I wonder just how many of those who watched the third season of Master of None on Netflix are aware that Aziz Ansari wanted to bring a queer homage to Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (and, thus, to win a couple of more prizes on the way)? Very few of them, probably: most of Bergman’s admirers don’t waste their precious time with the popular streaming platform, and most Netflix fans are not familiar with the filmography of the major Swedish filmmaker (and for this latter category, as Alex. Leo Șerban would have noted, cinema starts with Tarantino rather than Tarkovski, the one who bluntly stated that he was only interested in the opinion of two people: Bresson and Bergman). Under these circumstances, what is the point of reviving – be it through reference and/or reverence, if not an outright remake – the oeuvre of Bergman (or that of other essential filmmakers and/or artists)? Well, there is one! Relying on an example from a different area, I’d say that if even one gamer that fell under the spell of Dante’s Inferno has ended up reading The Divine Comedy, then the game makers’ efforts have not been in vain.

The new HBO miniseries, Scenes from a Marriage, proudly flaunts its influences stemming from Bergman. When he was writing and directing his own Scenes, in the West, the sexual revolution (which the filmmaker has contributed to, with the help of his early films) was in full swing. Bergman’s miniseries, comprising six episodes over a total span of almost five hours (including credits), was broadcast by the Swedish Television in the spring of 1973. The director then released a version intended for cinemas, that was about two hours shorter, in which the titles of the initial episodes turn into chapter titles. The Scenes sprang from Bergman’s personal experiences: his relationship with Liv Ullman (who was the filmmaker’s muse for a long time, however without ever having formalized their liaison, and who performs the leading role of Marianne in the film, whose partner is Erland Josephson – or Johan, on-screen), his failed marriages to Gun Hagberg and Käbi Laretei, but also the marriage of his parents, who, as a child, he had glimpsed as they exchanged not just insults, but also blows and shoves.

The HBO production moves the story into the suburbs of contemporary Boston (shot, however, in New York) and, naturally so, adapts it to today’s context and political agenda. This difficult task was given to Hagai Levi, the mastermind behind the Israeli series BeTipul (two seasons, 2005-2008) which was syndicated by HBO and adapted to the United States (In Treatment, four seasons, 2008-2021), Romania (În derivă, the first locally-produced HBO series, for two seasons between 2010-2012), and various other territories. Levi was not just the screenwriter, but also the director of the five episodes, whose total length clocks in at almost five yours. With inevitable ellipses, the miniseries covers seven years in the lives of the two partners, Mira and Jonathan, performed by Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac (while in Bergman’s case, the time-span was a decade of marriage). The protagonists from fifty years ago were a female lawyer specialized in divorces, and a university lecturer at a polytechnic institute. Nowadays, Mira occupies a leading post in a big tech company, and Jonathan (or Yonathan, as his mother calls him, as he is originally part of a traditionalistic Jewish family) is still an academic, thus earning much less than his wife does. A progressive corporate woman, who considers herself a member of the global village, and a conservative that has a well-developed sense of community.

Bergman’s second episode, titled “The Art of Sweeping Things Under the Rug”, was eliminated by the Israeli filmmaker, who apparently was in a rush to arrive at the moment which illuminates the couple’s crisis, thus setting it on a path of no return (while the Swedish director used a raisonneur towards this purpose, in the person of one of the lawyer’s clients). In fact, Levi substantially reduced the number of secondary characters and shooting locations, focusing on the two protagonists and, even more so, on a single home (just like in BeTipul and its derivatives) which, throughout the series’ five episodes, reveals its every nook and cranny to the audience. A fundamental yet appropriate modification, in the spirit of current ages, is to invert the roles of the protagonists: after an abortion that broadens the rifts in the couple, this time around, the woman is the one to leave her husband for another man (Poli – the correspondent figure of the original miniseries’ Pauline -, an Israeli businessman). Levi not only eliminates an entire episode from Bergman’s teleplay but also lessens much of its cynicism and cruelty, thus sweetening his creation. There was no longer any place for lines such as “I never loved my children”, put into the mouth of the raisonneur character, or the protagonist’s misogynistic remarks, such as “women are not right in the head” or “women stole the best role for themselves, from the very beginning”. It’s understandable why Ullman, amid shooting Scenes from a Marriage, felt the need to involve herself in the era’s feminist movement.

By accentuating its melodramatic currents and explaining the protagonists’ motivations, Levi aimed for a much larger audience than the one which consumes auteur cinema. If, in 1973, the broadcast of Bergman’s miniseries unleashed a significant wave of divorces in Sweden and Denmark, the up-to-date version of the Scenes from a Marriage might have the opposite effect, and end up encouraging reconciliations and comebacks to the marital home.

In contrast to Ansari, who opted for long single shots in his five new episodes/chapters of Master of None, reunited under the title Moments in Love, Levi has appropriated the lessons of Bergman and intelligently uses analytical editing, thus managing to underline the talent and the versatility of his two main actors. And I, for one, could stare at Chastain and Isaac performing well-written roles that are tailored to their aptitudes not just for five hours, but fifty.

In his miniseries, Bergman achieves the Brechtian distancing effect through the cold, unflappable voice of the narrator speaking from a voice-over, who, at the beginning of every new episode, offered the summary of the previous one, and who, in the end, read the names of the actors and creators aloud, over an image of Fårö island, where Bergman lived and produced the majority of his films shot after 1960. In the HBO series, Levi underlines the artificiality of the construction through the episodes’ beginnings, where the two main actors quickly enter their roles, surrounded by the members of the team (including the director), all clad in face masks (as the episodes were shot during the pandemic), and, in the end, by exiting their roles and leaving the set.

The new Scenes from a Marriage adapt Bergman to the tastes and sensibilities of modern audiences, even arriving at some excesses in this respect (for example, the scene that features erotic suggestions between Mira and her friend, Kate, which is not justified from a narrative and character-driven perspective). But the creators were careful to ensure that the late filmmakers’ estate gave their blessings to this effort: Daniel, his son, is amongst the show’s executive producers, and the Ingmar Bergman Foundation was also involved in the production. Scenes from a Marriage is a testament not only to the fact that Levi is an inspired writer, but also an endowed filmmaker. For example, the scenes in the second episode (the most intense of the series) in which Mira and Jonathan wake up next to each other, after the night in which the dice had been thrown, are memorable, and the simple gesture of washing their teeth together turns from a familiar routine into an embarrassing eccentricity. A miniseries that will certainly garner many nominations and awards at next year’s editions of the Golden Globes and Emmys.

Mihai Fulger

A film critic that has been active for two decades, member of the Romanian Filmmakers Union (The Association of Critics and Filmologists), the International Film Critic Federation (FIPRESCI), the European and Mediterranean Film Critic Federation (FEDEORA) and the European Film Academy (EFA). He has been an editor of the trimestrial Film magazine since its very first issue, in 2013, and is a collaborator of the Cultural Observatory weekly since 2005. Collaborates with multiple Romanian film festivals. After working for 8 years at the National Film Archives, he is currently a scientific researcher at the „G. Oprescu'' Arts History Institute (part of the Romanian Academy).