Rust in Blue

Violence subtly encroaches on a quiet Baltic island. Four people have a subtly desperate, superficially warm, relationship in 1969's The Passion of Anna (En passion). The English title draws attention to Liv Ullmann's character but this brilliant Ingmar Bergman film also stars three of his other regulars--Erland Josephson, Bibi Andersson, and Max von Sydow.

Andreas (von Sydow) is the point of view character for most of the film. He lives alone, nursing emotional scars from his failed marriage. One day, Anna (Ullmann) turns up to use his phone. She accidentally leaves her purse behind and, inside, Andreas finds notes from her husband about her violent behaviour.

She's living with two friends--a photographer named Elis (Josephson) and his wife, Eva (Andersson). Andreas finds himself at dinner with the three of them and the human contact turns out to be something he desperately needs.

The film features interviews with the actors talking about their characters and von Sydow discusses how he found it difficult to play a man whose experiences have made him naturally reticent to express himself in even the slightest way. Of course, having that interview thrown in does make von Sydow's job a little easier, and I wonder if that's what Bergman had in mind, and if von Sydow was at all insulted. Anyway, he does a perfectly good job. I'm not sure I think the interviews help the film a lot.

Ullmann's is more interesting. She talks about Anna's passion, which is for truth, and her deranged response to a world that contradicts what she sees as truth. The film is wonderfully subtle about it and it feels like you discover the horrifying aspect of Anna's personality by accident. Little things that happen quite naturally, or big things that don't seem connected, slowly take shape. A little dog Andreas rescues from a noose, a bird that Anna mourns after it's crashed into a door, Anna's and Eva's warnings to Andreas about each other.

Andreas has a brief affair with Eva which is really sweet. She gives the impression of being very open and at the same time very distant. Like she has no serious regard for the powerful feelings she has around Andreas.

There's a beautiful rust and powder blue palette throughout the film, except for a few scenes lit by a fiery glow.

The Passion of Anna is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1565

Robotic arms could clutch reactor stars.
The safety glow reminds the brain to sleep.
I'll meet the woman late behind the bars.
But spirit pumps could never step too deep.
The sky's a doom, a blue contained in rust.
Replacing brains with mouths the plan evolved.
A northern speech invites a southern bust.
It's easy now to heighten screen rescolve.
The party crossed a bridge of wicked vines.
Another loading screen awaits beyond.
The ivy crushed a shiny bunch of lines.
A hundred fish explode the tiny pond.
A quiet day appeared amid the ice.
A tiny hat dispersed among the mice.

What They are to Each Other

Last night I finished Scenes from a Marriage, Ingmar Bergman's 1973 miniseries. It was good from the beginning but by the end it achieves a stranger power as the title becomes an increasingly bold statement.

The latter half of the series might have been better titled Dissolution and Remnants of a Marriage as we watch Johan (Erland Josephson) and Marianne (Liv Ullman) first separate, go through a lengthy divorce process, and finally are married to other people.

Yet each episode features the two coming together and having long conversations in each others' arms, even having sex. They shift back and forth from angry rebukes to passionate pleas. One minute Johan claims he has always hated Marianne, and has had this thought every time he's had sex with her--the next minute, he's pleading with her to take him back. Marianne casually mentions never having had an orgasm until she had sex with a man named Henrik, after she'd divorced Johan. And yet it's with Johan she sneaks away to a summer house while Henrik's out of town.

With all these extreme contradictions, one might expect the quality of writing to be on the level of a silly soap opera. Bergman's genius, though, makes all of this completely credible, the confusion and contradiction always real. We watch Johan slowly transform from a content, confident, and respected professor to a man whom the world has taken down several pegs. One woman, as kindly as possible, informs him how bad his poetry is. A prestigious job in America quietly evaporates. At first Johan bitterly complains to Marianne about campus politics and conspiracies before finally accepting he was just never as amazing as he thought he was.

Marianne has learned to be more confident, more in touch with her own feelings (and not just when it comes to orgasms). Arguably, their separation and separate marriages have made Johan and Marianne a better couple by the end of the series. And yet Marianne fearfully clings to Johan and, with genuine desperation, asks why she's never loved him. Are the two of them, in the end, simply friends, comrades who know each other better than anyone else, or are they something more? Which is the more comforting answer?

Scenes from a Marriage is available on The Criterion Channel.

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.