SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE: Anatomy of a Breakup

The new version of Scenes from a Marriage directed by Hagai Levi (The Affair, In Treatment, Our Boys), based on Ingmar Bergman’s immortal classic, is not a reheated dish at all – it is a fresh and original reinterpretation of the original, no less touching, and perhaps even more moving, because it is set in the familiar realities of contemporary relationships.

The original Scenes from a Marriage began production in 1972. It was then that Ingmar Bergman started working on the script for a television series about the marriage of Johan and Marianne, which, though seemingly happy, begins to fall apart. He used in it observations of the abusive relationship of his parents, as well as his own experiences from marriage to pianist Käbi Laratei and journalist Gun Hagberg, or from his relationship with actress Liv Ullmann, whom he cast in the lead female role. Marianne’s on-screen husband was played by Erland Josephson.

This six-episode television series (reworked by Bergman into an almost three-hour theatrical version), which in its time caused a wave of divorces in Sweden but also contributed to the development of marriage therapy, nearly 50 years later became the subject of interest for the Israeli creator who can talk about relationships and their complexities like no one else. This is Hagai Levi, creator of the award-winning The Affair, a story – as the very title suggests – of an affair that leads to the breakup of two marriages. Levi performed a vivisection of romantic relationships there – it is hard to imagine a better creator to make a remake of Scenes from a Marriage.

The proposal came from director and producer Daniel Bergman, the son of the famous director and Käbi Laratei. The 2021 Scenes from a Marriage are just as insightful as their 1970s original, despite the fact that Hagai Levi made many changes compared to the original. The director uses familiar Bergmanesque frameworks – the episodes have the same titles, and each unfolds according to the same plot as in the original (with the exception that Levi completely omits the second episode, ultimately creating five episodes instead of six, as Bergman did).

His adaptation is faithful to the original, but in no way derivative – the creator of The Affair completely reverses the dynamics in the relationship of his protagonists. Jonathan (Oscar Isaac) and Mira (Jessica Chastain) are a seemingly happy couple with ten years of marriage behind them. She is a product manager at a tech corporation and the primary breadwinner of the family, he is a professor of philosophy who, far more often than his frequently traveling wife, takes care of their daughter Ava (Lily Jane).

Jonathan’s story resembles that of Marianne (Liv Ullmann), and Mira’s – that of Johan (Erland Josephson) from Bergman’s original. It is Jonathan who is the sensitive, attentive half who tends to the domestic hearth; he, like Marianne, is far more dependent on his partner than she is on him. Mira, on the other hand, like Johan, is confident, rational, and cool-headed, but also free from the baggage of experience Jonathan brings into the relationship – a Jew who many years earlier cut himself off from the Orthodox Judaism in which he was raised.

What Levi succeeds in achieving is making his protagonists into two wounded, sensitive, flesh-and-blood people for whom we can feel equal compassion. Although we are more on the side of the rejected Jonathan, we see the emotions raging inside Mira, understanding the motives behind her decision. In Bergman’s work this imbalance of power was very visible – Johan, who ultimately abandons the unsuspecting Marianne, is a completely insensitive ignoramus, a self-absorbed egocentric. Bergman did not endow him with any positive traits, concentrating them all in the character of Marianne in order to evoke a specific emotional effect in the viewers.

This is especially evident in the scenes when Johan and Marianne talk about their daughters. After the breakup, the man clearly does not care for his children, avoids contact with them (indeed, he does not even want to tell them about the separation from their mother and his departure from the country for many months!), repeatedly saying that the girls annoy him. Hagai Levi made a key change in this respect, encouraged by Daniel Bergman, who wanted the couple’s child to play a significant role in this version. Although we practically never see Ava, who grows up over the course of the episodes, on screen, Jonathan and Mira often talk about her – whether about the division of parental care or the difficult relationship with their daughter marked by their separation.

Above all, the new Scenes from a Marriage is a deeply authentic and moving study of marriage and painful separation. It would probably not have succeeded without excellent dialogue, contemporary touches, and a brilliant cast – Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac as a disintegrating couple are a perfect choice. The actors had already played a married couple once before in the film A Most Violent Year (2014), and are friends in real life, which may be why the on-screen relationship between Mira and Jonathan is full of genuine chemistry. Levi’s series is simply a great production – these are exactly the kind of remakes I have been fighting for!