What is love? What is marriage? Do women lose themselves in marriage?
49 years ago, a TV series that deeply dissected complex marital relationships was broadcast in Sweden, causing the divorce rate to soar by 50%.
Forty-nine years later, a 21st-century remake aired, once again causing widespread discussion. Half a century later, how much has people's views on marriage and love improved?
Scenes from a Marriage
The show, called Scenes from a Marriage, was remade by HBO in five episodes and premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2021.
Cass is also very good, starring Jessica Chastain, the "model sister" who just won an Oscar this year, and Oscar Isaac, the actor who played Sweet Tea Daddy in "Dune". It tells the story of a middle-class couple in the United States in the married life of "a chicken feather".
Oscar plays the role of "husband" Jonathan in the marriage relationship, a 41-year-old university professor of philosophy. Playing her wife Mira, She is an important executive at a startup in the tech industry.
Because of the difference in income and social status, in this marital relationship, it seems to be a balanced relationship of "female outside and male inside" on the outside.
This is also the biggest difference from the original work, Ingmar Bergman's 1973 "Married Life": an attempt to re-explore the complex and unspeakable fatal problems in marriage through a new type of conjugal relationship in which "women are strong and men are weak".
In the original version, it was the men who were bored with married life and proposed to leave. But in the remake, the first to cheat and file for divorce is the woman.
Part I: 1973 edition of Married Life
Part 2021
They were supposed to live a life that was enviable in the eyes of the masses: both were well educated, had a stable and lucrative income, had a respectable social status, and their daughter grew up healthy...
But even so, they still can't get rid of the daily trivial spell of "marriage", falling into endless quarrels, cold wars, leaving...
What went wrong?
Stills from 2021 Married Life
As a comment on Douban said, they have love, money, patience, communication, mutual respect, and psychological counselors, but it is not okay or not.
That's the most desperate thing.
Of course, the acting skills of the two powerful actors are unquestionable, and they have once again received many nominations including the Screen Actors Guild Award and the Golden Globe Award with this drama. He also "sprinkled sugar like crazy" on the red carpet and earned enough topics (who would have thought that this was a large-scale "marriage and childbirth persuasion" drama).
2021's "Married Life" seems to reverse the fixed rules of "strong men and weak women" in married life, but Mira's departure is extremely hasty, awkward, and deep self-blame and self-contradiction.
Stills from the 2021 edition of Married Life
Half a century later, has a woman's "self" in marriage really improved?
01
Talk about Married Life
And, married life
In the spring of 1973, the six-episode miniseries "Scener ur ett ktenskap" (Married Life) was filmed by the famous Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, which was quietly launched on local Swedish television.
In addition to the TV version, a film version that was still 169 minutes long after editing was also introduced.
The Swedish name of the play, "Scener ur ett ktenskap", is "some scene fragments of marriage", which is very much in line with the style of the whole play.
The shooting scene is mainly in the space of the home, using the lens to spy on a real couple in their daily life of straightforward and profound quarrels, peace, peeping their love fades, incomparably real, and suddenly substitute the audience into it.
Stills from the 1973 edition of Married Life
Statistics say the show created a miracle in Swedish television history, with a peak of 3.5 million viewers, more than half of the Swedish adult population at that time.
The "aftershocks" that came with the broadcast were even more violent, and in 1973 alone, when the episodes were broadcast, the Swedish divorce rate suddenly soared by 50%, and many couples lined up for marriage counseling.
Director Ingmar Bergman is also the screenwriter of the show.
In fact, the play tells Bergman's own story.
He and actress and actress Liv Uman began to fall in love with the film Masquerade (1966) and lived together for five years. After the breakup, Bergman, who was about to enter a new marriage, wrote the script of "Married Life" of "a chicken feather".
Left: Ingmar Bergman
Right: Liv Uman
It talks about many practical issues: the inequality of male and female identities in marriage, the bondage of women and the family, the loss of women's self-worth... Wait a minute.
Nearly half a century has passed, but these problems have also been brought to 2021.
Stills from the 2021 edition of Married Life
At the beginning of the series, the couple is investigated by scholars together. The first question was "how to define yourself," to which her husband, Jonathan, replied: he was Jewish, a father, an academic (who made up a large part of his self-definition), taught in a university philosophy department, supported the Democratic Party, and had asthma.
Mira, who has a higher social status and achievements from the perspective of the public, is not very confident in herself.
She affirmed her family identity first, then social identity, and when it came to age and professional achievement, it was obviously unnatural and apologetic.
Jonathan also talked about his "sacrifices" to the division of labor in the family and to the care of his daughter, directly stamping the status quo of "female lead" and believing that he has paid more for the family.
This is also the most controversial place after the first episode of the new version aired.
Proponents argue that even though modern women have greatly improved their career and family status, they are still the "weak" side of marriage, and the series proves this fact once again from a new perspective.
Opponents believe that the show did not jump out of the "cage" of the original work, and the so-called "gender reversal" is just a gimmick.
But love and marriage are far from simple.
02
Women enter marriage
Doomed to lose yourself?
Women in Marriage
This is probably an age-old conundrum.
In early relationships, women were often the "master" party, who ran the household, raised children, and cared for their husbands, working hard but often depending on men because they had no direct source of income.
But in 1971, when Bergman wrote Married Life, it was the booming period of the women's movement in Europe and the United States, and a large number of women poured into the workplace, and more diversified free will began to appear.
Stills from the 1973 edition of Married Life
In the 2021 edition of Married Life, the writers try to introduce more modern, novel ideas.
First of all, through a four-person conversation with a friend and husband, the topic of "open marriage" was thrown out.
Stills from 2021 Married Life
Also a career woman, her friend Kate is obviously more direct, rational, and borderline than Mira, and dares to face problems head-on.
Although she and her husband Peter had a fierce quarrel, their views were actually the same, believing that the "specificity" in the marriage system was based on the consideration of reason and order, but it destroyed human instincts and lusts.
Pulling the relationship between husband and wife to an equal position, you can fight for your own rights like a partner.
Stills from 2021 Married Life
The second is to show the real problems in the marriage relationship in the form of gender interchange.
When Mira confessed to her husband's cheating and filed for divorce, when talking about the upbringing of her daughters, she mentioned the real situation of "widowed" education in many families today.
This seems to echo the fact that a husband who has been separated for a long time and has not fulfilled his paternal responsibilities in the 1973 version of the original can still criticize his wife for improperly educating his children.
When Mira returned home after her overseas assignment, she was further promoted. Escaping from the dull marriage, love, career triumph, makes her whole person radiant.
She talks about her success, being more knowledgeable, independent, and enjoying solitude than her young, goldy new boyfriend.
But then she was punctured by her husband, thinking that the louder she spoke, the more it showed that she was not confident in her heart.
Mira's behavior reminds us of many "successful men" in real life who think that money and status solve all problems. Mira subconsciously imitates the "winners" of a patriarchal society and gains spiritual satisfaction.
Although Mira has "economic status" in the family relationship, she has not really become a dominant player in the relationship between the two. As they showed in marriage counseling, she had low levels of identification with herself and was not confident.
Although Jonathan, who is "within the Lord," is in a "spiritually dominant" position in family relationships, he always stands on the commanding heights of theory, leaving the problems of married life to Mira to solve alone.
Stills from 2021 Married Life
Jonathan's feedback to his wife was even indifferent. When the wife is dissatisfied with life and cries to her husband, he not only cannot understand and comfort, but thinks that the wife is unreasonable.
Stills from 2021 Married Life
Essentially, Jonathan sees marriage as a "partnership system," assigning some "functions" directly to his wife, such as the second child who caused their emotional breakdown.
Mira's unwanted pregnancy and abortion were the triggers that led to a sharp turn in the marriage. Jonathan wanted the child, mira hesitant.
Men are always on the issue of "procreation" and naturally take it as a female responsibility. After giving birth to her first child, Mira lost herself to parenting, so she was troubled.
However, Jonathan did not say what he thought, but instead left the decision and responsibility on the issue to Mira, leaving himself out of the matter.
Motherhood is still Mira's most important identity. While Jonathan is home-carers, Mira earns money to support her family. However, when faced with "fertility problems", Mira will bear the "guilt" of choosing "abortion": she not only faces the grief of losing her child alone, but also comforts Jonathan's emotions.
Half a century of women's progress is that mira can now see her husband's tricks compared to her wife in 1973, and even if she gives up a little self in marriage, she has the ability to get it back.
03
What's the problem?
The problem is love
Love & Marriage
Legally, marriage is defined as a long-term contractual relationship. Subject to social and legal constraints.
And love is instinctive.
In the original work, Bergman uses the mouth of her husband to dissect the nature of love: "I love you in my selfish way, and I know that you love me in your picky, pestering way." ”
The wife, on the other hand, believes that love is not a necessity in married life, and that it is enough to be "good" to each other living together.
Stills from 1973 Married Life
But this "contractual relationship" is expected of each other, hoping that the other party will be good to themselves, not to play an unwilling role, and hope that life is still full of color.
Just like mira abortion, the deep reason for infidelity is not to pursue love, but to escape from the immutable marriage.
Stills from 2021 Married Life
When emotional thinking returns to rational thinking, Mira also realizes that no matter who she is with, when love and passion gradually fade, marriage will eventually return to chai rice oil and salt and no waves.
Stills from 2021 Married Life
At the same time, she still has love and dependence on Jonathan, and will lie, court, and even fight for him.
The differences (stability or passion) that men and women expect in marriage, as well as the asymmetry of personality growth, and the game of rational and emotional thinking, intertwine the complex and unpredictable nature of human nature.
Stills from 2021 Married Life
So much so that Bergman arranged an absurd ending for "Married Life" that broke up the worldly morality: the man and woman rekindled their love after breaking up and were together in a cheating way.
Hints are given at the beginning of the new episode to explore the possibility of open marriage.
Nearly 50 years later, marriage issues remain a century of conundrum for couples, with no standard answers.
But at the very least, people can see themselves in other people's stories and start being honest and talking to each other.
Finally, the 2021 version of "Married Life" has been exclusively launched on Tencent Video, and those friends who are confused and thinking about marriage and love are welcome to search and watch.
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