My Issues With Scenes From a Marriage

Scenes From a Marriage, the 5 and half hour television series, which became so popular, it was later condensed to form a feature length film, is widely acclaimed as a masterpiece. I didn't like the movie much though.

Firstly, as a piece of literature, it is brilliant. Liv Ullmann, who plays the female character, says in an interview in the special features of the Criterion disks that Bergman would never let any one tweak even minor things in his script. It had to remain as was written. They could improvise in expressions and acting but not in dialogue. It made me think, why not? You don't change what Shakespeare wrote when enacting it, even though the spoken language has changed. Why not Bergman. His script has the highest level as far as depth of dialogues go.

Coming to why I didn't like Scenes from a Marriage. Firstly, my biggest problem is that Bergman seems to have brought all the insecurities of a married life into this film. It is as if he jotted down the insecurities which could happen in a marriage and brought them all out. What was missing were scenes where they appreciated things which they did like about each other. There must be a few things. Maybe they did do it in the later film Bergman made, Saraband, where the two get together after many years but I missed it here.

The second aspect is the dramatic change which occurs. In the first scene during the television interview, the couple seem happily married. Then, the scene of conflict between their couple friends occurs and the sudden realization occurs that they cannot live on like this. This is where I disagree strongly. I believe things cannot go on suppressed for such a long time without any scenes of conflict and mutual realization that things are not that good after all. The first scene gave the impression that they couple were living a lie and despite their frustrations, they didn't realize the trouble living together was causing the other person in the relationship. I think couples do realize this with repeated issues which crop up and despite it you live together.

The third is a selfish reason more than any thing. The movie deals with what happens after the marriage of the couple breaks. Yet, it is named Scenes From a Marriage. What I would have liked to have seen is how the couple spent the 10 years together, living in sadness and anxiety. If Bergman had written that, I think it could have made a great movie by itself. This is purely a personal miff.

I did enjoy watching Scenes From a Marriage though. The five and half hours passed very quickly and you just couldn't stop watching. You want to see much more of Bergman after you see this. It is not for nothing that he is called a master.

A Separation

The latest masterpiece from Iran, Asghar Farhadi's A Separation shows how terribly complex the Iranian society is. In that, it is honest and true. Not every one would be interested in what happens in Iran though. What makes this film great is that it could have been a story about Kashmir or Afghanistan or even late 18th century France before the French Revolution.

Usually, a situation of crisis is shown with crafty story telling techniques. If you want to show how the British were terrible when they ruled India (as many films pertaining to the freedom struggle tend to show), you show some of them beating feeble Indians or some one sporting a nasty look like Captain Andrew Russell in (the wonderful) Lagaan. It pushes forward the story but is often manipulative, or the easier route.

Focusing on just a family or a small number of people is also nothing new. From art house films to hollywood blockbusters like The Titanic, all have done it. However, it is usually done with some strong back ground scores or losing objectivity some where down the middle. Again, to forward the story, easier ways are adopted.

There is little dramatic affect in this film. The first scene establishes the two want to separate because of not any domestic hostility or because of each other but they do want to separate because Iran is not viable any more for the mother to bring up her child and the father cannot leave his own ailing father. It is daily, real and yet not overtly dramatic situations like these which are highlighted. Financial and social constraints means a wife lies to her husband for not any devilish intent but because she wants to earn money.

The second, more poorer family shown has the man very agitated a lot of times. The scary part is the male protagonist in the film, Peyman Moaadi playing Naader, could become like this other family in 5-7 years time emotionally and financially as laws prevailing are redundant enough to enforce fines or be behind bars as it does on Naader despite no real faults of his.

Where the people's freedom is curtailed by imposition of too many religious, social and every other rules, their life keeps deteriorating if they decide to live on in that place. Some, like Naader can't leave though.

The separation of a family for no real fault of theirs leaves an impact. How many such families have been separated? How many more people have go to hell daily as they try to lead normal lives? It is a point well established through the film.

A Separation is Iran's Nomination for the Foreign language category for the Academy Awards. With Iranian directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof jailed in recent times, this film gains special significance and I wouldn't be surprised if it wins the Award itself. It could easily win on merit itself though given it is far better than some of the previous oddball selections the Academy tends to pop up in this category.

Dogtooth

Not a lot of movies shock me. So I was quite surprised the unsettling impact Dogtooth had on me. A father locks up his 3 children who are in their late teens - early twenties in a large house and they have stayed there all their lives.

The three children are told lies of various degrees. Living totally isolated from the world and in a manufactured universe, they do not react like normal people would. The lack of awareness and exposure makes for very interesting scenarios and reactions.
 
The film can be pondered upon on several levels. For instance, governments never really tell their people any thing close to the whole truth. Thoughts on these lines - the harms caused by leaving people in the dark are the obvious things one can take back from the movie.

I am very interested in the alternate viewpoint of the parents though. They genuinely thought exposing the children to the world would be harmful for them. While that is not some thing one can possibly agree with, there are some positives which do come out of it in my opinion. For instance, when one of the girls who has never having been exposed to popular culture, dances (see video on youtube here), she creates some thing unique. As she has not seen any thing before, she is not influences by any thing and creates her own style. That is a positive in my mind.

This is film which is close to a masterpiece. When the film had released, it was panned in The New York Times and received an average review from Roger Ebert.  I am quite pleased then, that it is slowly getting appreciation and is ending up in a few best of the year lists as well. This is a must watch according to me. 8.5/10.

Two Excellent French Contemporary Films

Both the films were on my 21st Century TSP list and I watched them sequentially by co-incidence.

Caché

Thriller-drama putting across the message that the deeds of our past may come to haunt us any time in the future, you never know. This is a film about conscience and explores how people often forget the small yet significant deeds they have done in the past which may have changed some one else's life drastically. The protagonist earlier never feels any thing on his conscience but is made to feel a burden on it by the end of the movie in a very dramatic way. 7.5/10.



Summer Hours

I absolutely love this movie. It is about how modern day life is splitting families apart. Three siblings now live in three different countries. The mother might pass away soon and what to do of the family heirlooms and house is a question which needs addressing. The grand children don't feel particularly attached to the heirlooms as they show no interest in the paintings. The last two sequences of the film sum it up. In one, the caretaker of the family house is bidding her own son goodbye and awaits meeting him in next September summing up how life is in the modern world. In the last scene, grandchild mulls over her grandma with her boyfriend in a particular place where the grandma used to come with her boyfriend. This is a movie which pans generations and is about the 21st century way of life where families are families no more. Criterion has released a disk of the film in March, 2010 and I urge you to see this one. It is an absolute masterpiece. 9/10

Ordet - Perfect

Ordet is a movie about faith. It really questions the faith we have to the extremest measures possible. Men and women of various levels of faith are shown for instance there is the man and wife, the man being a non believer while the wife is a believer 100%. Then there is the father who hopes he has faith but doesn't know because he is again, tested extremely because of his mentally ill son.

The movie seemed ok for the better half but I wasn't getting the concept of faith totally which Dreyer was trying to put across. Some where around the mid point of the movie, I would have thought I would give this movie a rating of around 5. It slowly shifted to 8 as the movie treaded along. Fifteen minutes after I had watched the movie, I finally got the concept exactly as the director was trying to put across and the movie seemed perfect to me.

It is a great piece of art. I don't think it is possible to depict the concept of faith any better than this movie has done and thus I give it a rating of 10/10. This movie is timeless.