Caryn James writes that the screen depictions of troubled relationships reflect a changing society, a new remake of the premiere of the classic TV series "Marriage Scene."
Some of today's best movies and TV series are about the absolute worst marriages. "You hate me!" The husband in the wonderful movie "Marriage Story" (2019) shouts at his ex-wife who is about to become an ex-wife: "You hate me!" ”
"I hate your face," one man said in this year's funny and poignant comic book series. The woman he lived with likened to cancer and diarrhea.
In Ingmar Bergman's new 1973 tv show, Marriage Scene, the wife is about to leave the house forever. Her angry husband, Jonathan (Oscar Isaac), yells and pleads that they should settle their relationship once and for all "until we figure out how to fix it." Mira (Jessica Chastain) retorts, "I'm no longer attracted to you, how do you fix it?" ”
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The great, roaring cathartic arguments shaped by the explosive performances are the hallmark of this new, visible 21st century screen version of toxic marriage. Being sober and keen about relationships that have rotted away reflects an era when divorce is common and long-term relationships don't always include marriage. And they often depend on how the balance of power between men and women shifts to equality, at least to some extent. In Noah Baumbach's eloquent and nuanced marriage story, his wife (Scarlett Johansson) leaves New York for Los Angeles to take care of her career. A new scene from marriage flipped the gender in the Bergman series. It was the wife, not the husband, who cheated on him this time. Gender swapping doesn't mean women or men should be blamed, it's just that the film reflects society itself.
In film noir like Double Reparations (pictured), a wife would try to escape an unhappy marriage by conspiring to murder her husband
In the past, on screens as in life, unfortunate married couples had limited options and everything was terrible. A man may cheat and most likely get away with it because divorce is shameful. A woman can remain miserable. She could have killed her husband, as in the classic noir Double Reparations (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), which must have satisfied the fantasies of millions of women. Or she could commit suicide, jump ahead of a train like Anna Karenina, or swallow poison like Emma Bovary, the heroine of 19th-century literature who has been a source of endless cinematic healing. From Greta Garbo in 1935 to Kaila Knightley in 2012, Annas continues to resonate with frustrated 20th-century wives. If a romantic escape means an asexual interlude with a man at the train station, then for an unhappy wife, the scenery is grim,
New Wave
In the 1970s, as movies caught up with the sexual revolution of the '60s, divorce lost its scandalous color, and a new kind of marriage movie began to emerge. A typical example is Unmarried Woman (1978). Jill Clayburgh's character stands on the sidewalk because her husband is dumping her. "I'm in love with someone else," he said, crying with self-pity. But she finds a new independent life and romance with an artist (Alan Bates). This is a very second wave of feminism, but it's worth noting that husbands are still in charge.
The same is true of Bergman's intimate, psychologically exploratory marriage scenes (also released in shorter film versions) after the breakdown of marriages and their aftermath. Liv Ullman's character actually has a career as a divorce lawyer (ironically). But her husband (Erlan Josephson) is a professor who runs the entire family. When he left her for a young woman, she was distraught for months. But by the time he wanted to get back into the marriage, she had already surpassed him. Bergman's series pays equal attention to each spouse's trajectory, with heated arguments and manipulations on both sides casting a long shadow over today's toxic marriage stories, their tug-of-war over power balances, complaints about sex or lack of sex,
Bergman created The Marriage Scene based on personal experience—including his own relationship with Ullmann
Written and directed by Hagai Levi (co-creator of The Affair), the new Sciences from a Marriage is a faithful remake in many ways, including a strong focus on the characters' most painful exchanges and a critical look at their unbreakable love-hate feud. Through five episodes, it first observes Mira and Jonathan's apparently stable marriage and depicts their intense breakup and sexy, controversial post-divorce encounters. The gender reversal is not a gimmick, but a detail that adds a modern touch. Mira is a successful tech executive, and Jonathan is a professor with a lower income who is mainly responsible for caring for her young daughter. Those real 21st century changes have allowed us to enter their world and emotional lives more fully.
They deliberately say hurtful things that may not be forgivable. But they're also related things that we've all said, or wanted to say, or know we'll never dare say out loud
We are led to see Mira as selfish and controlling – not because she wants to leave, but because of the ruthless way she does things. Fair Warning: This is a spoiler for anyone who hasn't seen Bergman's version. Contrary to the original, the wife here walks in one night and announces that the next day she will leave the young man with whom she has an affair. It was the shocked, injured husband who begged her to stay.
Chastain and Isaac bring raw, heartfelt emotions to Mira and Jonathan's arguments, driving the story forward. "You're a narcissist," Mira told him. "How not to be ashamed?" He asked her. Like in all toxic marriage movies, they deliberately say hurtful things that may not be forgivable. But they're also related things that we've all said, or want to say, or know we'll never dare say out loud. Often watching in exaggerated form the arguments that most of us experience or try to avoid in reality is a catharsis.
Shortly after its release in Sweden, Bergman's Marriage Scene was cited as the reason for the country's rising divorce rate. It may be mythical, but the series' influences are sure to appear in 21st century relationship films, sometimes with unambiguous homage. Mia Hansen-Love's elegant, playful New Bergman Island explores the worrisome, less catastrophic but definitely 21st-century marriage between two filmmakers Chris and Tony (Vicki Kripps and Tim Rose). When the artist's residency brought them to Faro, the island where Bergman lived and worked, they were assigned to live in the house where he filmed the series. "You did realize we were going to sleep in the bed where they were filming the marriage scene," Chris said. "We may have to sleep in another bedroom."
Baumbach wrote Marriage Story after divorcing Jennifer Jason Lee—his early film Squid and Whale was inspired by his parents' divorce
In Marriage Story, Johnson and Adam Dreifer are Nicole and Charlie, respectively, actors and directors who work together in his theater company. On the wall of their Brooklyn home, a magazine article about them with the headline "Marriage Scene" was never a good sign.
Baumbach's eloquent script begins with the couple's description of the other. Among Nicole's great qualities, Charlie said, "She could have stayed in L.A. and become a movie star, but she gave up acting with me in New York. That's the beginning of the problem, or at least an early warning sign. Part of the brilliance of the film is that Nicole's early choices are all believable – we all do crazy things in love and sometimes reconfigure ourselves – as well as retro. After moving to Los Angeles with her son to produce a TV show, she explains in detail to her lawyer (Laura Dunn) why the marriage broke down. "I never really lived for myself," she said, but ended up with a comical kicker, "and, I think he slept with stage supervisor Marianne."
The heated and hateful argument after Nicole and Charlie break up is probably the most memorable scene in the movie. He called her a "hacker" actress. She said, "You set me on fire. They claim that they were physically mutually exclusive during marriage and — and perhaps even worse — accuse each other of possessing the worst traits of their parents. It's a battle with no going back, perfectly in line with today's broken marriage movies.
emergency exit
Middle-class characters have no exclusive rights over toxic marriages on screen. In Derek Cianfrance's heartbreaking, chronologically fragmented Blue Valentine's Day (2010), Michelle Williams plays Cindy, a busy nurse and mother. Ryan Gosling is her husband Dean, who drinks beer in the morning before his job to paint the house. But they have the same unsolvable marital problems, the same soul-killing arguments. Cianfrance begins his story at the low point of marriage, then gracefully switches back and forth to the early moments when Dean was charming and Cindy was captivated by him. But when they adjusted to the mundane life, he drank and she became angry. When he gets drunk and insults her work, she is the one who ends things up. "I'm done. I don't have to be so angry anymore. I've made you so drunk," she shouted and began to slap him. They were all in pain, but unlike the early women, she had a way forward.
Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Blue Valentine's Day: "I've read reviews saying it's not clear what went wrong with them coming here from there. ”
Cheering it up together reveals the timeliness and adaptability of today's toxic relationship dramas. James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan are an unmarried couple who have a 10-year-old son (they are the only three actors on screen) who were trapped in their home during the Covid lockdown. Directed by Stephen Dardley (The Hours) and written by playwright Dennis Kelly (written by the musical Matilda the Musical), the film turns the scaled-down into an advantage, offering a sharp view of an already troubled relationship. As the nameless characters look into the camera and talk to each other, we learn the reasons for their anger and dissatisfaction. He's a successful business owner, she's a human rights worker, so he has money, but she has moral high ground. They hate the idea of having sex with each other.
Months passed, and epidemics and sadness permeated their lives. They started having sex again, which surprised them. They say it doesn't make sense, but the sex is very good. Their arguments are scathing, sometimes funny, sometimes brutal, as the actors successfully overcome the skill of speaking to the camera.
In the end, McAvoy's character has a discovery that feels like a revelation to him, and she sternly guesses that he stole it from a song. He said he had hated her for so long, but now, "I think there's an opportunity for existence beyond hate, and we've somehow been in this place, and there's the existence of love beyond hate that ends with love — not a lot of people can go there." The second part he was wrong. On the screen of the 21st century, they often do this.