One night a few days after watching "Marriage Scene", I was lying in bed and suddenly found: I always thought that "sleeping with embracing" is a romantic state, a kind of complete communication between two people in body and mind. , can achieve the embodiment of the most perfect relationship. However, in fact, when two people are actually lying on the bed and trying to use their bodies to approach each other, this state makes people feel the obstacles, staggering and asynchrony between the two more than anything else. When the two embrace each other, they will be more aware than usual: how the extra hands and extra bones lie between the two, making it impossible for the two bodies to fit tightly. Even if you manage to do it, it can only last for a while. After a while, you will start to feel sore, tired, and even painful in some part of your arm or body. The body begins to yearn to return to the state it was when it was alone, and is struck by how unburdened, autonomous and complete it is.
After some inner suffering of secret struggle, one party finally made a decision. He gently broke free from this gesture and pulled away from the other party's body, and if the other party was already waiting for this moment, they would have a tacit understanding. With the cooperation of the two, the two returned to their own territory, returning to the complete posture when they were sleeping alone. And even if the two continue to insist on embracing each other, it is inevitable that one of them will fall asleep first, and he will leave the other and wander alone to another world that belongs only to him. The one who is awake can also perceive this from the other's gradually becoming longer and more comfortable breathing: now there is only himself left, only himself alone with his awake consciousness as company, in this state There will be no verbal communication and no physical communication. Somewhat ironically, at this time, the only way to make the other party aware of his existence again may be to withdraw and leave.
"Marriage Scene", like many of Bergman's other films, is about the tension between two people who are in a state of being staggered from each other, but they are tightly intertwined and inseparable as if they are bound by fate. However, what is more special is that compared to the average length of the film, the TV version of "Marriage Scene", because it is divided into six independent episodes, with a total of five hours, seems to be more than enough to describe in detail to some extent. These tensions, and the various factors that change between the two protagonists. Bergman gave the titles to the six episodes as follows:
1. Innocence and panic
2. The art of seeing nothing but seeing
3. Paula
Fourth, the valley of tears is deep
5. Emotional blindness
6. The midnight hut in the corner of the world
Before discussing the content of these six series obviously too briefly, perhaps we can start with this couple, John and Marianne. They can be said to be the only two characters in this marriage. The parents, children, and even the object of the affair, although they also played a role in promoting the plot, were obviously weakened or disappeared. In other words, this scene of "marriage scene" is actually the common life of these two people.
Bergman's background for the two characters is interesting: John is an associate professor of psychology, and Marianne is a lawyer specializing in marriage and family law, especially in divorce cases. On the surface, there is nothing more suitable for facing the difficulties of married life and the conflicts and crises of emotions than such a combination. But sometimes, the existence of a problem is presupposed or hypothesized just before the actual experience of the problem, and this condition makes people even more deeply immersed in the problem, which is presented in the later plot. of.
In this story, John and Marianne each have their own set of principles they believe in. What John believed, or could be said to be, was the inevitability of collapse, and he had a cynical tendency to think that all the life he was enjoying was supported by some necessary external conditions, a kind of phantom. Embracing this strong sense of insecurity, even when he was at his calmest, he always felt the impending crisis.
Continuing this way of thinking, in the face of a crisis, he does not hope to confront it with an abstract and obscure emotional force, because this force is even more unstable and difficult to control than the crisis itself. For him, the way to live is to avoid these obscure, obscure mysteries as carefully as possible. When others show incomprehensible emotions, he dismisses them as meaningless. He tries to look at everything, including his own inner state, with a sarcastic, distanced attitude, but in fact this is often an attitude of whitewashing and escaping from facing the real problem. When conflicts arise, he appears to be tolerant, cooperative, and always yielding, but this is not based on a sincere understanding of others, or the practice of some personal principle, but simply because he believes that nothing is worth pursuing or championing of.
This is especially clear in the first episode, where Marianne has a conversation with John when she finds out she's pregnant. At first, Marianne tried to ask John's opinion, wanting to know whether he wanted to have a child or not, but in response to Marianne's hesitation, anxiety and various considerations, John put on a seemingly rational posture and told her " You don't know what you're thinking", berating Marianne for being "too emotional". Even at the end, Bergman filmed Marianne turning her head and once again revealing her inner thoughts with a very serious expression, but John, who was turned away from the audience and had no expression on the screen, still said indifferently: "There is no one. Words have meaning." In the end Marianne had to give up trying to make John understand herself, and instead just discuss the superficial decision of the matter, she lowered her face and finally "clearly" said what she wanted: "We can't have this baby, Then happy?" and John, relieved, responded wearily, but not without relief, "I already said it was a good thing." By the end of the conversation, things seemed to "work out." But the real abyss that is really important, and the real abyss that was originally glimpsed because of this incident, has become even bigger under the pull of this seemingly mutual understanding, but actually distanced from each other. So it's perhaps not surprising that the first episode ends with Marianne opting for an abortion.
And what about Marianne? In many ways she is more of an optimistic activist than John. For her, acting almost always precedes thinking, or she thinks only to act. She is convinced that everything has a solution, and mistakes can definitely be improved, but in fact she lacks the ability to truly take on the other side. Therefore, although she felt that there was a problem in her marriage, she only felt things that could be changed within the scope of her own thinking. Regarding what John cares about, such as dissatisfaction with the sex life of the two, and more problems that may be lurking underneath, Marianne claims that she has tried her best to use such an excuse to escape understanding or trying efforts. Because of this, she was unaware of John's affair, because she was trapped in a world that she understood and arranged. She tried her best to manage her life and arrange trivial matters. She also suggested a trip to save her relationship. But all of this is doomed to fail, because she tries to decide the two people's common life with the power of one person, and this common life actually consists only of her own false ("paper-based") projection.
Ironically, in the image presented earlier, Marianne was a champion of "frankness" and "common language", and she created an open, listening mask for herself that would require frankness, verbal communication (the so-called the "common language") as a substitute for undertaking the other party. But such a commitment is only self-deception after all. When the affair broke out, when John finally confessed his negative views about the marriage, she broke down asking John to "don't say it" and to "lie me," a scene that relentlessly revealed the emptiness of this gesture; at the same time , After John left the country house for Paris, Marianne discovered that this matter had long been known in the circle of friends, and only she was kept in the dark, all of which seemed to be an ironic contrast to her indulging fantasies.
Interestingly, this trait of Marianne, despite her embarrassing failure in this marriage, seems to have brought her considerable strength and growth after she was abandoned and faced her own life again. . In the fourth episode, we see her, instead of the depression at the end of the third episode, with a gorgeous and moving posture, sitting in a home where there is no longer John. She occupied the desk where John used to work, which reminds us that she also has a job of her own, with her own financial and professional abilities; she has replaced the double bed with a single bed, and only has a tryst with her new lover at her new lover's house, it seems It hints at her decision to no longer be weak and no longer allow outsiders to easily invade her own realm.
At the same time, she no longer needs to worry about John's objection or denial, she re-examines the relationship, carefully combs and analyzes various problems. In the fourth episode, Marianne recites her notes, a confession that is feminist (although Bergman's own attitude to feminism or the women's movement is not so easy to define), and she blames herself for being in the wrong place. In the process of growing up, he catered to others, and even lost the ability to dream, act and express, and finally he was indifferent to everything. She tried to rethink what kind of (woman) person she could be, and to reimagine her new life. Although such an attempt can still be said to be self-centered, it is at least a way of thinking that is more authentic, admits one's own limitations, and therefore more possible than the "candid" that used to deceive oneself. It was also at this time that she could finally claim that she was "able to take on each other".
The affair can be said to be the first turning point in "Marriage Scene" that brings about substantial changes. It gave Marianne an opportunity to re-understand and adjust herself. In contrast, John, who seemed to choose to leave, did not seem to go in such a direction. He initially moved to a new life with Paula in order to escape, but instead of saving him, this new life became another predicament to escape. Living in a small, cramped apartment, enduring the noisy, cluttered quality of life nearby, and having an emotional and jealous girlfriend at home. John describes this life as "hell," but the question is: what is heaven in his mind?
Let's go back to John's situation again. Although he is pessimistic and negative most of the time, it does not mean that he does not aspire to achieve something or create meaning for his life. John's private longing for affirmation and success can be seen in two places in the play—one is writing poetry, and the other is his fascination with Paula, who needs him and adores him.
The common feature of these two events is that they are both covered up and carried on under the normal trajectories of life—to be precise, outside of life with Marianne. Because the latter means a (disguised) "satisfaction", a "two-person world" that requires (false) frankness with each other and belonging to each other as the highest requirements, so creating this kind of extremely personal, trying to explore oneself, and Extremely lonely behavior, it seems out of place. Compared with the fact that Marian started thinking about what she could "do" after leaving the two-person world, John's attempts actually occurred earlier, but because it was too far from his other defeatist stance, In the case of being unable to face up to and reveal his own contradictions; or, in other words, unable to work hard to reverse the adversity, in the end he did not grow up and affirm himself from anything, but when he encountered denial or setbacks (If a colleague subtly expresses his poor poetry, or Paula doesn't really need him), use more excuses and anger to cover up your failures.
So perhaps the biggest turning point for John happened in episode five. He lost his teaching opportunity in the United States, and when he broke the news to Marianne, hoping to gain her sympathy (and perhaps a chance to reunite with it), the result was: Marianne was surprised but not disappointed Revengefully declared to him that she found herself not caring about John's feelings at all. In the end, under the provocation of Marian's contempt one after another, John finally couldn't hold back his rage and beat Marian to the ground. This embarrassing scene is like tearing off the mask of John's feigning rationality and sneering at everything, and it is a naked declaration of his desperation. The more frantically he waved his fists, the more he showed that he had nothing. But perhaps it was also at this moment, when he could no longer escape from watching Marianne's blood flow, realizing that he had made everything irreparable, that he finally had the opportunity to face and truly acknowledge the existence of the predicament, instead of Ignore it with shirk or evasion. It is after this turning point that the final episode, and the final turning point, takes place.
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