HBO's 'Scenes From a Marriage' doesn't work. Bergman's original shows what's missing
Much of contemporary screen drama seems designed not to enthrall but to stun viewers into submission before they turn their fickle attention elsewhere.
A powerful corrective to this mode of hyperactive storytelling is the work of Ingmar Bergman. The Swedish filmmaker and theater director never lost faith in the gripping nature of the human drama.
No matter the elements of the story, his focus remained on inner realty. Ambivalence, bad faith, suppressed rage, inexplicable terror — in combination or alone — were sufficient to drive a Bergman plot. As an auteur, he was drawn to emotional extremity. He found what he needed not only in violent fables but also in everyday life.
"Scenes From a Marriage," Bergman's six-part 1973 television drama starring Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, had a seismic impact when it first aired in Sweden. Its subsequent release in movie theaters in a truncated version (which is how "Scenes" was introduced to audiences in the U.S.) extended the tremors beyond Scandinavia.
The story of a married couple's disintegration landed at
