There’s a passage in Tom Wolfe’s “The Me Decade and Third Great Awakening“, which I happened to re-read a couple of days ago, that put the hook in. It says that Ingmar Bergman‘s Scenes From A Marriage (’73 — recently remade for HBO with Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain) “is one of those rare works of art, like Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, that not only succeed in capturing a certain mental atmosphere in fictional form…but also turn around and help radiate it throughout real life.”
Hundreds of fictional films have captured a certain social atmosphere or way or looking at life, of course. It could be argued, in fact, that this is what defines a great film — the capturing of some aspect of real actual life that millions recognize as being genuine in some poetic or distilled, boiled-down way. But how many times has the public reception to this kind of film turned around and regenerated and become a current in and of itself?
My first thought when this question came to mind was William Wyler‘s The Best Years of Our Lives (’46). Or John Badham‘s Saturday Night Fever, although I’m not sure how many people really wanted to live the life of John Travolta‘s Tony Manero. Or Robert Redford‘s Ordinary People. I’m actually not sure which films meet this standard — still kicking this one around.
The Wolfe passage in question:
A key drama of our own day is Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage. In it we see a husband and wife who have good jobs and a well-furnished home but who are unable to “communicate”—to cite one of the signature words of the Me Decade. Then they begin to communicate, and there upon their marriage breaks up and they start divorce proceedings. For the rest of the picture they communicate endlessly, with great candor, but the “relationship” — another signature word — remains doomed. Ironically, the lesson that people seem to draw from this movie has to do with “the need to communicate.”
Scenes From a Marriage is one of those rare works of art, like The Sun Also Rises, that not only succeed in capturing a certain mental atmosphere in fictional form … but also turn around and help radiate it throughout real life. I personally know of two instances in which couples, after years of marriage, went to see Scenes From a Marriage and came home convinced of the “need to communicate.” The discussions began with one of the two saying. Let’s try to be completely candid for once. You tell me exactly what you don’t like about me, and I’ll do the same for you. At this, the starting point, the whole notion is exciting. We’re going to talk about Me! (And I can take it.) I’m going to find out what he (or she) really thinks about me! (Of course, I have my faults, but they’re minor, or else exciting.)
She says. “Go ahead. What don’t you like about me?”
They’re both under the Bergman spell. Nevertheless, a certain sixth sense tells him that they’re on dangerous ground. So he decides to pick something that doesn’t seem too terrible.
“Well,” he says, “one thing that bothers me is that when we meet people for the first time, you never know what to say. Or else you get nervous and start babbling away, and it’s all so banal, it makes me look bad.”
Consciously she’s still telling herself, “I can take it.” But what he has just said begins to seep through her brain like scalding water. What’s he talking about? … makes him look bad? He’s saying I’m unsophisticated, a social liability, and an embarrassment. All those times we’ve gone out, he’s been ashamed of me! (And what makes it worse—it’s the sort of disease for which there’s no cure!) She always knew she was awkward. His crime is: He noticed! He’s known it, too, all along. He’s had contempt for me.
Out loud she says. “Well, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about that.”
He detects the petulant note. “Look,” he says. “you’re the one who said to be candid.”
She says, “I know. I want you to be.”
He says, “Well, it’s your turn.”
“Well,” she says, “I’ll tell you something about when we meet people and when we go places. You never clean yourself properly — you don’t know how to wipe yourself. Sometimes we’re standing there talking to people, and there’s…a smell. And I’ll tell you something else. People can tell it’s you.”
And he’s still telling himself, “I can take it” — but what inna namea Christ is this?
He says, “But you’ve never said anything…about anything like that.”
She says, “But I tried to. How many times have I told you about your dirty drawers when you were taking them off at night?”
Somehow this really makes him angry… . All those times…and his mind immediately fastens on Harley Thatcher and his wife, whom he has always wanted to impress. From underneath my $250 suits, I smelled of shit! What infuriates him is that this is a humiliation from which there’s no recovery. How often have they sniggered about it later? — or not invited me places? Is it something people say every time my name comes up? And all at once he is intensely annoyed with his wife, not because she never told him all these years — but simply because she knows about his disgrace, and she was the one who brought him the bad news!
From that moment on they’re ready to get the skewers in. It’s only a few minutes before they’ve begun trying to sting each other with confessions about their little affairs, their little slipping around, their little coitus on the sly—“Remember that time I told you my flight from Buffalo was canceled?”—and at that juncture the ranks of those who can take it become very thin, indeed. So they communicate with great candor! and break up! and keep on communicating! and then find the relationship hopelessly doomed.