Scenes from a Marriage: Ingmar Bergman

In an age when filmmakers are increasingly favoring digital media, the cinematic dream-team of director Ingmar Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist stand as one of the greatest testaments to the power and beauty of celluloid. From a formalistic standpoint, Scenes from a Marriage is one of their most stylistically controlled and hyper-realistic films. The film follows the gradual disintegration and eventual reconciliation of the marriage between two wealthy Swedes: Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Erland (Josephson). As can be expected of Bergman, the film delves deeply into their respective psychologies, explaining their motives for tearing the marriage apart and then tentatively limping back to each other. Originally made as a six-episode, 281-minute TV miniseries, the film is certainly fatiguing to watch in one single sitting. Still, Nykvist's cinematography and use of lighting transforms this domestic drama into a spectacle of heart-breaking beauty. Scenes from a Marriage is a veritable painting with film stock as the canvas, Nykvist's camera as the brush, and Bergman's artistic vision and direction as the painter.

8/10