.
They portray two recognizable, fragile and fallible characters with such dedication and so much self-evidence, and the chemistry between them crackles. This was evident not only in their sultry passage on the red carpet in Venice, but also in the way they can go from an intense fight to a passionate kiss and back again.
Virtually every episode opens with a look behind the fourth wall, where one of these two born actors walks onto the set and prepares to shoot: as if Bergman and Levi are reminding us that every marriage partner has a part to play. Scenes from a Marriage is therefore not an advertisement for the marriage institute (or the marriage industry), but for the craft called acting.
Scenes from a Marriage, now on Streamz.
