Bergman's six-act chamber play Married Life is a classic text and work. By comparison, the 2021 American adaptation seems less refined and quieter. No one has more motivation and strength than a director who has been married five times to tell this story about marriage, a story that doesn't make a story, a story about hardship, loss, and questioning.
Now it seems that the image of mirror language is blurred, but it does not hinder thinking, but adds philosophical interest to the endless lines. Each episode ends with a bleak landscape shot on an island somewhere in northern Europe. In such a dark environment with little sunlight, the director chases, contemplates and uses light, just like a novelist using language. In the opening interview shots, silver tableware and candlesticks reflect a certain "magnificent" atmosphere on the surface of marriage. The middle-class couple, John and Marianne, answered questions about marriage in this tiny palace-like living room, and the conversation seemed smooth. The valuable dark green sofa seems to be the epitome of countless marriages of this class in the world. People from a society that is very different from Northern Europe can't help but think, if I had this piece of furniture, what else could be wrong with my marriage? The second episode, a family reunion of two couples, starts with a large crystal lamp above the laughter - yes, Kieslowski's "Blue" uses a similar approach, blue, transparent , Fragile crystal wind chimes. Friends couples whose marriages seem to be on the brink of hurting each other as best they can. With the shadowy transparent wine glasses, the sound of bone china clinking, and the two ladies talking in the polished bathroom, heartbreak seems to have an indistinguishable connection with the dazzling light. The American version changed the bathroom into a bedroom, without the strong contrast of the light source, and did not feel the heart-piercing collapse, but instead had the warm illusion of "girl helps girl". While they were barely able to stay married despite the trauma of a miscarriage, Marianne lit a random candle in the house. The act of burning wax occupies an aesthetic place in all of Bergman's films, yet it has so far been ignored.The Swedes' life sentiment, which contains both nationality and practicality, as well as beauty and education, plays the role of telling light in the film. Under the smudge of candlelight, the lines have a mysterious temperament, which is out of the life scene. The story presumably begins with a friendly meeting between John and Marianne into the dark room. They chose an underground cafe. Later, the camera cuts to their workplaces - John works in a dark laboratory, while Marianne has an important conversation with a gloomy client, Mrs. Jacoby. In this conversation, through the mouth of Mrs. Jacoby, who seems to be a supporting role, the theme of the miniseries in the director's mind is expressed: love does not exist. Later, when the two had gone through a lot of broken, divorced, and sorted out their moods to meet again, an impressive Japanese-style smiling chandelier appeared, and it always stood in a prominent position between the two. In the darkness, In the dialogue between men and women, smiling.
There is a lot more to the use of light in this work. It's easy for me to pay attention to light in films simply because the director's mastery of light is so poetic, so full of pre-modern nostalgia, so much like my childhood, so much like the childhood of the whole of modernity. Even though the marriage of John and Mariana was a piece of shit, we still wanted to be a Swede, eating simple food, but using flashing utensils; we wanted to share a book of pure literature with our spouse and mother, citing scriptures; I want to talk about things other than morality, talk about beauty, loneliness... That elegant life actually stems from the elegant wording. If the biggest gap between the American version and the original is here. The Fxxx words flying in the sky and the sense of sight of American fast food brought by Freud are already a common problem in this type of American family drama. Without metaphysical beauty, metaphysical becomes in vain. The audience is immersed in a contemplation of marriage through long, but not annoying, lines. By letting the hero and heroine and some marginal characters expose the shortcomings of their characters in a short space, the director tries to find the faint ashes above the silver tableware and the fine sofa.
For John, loneliness is an urgent problem. When he was single, he got married because of this. After marriage, he cheated and divorced because of this. After the divorce, he missed Mariana because of this. If a well-educated man does not limit his nature and let it gallop toward weakness, he is likely to become more and more lonely, and even the company of a loving wife or a charming lover will not make loneliness less. . Husbands are often faithful to this unforgettable loneliness. In the play, John believes that loneliness is something absolute, something that exists uniquely. Everything else is just the result of our imagination, an illusion. He did not expect to be free from loneliness, since it was absolute. Other fictions—religion, politics, love, art, for example—are some sort of inferior substitute. Loneliness is eternal. And the deceit of marriage is that it is imagined as something that can be reached. Therefore, a man who falls into marriage will inevitably fall into a dilemma at the same time. He must learn to live in the awareness that loneliness is absolute, and stop complaining and complaining about others. At this time, he will feel at peace, gain inner support, and learn to Taking the absurd as a matter of course; but at the same time he lives as hard as he can because he is unwilling to surrender, a road that seems to end only in death, either life or social.
For Marianne, the bigger concern of marriage is communication. She described the conflict between friends and couples as "they speak different languages. They have to translate it into a third language that both parties can accept to understand what everyone is trying to say." "Take you and me as an example. When we talk about any topic, we understand each other with half a sentence. We have a common language, so we can get along so well.” Under Bergman's lens, women seem to be portrayed as less affectionate than men, as naive, less insightful, and more determined human beings. This is of course not 100% correct. But this is also in line with the commonality of some women's personalities. Because marriage is more effective for women to "dismiss loneliness", it is often not an illusion. The days are concrete and the control is real when you're taking care of the house, when you're pregnant, when you're breastfeeding, or even when you're old, it's hard to say this "I'm with everyone" feeling of not being alone , is an illusion. Family life is not male friendly. Of course, I say this based on a highly civilized society like the one in the film, a society that talks about beauty and virtue and truly realizes an artistic life. This is very specific in Marianne, because she doesn't have to question her own marriage and family, her "need" and "possession", even after learning that her husband has a lover, she is still emotionally From a "problem solver" status.
Since in the eyes of a woman, the problem is only communication, then communication is definitely a wife's strength. So Marianne was overconfident. At this time, she encountered Mrs. Jacoby. A year-and-a-half-and-a-half-year-old woman who, for no other reason, wanted to sue for divorce. Of course, her husband was shocked by filing for divorce, and he begged her to think about it first. He asked a hundred times what was so bad about their marriage that she wanted a divorce. She always told him that she couldn't go on living with someone who didn't love her. He always asks what love means. And as she explained to him hundreds of times, it was impossible to portray something that didn't exist.
Mrs. Jacobi also believed that she had never loved her children. But she was also a "nice, even good mother". "I did everything I could for them, even though I actually had no feelings for them (smiles)." She has everything she wants, and as a wife and mother, she has succeeded, but she believes that there are other feelings in the world besides wives and mothers: mutual trust, tenderness, friendship and goodwill; in addition to wives and mothers, she has other feelings in her mind. There is another self-image - "I have a talent for love within me, but it's a secret. I regret it because my life so far has not helped to reveal that talent. And instead, push it Into the abyss, turned into a sealed airbag. I can't do this anymore, I have to do something. Here, the first step should be divorce. I feel that my husband and I are blocking each other, as if we are killing each other." Of course it sounds "feminist", but what she says next is closer to a lament: "You know, something pretty scary happens all the time. My senses, I mean my touch. , sight, hearing, begin to deceive me. For example, I know, this is the table, I see it, I can touch it. But my perception is limited, and I am not alive. Do you understand me? Music, smell, human face, voice... ...everything becomes pale and insignificant".
Seeing this, I think that Director Bergman, in his five marriages, should also be unhappy, if we examine what "happiness" is from a secular perspective. Compared with ordinary people's concerns about whether marriage can bring happiness in this world, literary and artistic creators are more concerned about the day-to-day consumption of creativity by marriage. This kind of attrition is actually fatal to ordinary people, but they often don’t make a living from creation; this neglected, tragic, and inevitable attrition, even beyond your visual range, gradually becomes invisible. Mrs. Jacoby is simply saying that marriage as an institution exists, but marriage as a form of love is almost ridiculous, and love does not exist. So, since it's so scary, what exactly is marriage? What exactly is marriage? How to deal with the pain of marriage?
In both the original and the US version, the story ends with the couple divorcing and starting a new life of their own, but then reuniting, repeating the ill-fated love that ostensibly destroyed their marriage. Moreover, the joy of this tryst was largely hidden, and replaced by a familiar, middle-aged body (a situation), and a different sense of youth rekindled on this body, which appears here. The fireplace was also adapted into a loft with star lights in the American version. It seems that only by constantly transcending the fetters of marriage can they endure the chronic pain of marriage. And the pain can never be solved, it is difficult to resist, the pain can only be endured. This world always sells people the solution to the pain of marriage, the best-selling book of marriage guide, the model and demonstration of a perfect marriage, the object of imitation, or the pursuit of "evil of human nature" with morality, law, and religion to achieve "a perfect marriage". Virtue" effect, however the fact is that those with a greater instinct for the good are likely not to occupy a "good" high ground in marriage, a world that is the opposite of reality, not even a mirror image of reality , it can obviously transcend certain boundaries, there are deep-rooted love desires and light killings, marriage only belongs to those who have better endurance, and endurance is essentially a kind of nobility. In the almost long and never-ending profiling and dialogue, in the depressing, bright but unable to escape the dark room, Bergman gave empathy to all the people in marriage - tell me, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the night. Somewhere in the world, in a room.
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