How HBO’s Scenes From A Marriage Compares To The Original 1973 Miniseries

HBO’s Scenes From A Marriage is adapted from Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 miniseries – here’s how the new series compares to the original family drama.

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Warning: SPOILERS for the original Scenes From A Marriage series and HBO remake.

Ingmar Bergman’s original Scenes From A Marriage has been influencing filmmakers ever since its release in 1973, and now HBO has adapted the Swedish director’s ground-breaking family drama into a new series set in modern-day America. The limited series, created by Hagai Levi (The Affair) and starring Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac, re-examines Bergman’s classic tale from a contemporary perspective.

Bergman’s miniseries followed the ups and downs of the tumultuous decade-long relationship between a married couple, Marianne (played by Liv Ullman) and Johan (Erland Josephson). Levi’s adaptation stays faithful to the original premise while updating several aspects of the story to make it more relevant to audiences today. Levi’s Scenes From A Marriage includes some on-the-surface, structural changes in terms of the characters and plot. The story still revolves around an upper-middle-class couple, but instead of 1970s Sweden, they have been transported to an American suburb in modern times.

The 2021 HBO limited series is also shorter – five episodes instead of six – by cutting the second episode from the original, “The Art of Sweeping Things Under The Rug.” Aside from this change, the titles of the episodes remain the same. With the exception of “Paula” becoming “Poli” in episode 3. Instead of Jonathan having the affair — as Johan does in Bergman’s story – this time it’s Mira who is unfaithful, thus “Paula” becomes “Poli” – one of many gender reversals in the series. The basic plot elements are also the same, too, at least from an outline perspective. Getting into the actual details of the setting, characters, dialogue, and plot are where things begin to change in the updated version of Bergman’s classic tale of marriage, love, and loss.

Set Design Changes

Besides the obvious updates that place Mira and Jonathan in modern times, there are also bigger changes to the set design in HBO’s modern take on the classic miniseries. Bergman had a small budget for Scenes From A Marriage, and thus the set design was pared down, often resembling that of a theater stage production rather than a cinematic one. There are no cuts to the neighborhood and the house the couple is living in at the beginning — for example — like the one in HBO’s series.

This could help to explain Levi’s decision to open each episode of the new series by breaking the fourth wall — showing the cast and crew bustling around as they prepare for the opening scene to start. Doing this allows the audience to see the metaphorical “stage” upon which the actors are about to play. It seems counter-intuitive, but doing this also creates a heightened sense of realism by reminding viewers that real life is always happening behind the camera — behind the façade of the stage.

Evolving Gender Norms & Identity

To update the series, Levi has also made some changes to the characters. The names have been changed — from Marianne to Mira and Johan to Jonathan — for example. And the person interviewing Mira and Jonathan in the opening scene has changed, too. In the original Scenes From A Marriage, a blonde reporter from a women’s magazine asks the couple about their marriage. In the adapted version, the journalist has been replaced by one of Jonathan’s graduate students, a Ph.D. candidate researching how “evolving gender norms affect monogamous marriages” — a theme that runs throughout the modernized take. Before beginning the interview by asking the couple to describe themselves in a few words — as the magazine writer does in Bergman’s version — the student starts by confirming Mira and Jonathan’s pronouns.

The style of questioning is also more academic than the reporter from the women’s journal, as the viewer would expect from a graduate student. When the student does ask the couple to describe themselves, she doesn’t ask for adjectives, she asks them to think of “attributes you couldn’t imagine yourself being without.” And this is where the audience really begins to see how distinctions are made between Levi’s Jonathan and Bergman’s Johan. Instead of — rather obnoxiously — describing how wonderful he is at everything, like Johan — who considers himself to be a great friend, father, and lover — Jonathan first describes himself on a basic level. It’s as if he’s ticking off the boxes on some standardized form — gender (man), religion (Jewish), political affiliation (Democrat). This gives viewers some surface details about the character, but it also works to modernize the story. Levi seems to be saying something about the way a person’s identity is defined in contemporary terms — by labeling and putting people in boxes to determine where they might “belong.” This is why Jonathan defaults to those identifying markers when asked. It’s become almost second nature to describe himself in these terms.

Changing Power Dynamics

Along the lines of evolving gender norms, Bergman’s Marianne was — ironically — a divorce lawyer, but Johan was still the breadwinner. In Levi’s version of Scenes From A Marriage, those gender roles get a swap. As a Tech Executive, Mira makes more money than her husband, Jonathan, a philosophy professor. She also works long hours, leaving Jonathan to take care of the household tasks Marianne attends to in Bergman’s Scenes. Unlike the original, Levi’s modern take also includes how this role reversal affects women in a different way when there are children involved. Mira feels like she has to justify her long hours at work — she has to make up for the time she took off during maternity leave — in a way that Johan never would have in the original series.

Despite this reversal in the power dynamics, what’s interesting is how the opening scene in episode 1, “Innocence & Panic” of the HBO adaptation remains very close to the original in terms of the relationship between Mira and Johan. Like Marianne, Mira is quiet and distant during the interview. She’s noticeably uncomfortable and lets Jonathan lead the conversation, answering questions for her the way Johan does Marianne in the 1973 version. In both cases, the audience immediately sees the clear disconnect between these two people who claim to be happily married. In Bergman’s Scenes, Johan is utterly un-self-aware, and the same is true of Jonathan, though the reasoning behind this lack of awareness is different. In this case, Jonathan has no idea that Mira is cheating on him, which is part of the reason why she’s distracted in that opening scene. Like Marianne, Mira doesn’t want to be there doing the interview — not because she’s shy and uncomfortable with the spotlight like Marianne, but because she knows that it’s all a sham, as the audience learns when her affair gets revealed.

Changing Family Dynamics

The changing power dynamics and gender norms also create a different family dynamic in the HBO limited series. There are small details like the fact there are two daughters in the original, whereas Levi’s version has one, but the role these children play in each of these stories is also quite different. The daughters in Bergman’s version appear in the opening scene, posing with their parents for a family photo that will appear alongside the article in the magazine, after which they scamper off never to be seen again. Literally — that is the only time the audience sees those daughters in the miniseries. Basically, the children are there to serve the same purpose as the rest of the props. Watching that today, it seems strange — why have them show up at all — but it also speaks to how family dynamics have evolved, at least in terms of how people think about the family unit today, and how it’s often portrayed in movies and tv shows.

In Levi’s Scenes From A Marriage, Mira and Jonathan’s daughter, Ava, is much more involved in her parents’ relationship struggles as she witnesses their unrest. In Bergman’s version, the children are out of sight out of mind. And perhaps this is as it should be in this case with the parents fighting. In reality, parents do have another life their children don’t get to see — especially when it comes to their relationship with one another — but in Levi’s version viewers get to see the way these hidden parts of a parent’s life impacts the child a bit more, whether the adults realize it or not.

The Performances Are Still Key

Like Bergman’s Scenes, the HBO show relies heavily on its actors. Michelle Williams was originally cast in the role of Mira. After she was forced to drop out due to scheduling conflicts, Chastain was brought in. And while the show likely would have worked with Williams in the role, too — given her level of skill and talent as an actor — it’s hard to imagine the relationship would feel the same as the one Chastain and Isaac present to the audience. Part of what made — and still makes — Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage so powerful was the relationship between the director and leading lady, Liv Ullmann. Given their decades-long relationship — the two had a daughter together — Bergman would have known how to pull emotions from Ullmann for that character in ways someone who wasn’t as close to her on a personal level could have done. The same is true of Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac, who have been friends since the years they spent studying together at Juilliard. Without the beautiful real-life friendship that these two appear to have, there’s always the chance the chemistry between the characters would have felt forced. And one of the reasons Scenes From A Marriage works in both the original and HBO version, is that the relationship feels so real. Without that, a show like this wouldn’t work.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/scenes-marriage-hbo-miniseries-changes-ingmar-bergman/