Scenes from a Marriage [Theatrical Version] (1974)

PG, despite nudity, language, sexuality, and domestic abuse.  I think the same thing happened with the TV version.  For a guy who spends a lot of times claiming that MPA ratings are too tough, this one is far too lenient.  This is not a PG movie.  If my kids walked into the room, I would quickly shut it off.  It's not like the whole thing is offensive, but it's not not offensive either.

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

Guys!  Guys!  First of all, it's a crime that I haven't written anything on this blog since Wicked.  This movie was long and I had to do alternative exercises that didn't involve watching a movie while I exercised.  Secondly, it's really weird that I'm writing another blog about a movie that I both disliked and watched recently.   It's a different cut of Scenes from a Marriage that was on TV instead of in theaters.  That means that the TV cut was longer.  But it's in the Bergman set and I feel like I wouldn't be a completist if I didn't write about every movie in the set.  I'm wired in a very specific way that I'm not entirely proud of.  

Well, here's the take.  While Scenes from a Marriage the theatrical cut is better, it doesn't really change my opinion about the story itself.  I could write intellectually (I think I could.  If I haven't done it so far, why start now, I guess?) about the role of pacing and focused storytelling.  But the long and short is that anything that makes this infuriating movie shorter is good in my estimation.  The movie is still incredibly long.  We're looking at almost three hours when it comes down to it.  That's not exactly a quick romp nor is much of the movie excised from this version.  It takes out the credits from each scene, which is good, I guess.  There's probably some smaller stuff that has been tightened.  It does make the movie more watchable as a movie.  But golly, the content is still borderline all there.  I'm trying to find a comprehensive list of changes between the two cuts and people are being really dodgy about the changes.  (I'm apparently the only one who slightly likes the theatrical cut better.  Trust me, if I liked this movie, I would be all about the television cut.)   Apparently, some of the secondary characters are minimized.  I mean, I remembered Johan's other lover.  But honestly...and this is a hot take...but the focused story is the theatrical cut.

I know!  Absolute blasphemy.  Again, I get it.  I get where the blasphemy lies.  I love how I'm advocating for a cut of a movie where I don't like either cut.  But the (and here's my intellectual read on this whole thing that I said I wasn't going to do) thing about the theatrical cut is that this is called Scenes from a Marriage.  The theatrical cut, while not being absolute in this format, is almost exclusively Johan and Marianne. We look to see what their actual marriage looks like.  It becomes a much tighter piece where we have to question what is truth and what is outside behavior.  While Marianne moves on from her separation from Johan, we never get to meet her new significant other. Instead, we have to trust that everything is above board.  From a marriage perspective, we get to see a more accurate version of Marianne to what he experiences on the reg.  The film version still shows how Johan flirts outside of his time with his wife.  I honestly feel like the theatrical version has that element of gaslighting that the television version doesn't have.  It also spirals out of control faster.  The movie starts with the implication that these two will never lose each other, despite the fact that their friends offer them a template of misery.

When the two split up, it seems like one moment shattered the whole thing.  I find that far more interesting than the death by a thousand cuts that the television version offers.  It's almost inevitable, which is kind of the point of the movie.

Oh, that's the major realization that I came to.  The first read of the film when I watched the TV version was that this was about infidelity.  Bergman, if you've been reading my Bergman blogs on this page, has been obsessed with infidelity.  But with the other Bergman infidelity movies have been mostly forgiving of infidelity.  And to a certain extent, Scenes from a Marriage is forgiving of infidelity.  Marianne constantly allows Johan back to have these sexual moments with her.  Sometimes these moments are meant to be attempts to fix a marriage; some of these moments are genuine moments of infidelity.  That's how the movie ends, by the way.  The two are away from their respective spouses on a tryst with each other.  That's the end.  It does imply that infidelity should be forgiven because it seems inevitable.  But I'm going to say that Bergman may be supporting infidelity even more than that with Scenes from a Marriage.

The behavior between these two is toxic.  We get that.  At one point, Johan beats Marianne quite badly almost to the point where I think that he tries to kill her.  (It's incredibly upsetting to see her go back to him and I think I went into this with my last blog about Scenes from a Marriage.) Initially, I thought that this all stemmed out of infidelity.  But I believe that Bergman is criticizing monogamy instead of infidelity.  It is because the two are married that they take sexual deviance as a slight against their natures.  The problems come from the fact that they are viewed as failures for keeping their marriage intact when everyone else is failing.  After all, the only other couple in their lives hate each other.  I even forgot that Johan and Marianne were married previous to this marriage, implying that no marriages last.  

It's only when the two are sleeping with each other when they aren't supposed to be that the two are happy.  That's kind of a bummer.  The more that they ascribe to a traditional happy family, the more that they seem to hate each other.  When they're being rebellious, that's when they find each other attractive.  (I honestly don't know why Marianne finds Johan attractive.  There wasn't one moment in the movie where I found him tolerable.  There were moments where I found him less intolerable than others, but I never found him to be a descent person worthy of love.) 

The whole thing bums me out so much, guys.  I want to be the guy who likes Bergman movies.  I mean, I still have The Seventh Seal, which is objectively a masterpiece. Ooh!  I also have Fanny and Alexander! It's just that I may be the only person who finds these other movies frustrating.  It's not that I'm against watching infidelity movies.  It simply seems like Bergman is trying to justify behavior that he partook in.  When he keeps coming back to the same well, it feels a bit like "She dost protest too much."  Fine.  Be sex positive.  It's not a me thing, but crapping all over marriage over and over and having people treat each other like dirt makes me sad.  There's the implication that if everyone was sex positive like Bergman, they'd be happier.  But people do fall in love.  People do get attached.  It's nice on paper, but it gets messy fast.  

The funny thing is that I still want to watch the Apple TV show.  I don't know what's wrong with me.