TV Review - Scenes From a Marriage
Images courtesy of HBO.
Fans of Normal People, Fleabag and Marriage Story: rejoice. Your next fix of authentic romantic suffering has arrived.
Scenes From a Marriage is a shattering and honest picture of the way long term romantic relationships work, and the way relationships can pan out to be not so straightforward after partners separate. This freshly released five-part limited series from Hagai Levi, an adaptation based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 TV miniseries of the same name, follows the breakdown of a marriage between characters played by your favourite long-term besties in the acting trade: Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac. Warning: this may hurt.
(Spoilers for episode 1 ahead).
In the first episode, as the audience is introduced to their relationship as a successful but (technically) non-traditional one, the tension is palpable between married couple Mira (Chastain) and Johnathan (Isaac). Johnathan has arranged for them to participate in an interview for a grad students’ research project, exploring gender norms and monogamy, which are of particular interest in their relationship where Mira is the ‘breadwinner’ of the family, whilst Johnathan, though still working from home, takes on the primary caregiving duties for their young daughter Ava. The underlying friction of their relationship seems to come from Mira more than Johnathan. She expresses her discomfort with participating in the interview altogether and struggles to answer the questions posed by the student, whilst Johnathan keenly provides responses to every prompt. It feels like they view their relationship (including their ten years of ‘successful’ marriage, measured somewhat by their adhesion to the rules of monogamy) as two different vehicles: Johnathan sees it as a way to have children, build a life, and establish security – he explains whilst Mira sits back and lets him do the talking - whilst Mira describes it, only after Johnathan has left the room, as an equilibrium that needs to be tended to at all times because it can be so easily unsettled at any moment. These responses alone foreshadow the entirety of the turbulence to come in their relationship over the following episodes.
Over dinner that evening with friends Kate and Peter, they reflect upon the final question posed to Mira and Johnathan by the student: to what extent do you see yourselves exclusively committed to each other sexually? The two couples laugh into their glasses of wine, all of them finding a sort of ironic hilarity in the fact that Mira and Johnathan’s relationship feels somewhat predicated on monogamy. Especially so when compared to Kate and Peter who claim to have maintained their marriage by removing the expectation of monogamy entirely. Kate tells Mira in private that her boyfriend (as in, boyfriend who is not my husband) broke up with her and she is struggling to think or talk about anything else, which is in turn a source of frustration for Peter who doesn’t want to hear about her romantic relationship with someone else breaking down. Kate also describes that despite feeling more attracted to Peter than she ever has been before now that they are no longer monogamous, she also experiences what she describes as “outbursts of hatred for him”. Whilst Kate and Peter’s rejection of monogamy claims to have been the saving grace for their marriage, it doesn’t seem to have played such a simple or similar role for their relationship altogether.
Later on in the evening, at home in bed with Johnathan, Mira reveals that the reason for her seeming frustration and distance during the interview was because she is pregnant. What proceeds this disclosure is a conversational dance where the pair seem to test their footing with every worded step. Mira and Johnathan try to rationally discuss what to do about the unplanned pregnancy, but they both provide responses that seem to be calculated and somewhat anodyne, hoping to sound to one another like exactly what each other wants to hear. They measure each other’s emotional reactions and proceed as inoffensively as possible for some time till eventually, Johnathan outright admits that he wants to have another child, and the pair agree that they will have the baby together. One week later, they are in a doctor’s office and Mira is swallowing a pill to terminate her pregnancy, having abandoned their plan to have another child.
What follows in the proceeding episodes is an intricate and emotional depiction of Mira and Johnathan’s connection through the turbulent events of their relationship before, after, and during its breakdown. Chastain and Isaac are the core of the story, being composed in near entirety of discussions between their characters and their emotional reactivity to one another. Their performances are tight and precise, even down to the smallest physical details, and without such talent it is easy to see why the story wouldn’t be anywhere near as captivating. Equally, my interest in seeing their relationship play out and investment in their characters would have been diminished if the pair didn’t have nearly as much chemistry as they do together on screen. Levi’s choice to include on-set (but out of character) footage of the pair in every episode increases the sense of legitimacy of their performances, particularly the personal moment that closes out episode 5 not between Mira and Johnathan, but Chastain and Isaac themselves. The magnetism between the pair is pretty undeniable, even if you haven’t seen the infamous Venice Film Festival red-carpet-armpit-sniff moment or aren’t aware of their long-term real life friendship - but if you are aware of those outside-the-show details, it makes their connection seem all the more genuine.
Without revealing too much about the conclusion of the show, the last episode is equal measures emotionally devastating and satisfying, to see the destinations that the pair reach both together and individually. The series overall provides a challenging consideration to what the nature of marriage really is, in its goals and outcomes, and a reminder that romantic relationships don’t always (and frequently never) end entirely after separation. Love is difficult, but so is making compromises for other people, and Scenes From a Marriage is a finely crafted piece of TV that makes it clear that sometimes it’s impossible to have your cake and eat it too without hurting someone you love.
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All episodes of Scenes From a Marriage are now available to stream on BINGE.