Sunday, April 19, 2009

Scenes from a Marriage (1973)


Director: Ingmar Bergman

After a couple years of trying, I managed to see the whole film. And I tried so many times…never managed to get over the first half. I feel a little bit proud of myself getting over this horror. As much as I love Bergman, I have to recognize that this is one of his most awful tries. Focusing all the drama on the universal white Swedish bourgeois family with no social network whatsoever, he manages to depict a gloomy world with no way out. Any outburst against the patriarchal matrix is repressed with fists and intellectual bullshit analysis. A feminist critique made by Liv Ulman’s character on her miserable condition finds no answer but pure violence. And the end is just sick: a return to the oppressive status quo, with a self-righteous husband and a submissive and dreamy wife, where past conflicts are seen as detached experience, a needed element for a “healthy” relationship. And all based on personal guilt and useless individual struggle, with no connection to an outside world that can face similar problems. I definitely not recommend this very long crap, especially if you are a Bergman enthusiast.

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