This movie sequel to the television miniseries "Scenes from a Marriage" is also Ingmar Bergman's last film, and I suppose operates as a decent farewell by him too if you're in the mood of viewing it that way. What's more stressed than people at the end of their lives, however, is Karin, the young granddaughter who, as attached as she is to her father and all (I mean that both sarcastically and seriously), still manages to break away for her own good. Bergman must have seen a young Liv Ullman in Julia Dufvenius, because they look a lot alike, are played off of each other often, and the latter takes on a lot of the mannerisms of the former. In sending her to music school, it's almost as if Bergman was passing on the reins of his favorite actress(type) into the realm of pure abstractness.
Henrik was a real troll and was very difficult to watch. For better or for worse, Johan and Marianne manage to be decently likable characters who you feel you can spend some hours with without much difficulty. That is not to say that Henrik wasn't very real--in fact, all too much, he's the lonely guy you're never able to sit with because if you let him too close he'll become an emotional vampire and suck the life from you.
It's nice seeing Ullman and Josephson back together again but the two characters they play are always wearying. This is not to be watched if you're expecting the drama to be fulfilled or to go by quickly. The two hour playlength goes by, and especially quickly next to the miniseries it was preceded by (where characters were confined more often to blank rooms and close-ups and hardly ever given the flashbacks and landscapes to interact with like in this movie), but watch this one expecting to need a long nap afterward. Now that the characters are older, too, the weight of the world presses down harder on them.
--PolarisDiB
Henrik was a real troll and was very difficult to watch. For better or for worse, Johan and Marianne manage to be decently likable characters who you feel you can spend some hours with without much difficulty. That is not to say that Henrik wasn't very real--in fact, all too much, he's the lonely guy you're never able to sit with because if you let him too close he'll become an emotional vampire and suck the life from you.
It's nice seeing Ullman and Josephson back together again but the two characters they play are always wearying. This is not to be watched if you're expecting the drama to be fulfilled or to go by quickly. The two hour playlength goes by, and especially quickly next to the miniseries it was preceded by (where characters were confined more often to blank rooms and close-ups and hardly ever given the flashbacks and landscapes to interact with like in this movie), but watch this one expecting to need a long nap afterward. Now that the characters are older, too, the weight of the world presses down harder on them.
--PolarisDiB