Cinema Mishmash

A Bergman Romance Revisited

Three Decades Later, Saraband Picks Up Where Scenes From A Marriage Left Off

[originally published in TENbyTENmagazine, Sept 2004]

Don’t try this at home: Johan comes home from work, crawls into bed, and announces to his faithful but unhappy wife, Marianne, that he’ll be leaving for Paris in the morning to live with his recently acquired lover. Marianne sits stunned for a moment then proceeds to ask if she can pick up the cad’s dry cleaning and pack his bags. But wait, there’s more: screaming, cuddling, pacing, a bit of breakfast, saying goodbye, and finally, the emotional breakdown. Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From A Marriage, now available on DVD both as the original television miniseries and the pared-down feature film that first hit American shores in 1974, is essential viewing for any couple with aspirations for longevity.

Not immediately convinced that witnessing the disintegration and transformation of a dysfunctional relationship is the ideal date movie? Think again. The direction and performances are exquisite. The characters are so raw, so flawed, they almost beg you to hate them. Or pity them. Whichever you choose, you will be wrong in the eyes of your viewing partner, and then yes, the two of you will have an impassioned discussion. Fine, call it an argument. But when the visceral reactions run their course, you are in for the best make-up sex that home video viewing has to offer. Call up the marriage counselor and tell her she’s fired. When you awaken refreshed, you may find yourself imagining the possible fate of Marianne and Johann, the fictional couple who seemed so real the night before. Apparently Bergman had similar musings since Scenes was released.

Defying his previously announced retirement from feature film directing, Bergman has given birth to his “child of pain,” Saraband. The director’s final feature project, originally shot for Swedish television, reintroduces Marianne and Johann, who have an impromptu rendezvous some 32 years after their divorce near the end of Scenes. Perhaps hoping the film would have the same, eh, payoff, one in every nine Swedes tuned in for the debut broadcast last December. Unfortunately, with the exception of a single debut screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago last Spring, the film isn’t slated for a worldwide theatrical release until Fall 2005. Apparently the delay is due in part to the 86-year-old director initially resisting the film’s transfer from HD to 35 mm.

Despite the overlap of characters and emotions, Saraband is no more a “sequel” to Scenes From A Marriage than any other of the handful of semi-autobiographical films Bergman has written or directed exploring the troubled relationships between the subject characters. Throughout his career, Bergman has been enlisting audiences to be his therapist, through early comedies like A Lesson In Love (1954) and Smiles of A Summer Night (1955) to the weightier dramas with which he is more often associated, like The Passion of Anna (1969) Scenes, and Fanny and Alexander (1982).

Lucky for us, each cinematic counseling session was an ineffective salve, because whether the screen is his confessional or sounding board, Bergman writes and directs relationship dramas with masterful strokes. The parallels between Bergman’s life and his characters have been discussed ad nauseam. And who cares, really? The satisfaction of watching films like Scenes and Saraband is not that you learn more about the director, but that you learn more about yourself. Like a dream in which every character is actually the dreamer’s self-projection, Bergman’s ruthless portrayals of men, women, parents, and children are a combination of internal and external commentary. When a particular character gets under your skin, could it be that he or she is an exposition of some hidden part of yourself?

Like Scenes, the characters in Saraband provide fertile ground for the viewer to cultivate a cornucopia of love, hate, pity, hope, sadness, and repulsion. The real treat is seeing Bergman stalwarts Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson inhabit the older incarnation of their original roles with absolute authenticity. In the 30 years since the characters last met, Marianne has gained a self-assurance and sense of identity lacking in her younger self. On the contrary, Johann’s personality has nearly surrendered to his ego; he displays the scars of a life defined by bitterness and emotional isolation.

The film’s two additional characters are Henrik, Johann’s recently widowed son from a previous marriage, and Henrik’s daughter Karin. Although Marianne and Johann have their chance to reminisce, the discord between Johann, Henrik, and Karin drives this story. The creepy, dysfunctional devotion between Henrik and Karin and the cruel resentment between Johann and Henrik are written and portrayed with incredible power. Like Scenes, once the spectacle begins to unfold, you cannot look away.

Unfortunately, Saraband doesn’t look nearly as good as its distant cousin. Master cinematographer and frequent Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist allowed Scenes From A Marriage to transcend the project’s television origins. Perhaps because of its simplified structure � each of the ten scenes contains only two of the four actors � Saraband feels more like television. The camerawork and sparse score are reminiscent of Faithless, directed in 2000 by Ullmann from a screenplay by Bergman that fully embraces its autobiographical content (Scenes‘ Josephson plays an aging film director named Bergman).

These limitations aside, Saraband is a formidable coda marking the end of the career of a legendary filmmaker. If nothing more, the story is another welcome antidote for the mindless romance that rolls off the Hollywood hills like so much smog. Take your date to dinner afterward. You’ll be discussing the film well through dessert.

____________________
Sony Pictures Classics have announced a Fall 2005 theatrical release for Saraband. Until then, Scenes From A Marriage is available in a beautiful three-disc DVD from The Criterion Collection, which publishes several additional Bergman titles. MGM has also recently released a six DVD Bergman box set. In addition, new prints from the Bergman retrospective that ran in New York City and Washington, D.C., this summer are slated for screening in San Francisco, Portland, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, this fall.

[Note: Saraband didn't get its limited theatrical release until July 2005, to considerable critical acclaim. This was the first published review of the film, which is now available on DVD.]