There is a moment in Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (1973) when the protagonists Johan and Marianne prepare for bed after a long dinner party. Marianne turns to Johan and asks: "Do you think there is any way that two people can live together all their lives?" Johan responds: "It's a damned absurd convention that we've inherited from I don't know what. People should have a five-year contract. Or one that is valid from year to year, so that they could give notice." Bergman's intensely psychological film originally aired on Swedish television in six 50-minute episodes. Viewers meet the upper-middle-class couple 10 years into their marriage, during an interview for a popular women's magazine, where both decidedly declare their happiness as husband and wife and parents of two daughters. Soon afterward, however, the marriage disintegrates with explosive arguments, sexual shortcomings, misunderstandings, boredom, and infidelity. Eventually, Johan and Marianne divorce and remarry other people. The concluding episode takes place nine years onward, almost 20 years after they originally married, in Stockholm, while their spouses are out of the country. Johan and Marianne rendezvous at a friend's cluttered summer cottage. After sex, Johan is melancholy. He becomes conflicted by his inability to perform the conventional role of faithful husband in yet another marriage, admittedly challenged by the contradictions of internal desires and external behaviors governed by the institution of marriage.
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