#Isaac and Chastain Fall Apart – /Film

Hagai Levi, the creator of Showtime’s The Affair and the Israeli drama that inspired In Treatment, set his sights high for his next project. He decided to write, direct, and executive produce a remake Scenes from a Marriage, the 1970s classic by Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman. Go big or go home, right?

Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) and Jessica Chastain (Take Shelter) play the married couple at the center of this version, and HBO has released a new trailer which hints that these actors might be able to access the entire spectrum of emotions in this series. If you’re a fan of the craft of acting, this looks like a can’t-miss show.

Scenes From a Marriage Trailer

Before the 2010s, a project like this Scenes from a Marriage remake would have been crafted as a movie instead of a show. (I guess since Ingmar Bergman made the original as a show before ultimately cutting it down into a movie, there’s a chance that a modern studio would have wanted to follow in those footsteps with a similar release strategy.) But the landscape has since shifted so dramatically in the past decade that it would be almost impossible to imagine a studio giving this the go-ahead in the form of a film nowadays. Mid-budget, big-screen stories aimed squarely at adults are practically an endangered species, but since TV rules the roost in Hollywood right now and there’s a proliferation of platforms desperate to fill their libraries with that sweet, sweet content, there’s arguably never been a better time for a show like this to get made.

That’s good news for viewers who are fans of Isaac and Chastain, who previously worked together playing husband and wife in J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year back in 2014. That was a fraught cinematic relationship, and it feels like the actors will be able to bring some of that shared history into this project, which seems fraught in an entirely different (and more heartbreakingly realistic) way. The trailer is a showcase for both actors, giving us a brief glimpse into their characters’ love, pain, desperation, and heartache, and it feels like the type of show that has the potential to emotionally devastate its viewers.

But is that a tinge of hope I see at the end of the trailer? We’ll find out how much of this show is misery porn and how much of it is a sharply observed portrait when Scenes from a Marriage premieres on HBO on September 12, 2021.

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