After "Wild Strawberries," this is perhaps my favorite Bergman movie, though be warned: it will take the wind out of you, especially if you watch the full five-hour version in a condensed period of time, as I did.
Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson create perhaps too realistic a version of marriage in this emotionally bruising film. When Marianne (Ullmann) finds out that Johan (Josephson) has been cheating on her and has decided to leave her, the safe, secure world she has built around her crumbles. She plays Marianne as a wife blind to her own husband's unhappiness and embarrassed that she didn't see it coming, and her's is a convincing portrait of a woman whose partner has decided long before her that what they have isn't working.
Josephson makes Johan into a contemptible ass, but he still manages to earn our sympathy. It's easy to dislike Johan but difficult to hate him, so we're in many respects thrust into the same emotional straight jacket as Marianne.
The saddest thing about "Scenes from a Marriage" is how much affection and love there actually is between these two people, and how it's going to waste. When they get angry, they lash out to hurt one another with words and even with fists at one point. There are tears, laughs, reveries. It's obvious that there wouldn't be the need for all this if there wasn't so much ingrained affection between them, and it's tragic to see them become each other's enemy rather than each other's ally.
For a very good if not quite as brilliant sequel to this film, see "Saraband," which has Marianne visiting Johan for the first time in many years after each has established a life of his/her own without the other. It brings a peaceful sense of closure and in many ways stitches up the raw wound left by the first film.
Grade: A
