The Treacherously Stable

Even a couple married for ten years can start to question the nature of love and whether or not they ever had it. Ingmar Bergman's 1973 miniseries, Scenes from a Marriage, follows such a couple as suspicions about their own contentment start to erode their marital bliss. I'm three episodes in on the six episode series and, as expected from Ingmar Bergman, the dialogue is captivating.

Bergman regulars Erland Josephson and Liv Ullman play Johan and Marianne who start the first episode giving an interview where they discuss the happiness of their marriage. Over the course of the first three episodes, we see the two in situations that slowly and subtly highlight uncertainties they actually have about their relationship.

There are a big things, like an abortion they don't really argue about but reach muddled, vague agreements about until the irrevocable thing actually occurs. And then Marianne is heartbroken. And there are little things, like when Marianne, a divorce lawyer, speaks with a client whose grounds for divorce amount simply to not feeling in love anymore.

Bergman's dialogue flows without ever getting caught in predictable currents. As the characters pace a room or curl up broodingly in bed, they think aloud, diving at first for one certain conclusion before finding fault in and questioning that conclusion. The third episode, in which Johan confesses to Marianne he's having an affair and plans to leave for Paris with his mistress, doesn't have anything like the standard portrayal of such a situation. Marianne is by far the more sympathetic in the scene, but Johan's strangely strident and then indecisive proclamations about his dissatisfaction with, yet strangely strengthened affections for, Marianne are terribly human.

Both Ullman and Josephson give great performances. Ullman comes off as a slightly neurotic sweetheart while Josephson comes off as a man finally trapped by his own mild nature, provoking himself to become a cornered, frightened animal.

Scenes from a Marriage is available on The Criterion Channel.