What mysterious magic sustains something as complex as marriage? What ingredients must exist in married life? Does it have a grammar of its own? These two people living side by side, day after day—why do they remain faithful to each other? Why don’t they? When, for what reasons, does distance grow between them? How does it happen? Gradually? Or all at once?
The anguish of living as a modern human being surfaces again and again in almost every Bergman film. His cinema contains far more than story—there’s the ebb and flow of human emotion, reckless desires and the troubles of fulfilling them or failing to, the multidimensional crises of the psyche.
Johan and Marianne are the ideal happy couple. ‘Scenes from a Marriage’ begins with an interview. There we learn that psychology professor Johan and divorce lawyer Marianne are quite content with their two daughters. By every measure—financial, social, familial—they are successful. Everything needed for two people to live together is present in their marriage, wrapped in mutual understanding and love: security, order, satisfaction, faithfulness. Everyone knows them as the perfect couple. They simply cannot function without each other. No troubles, no problems… In married life, no problem is the biggest problem!
Just days after the interview, Johan suddenly announces he’s in love with another woman. He’ll leave for Paris with her the very next day… The girl is beautiful, with a wonderful figure, very young, and marvelous in bed. Some boy has recently hurt her, and Johan extended a helping hand in her time of need. She doesn’t want to let go of that hand, and Johan doesn’t want to let go either. Liv Ullmann’s performance as Marianne, reacting to her husband’s words, is something any sensitive viewer will remember for a long time. Truly extraordinary! More real than reality itself! Liv has always been a priceless treasure in Bergman’s films.
Let me mention that Johan had been wanting his ‘freedom’ from Marianne for nearly four years! Can you imagine! Did anyone ever suspect this, even slightly? Now the question is: why did he want it? In the film, we learn some reasons from Johan’s account. But those reasons are utterly flimsy. People don’t really know what they want. They only know something is needed. What exactly is needed, they can’t quite figure out themselves. Even in a happy marriage… something is missing, something is missing… this regret haunts both of them. Where is happiness? Not here, somewhere else. Where? Nobody knows. But everyone knows this much: where they are right now, there is no happiness. Humans are creatures drawn to dissatisfaction. What will truly satisfy them—they don’t know for certain.
In the film we see that it’s not that Johan doesn’t love Marianne. Yet he doesn’t want to stay with her. Or perhaps for a long time he’s been searching for something in Marianne that he wasn’t finding. He couldn’t even say it aloud, couldn’t make her understand. (Was it fear of creating unnecessary trouble? Why create complications!) There are many Johans around us who love multiple people simultaneously. But due to social and family reasons, they can’t express it.
Yes, a person can fall in love with more than one person. There’s nothing wrong with that. In love there’s no first, second, third—each love is a first love. The heart cannot be bound, after all. This irresistible attraction a married person feels toward someone else—it’s not because they’re unhappy in married life, or don’t love their partner, or are unsatisfied in meeting the needs of heart and body. If the social cost of divorce weren’t so high, this country too would see divorces happening like popped rice.
Though Marianne had relationships with other men before marriage, for these ten years after marriage she remained completely faithful to Johan. She never entertained thoughts of anyone else. Yet Johan thumbed his nose at society and left her and their two daughters—what will happen now?
In the bed where she’s accustomed to sleeping in Johan’s embrace, how will she sleep alone?
The dream she never dreamed alone—how will she live with that dream?
She always gave Johan her very best—what was this sacrifice worth?
All of life’s beauty has been lost—how will she rebuild everything anew in this devastated heart?
Can someone who has never lived alone actually survive with solitude? Marianne thought that the day Johan left her would be the end of her life. She didn’t know that day was actually the beginning of her life. Her love for Johan didn’t end, nor did hatred for Johan arise. What happened in the ten years after Johan left was this: she learned to live alone, without Johan. She learned to understand that no one in this world is indispensable to anyone else. There’s no point in stopping one’s life for someone. If the old cannot be held back despite all efforts, then making room for the new is the secret of living. Friendship with Johan is possible, but a renewed marital relationship? No, never!
This wonderful comeback of Marianne’s in ‘Scenes from a Marriage’—one of the five greatest creations by cinema magician Ingmar Bergman—brings Kelly Clarkson’s “What Doesn’t Kill You” repeatedly to mind.