You’ve already seen it the video of Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival, his fiery gaze falls on an adorable affection between the two, all in slow motion. Look at it again, it’s a gift you never stop making; it also serves as a strong preamble to what works best in its new limited series. From the beginning, those of HBO Scenes from a wedding it shows the chemistry and ease between them, but it’s not always so compelling beyond its shared ferocity.
Based on the Swedish miniseries by Ingmar Bergman (currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, along with the abbreviated film version, the latter also available on HBO Max), this series attempts a high order. The original has influenced the tastes of Before midnight, History of marriage, and now this remake starring former Juilliard colleagues and A more violent year costars. Here, Chastain and Isaac play Mira and Jonathan, a couple at the beginning of their disintegration. Less a reimagining than a revival of Bergman’s text with a few twists, The affair Creator Hagai Levi’s version has started smoothly and confusingly.
The confusion stems from how the Levi series begins: a backstage vision that follows Chastain from a dressing room, through a bustling sound stage with forced COVID protocols, which reaches its mark on set. Is the stylistic choice designed to make us active participants not only in the drama but in the production, perhaps to invite us even more to see Mira and Jonathan? Are we supposed to get into the drama as released as Mira is during the interview that kicks off the episode? Is this affectation merely showy for its own good?
Starting the action with this artifice makes him feel very self-conscious and staggered, as if he were being given a script by Bergman. Vanya On 42nd Street treatment by people in the theater who pass the time and represent a beloved text. The opening does not exactly break the fourth wall or recognize the audience, but immediately advances the realism it attempts to create through raw performances in long, real-time observation. Levi gives us no idea of his intentions, but each episode will feature this device and I will have more to say later.
G / O Media may receive a commission
They provide us with a lot of background on the couple through an interview they grant to a PhD student (Sunita Mani). When they first met, Jonathan was kind of a square and she was straightforward; now it looks like he … she’s still kind of square and she’s less revealing, to say the least. Chastain fascinates us early on with Mira’s evasiveness, clearly avoiding all innocuous questions by providing conservative answers with physical discomfort. She can’t really blame herself when she’s immediately asked to “define” herself and her marriage (especially when it seems so easy for Jonathan), but the scene falls short in the face of her bewildered response (and Jonathan’s fun). ) in an investigation into their sexual exclusivity.
Stories about heterosexual couples love to obsess over monogamy, as if fidelity or lack of it was the most fascinating and stressful part of a relationship rather than how a marriage actually works. Scenes from a wedding thankfully it allows Mira and Jonathan more layers in their problems than that, but Bergman didn’t just care about fidelity. His version resonates because it asks larger, more open questions about the nature of love, gender roles, and the demands of society; instead, this episode touches on these topics in superficial detail, such as mentioning the marriage counseling tools industry and getting a doctoral student to say he or she is studying gender roles and monogamy. The new series even invites you to wonder what Levi and his co-writer Amy Herzog will bring to this material that reexamines these ideas in the current context 50 years later.
This first episode leaves this question unanswered until the arrival of Nicole Beharie and Corey Stoll as Kate and Peter, Mira and Jonathan’s married friends as well. Suddenly, the show has its first insights into today’s changing marriage rules: Kate and Peter maintain an open relationship, enduring a rough patch because Peter personally considers Kate to have a broken heart from a breakup with a boyfriend. The difference here from the original is that Kate and Peter are committed to the deal despite the obstacles, whereas previously it was a couple in each other’s throats and tied together by professional objection; it is a nuanced but important difference. However, the wine provokes an awkward discussion and Kate and Mira break upstairs, where Kate leaves everything to a supportive but guarded Mira.
Just as Bibi Andersson did a brief and exciting performance as Kate’s counterpart in Bergman’s original, Beharie is on fire here. Kate is a fascinating character, not only for her perspective on her open marriage, but for the vision Beharie provides in her brief time with us. Beharie allows her to be vulnerable but self-preserving, resulting in a kiss with Mira that feels inevitable, but also with a harmless support that Mira does not receive. Perhaps it serves to strain Beharie’s performance to be more natural and relaxed, awakening the episode with a certain sense of real life. But just as Andersson disappears after his one-episode performance showcase, so does Beharie.
The rest of “Innocence And Panic” deferentially follows the first chapter of the original: we find out that Mira’s anxiety during the interview was stirred (at least in part) when she found out she was pregnant and the couple discussed whether to continue ‘pregnancy or abortion. Mira’s journey with postpartum depression after her first pregnancy is a decisive factor, a nuance that feels intensely contemporary, as the reasons for ending a pregnancy are reduced by those who demonize her in the United States and with great consequences in the current moment. .
As Bergman’s partner did, Mira and Jonathan decide to have an abortion. It is important to see that the decision and the procedure itself are not traumatic, but what does underline the abortion is the lack of honesty and communication between them that has brought them to this point in their marriage. Jonathan has a determination to show solidarity, avoiding being subjected to a trace of emotion while getting something from the vending machine. Mira asks for privacy and finally collapses under the tension that has obviously been mounting the whole episode. But as their inner conflict is not physically spoken, we have not yet learned what they really have in mind. In retrospect, Ava’s interruption during her interview feels prophetic in a way they couldn’t understand: “It’s over.” And before they knew it.
“Innocence And Panic” is a slow start, despite the performances of Chastain, Isaac and Beharie. So far, it feels less like the show keeps us at a distance without revealing its interiority (even despite a precise detail of the character) than trying to figure out what to do with it. Levi struggles to not only examine what marriage means today, but also how Mira and Jonathan are emblematic of something more than themselves. If this new series wants to pursue the original, it will have to develop a point of view on the minutiae and complications of their relationship and what these messes represent. Otherwise, Scenes from a wedding they will only be strong performances adrift in memories of what made the source material more special.
Lost observations
- Mira went out with a college boy who was part of a band called Saraband, the title of the original Scenes‘sequel and the final Bergman film. References Awareness! What was his great song called? “Wolf Time”?
- Sunita Mani, we will bring you back to the glory of TO SHINE.
- Sometimes Jessica Chastain looks so similar to Bergman star Liv Ullman that she is spooky. It’s probably not an intentional callreturning to the original considering that Michelle Williams was originally made …
- Mira and Jonathan are given two of these professions that you should never develop for a character: “tech ™!” and professor of philosophy. No more questions.
- Do we really think this is the first time Mira and Kate have kissed? It’s open that one marriage is open and the other isn’t, but I have questions about how long they’ve known each other others.
- No thoughts, just Oscar Isaac’s curls of salt and pepper.