Saraband
Whether you saw the 168-minute cut of ''Scenes From a Marriage" back in its 1973 release or more recently tackled the unedited five-hour miniseries version on Criterion DVD, Ingmar Bergman's dissection of modern matrimony remains a blistering experience -- a full-course meal of bitterness, self-delusion, and clear-eyed resilience. Think of ''Saraband," then, as an after-dinner mint: a film that looks in on the same characters three decades later and finds their rage both cooled and passed down to the next generation. And rejoice while you're at it, because this is the first work directed by Bergman to be released in this country since 1984's ''After the Rehearsal."
Like most of the master's recent work, ''Saraband" was made for Swedish TV (his last theatrical movie was ''Fanny and Alexander" in 1982), and the flat digital camerawork lacks the sweep of classics such as ''Persona" and ''Cries and Whispers." But it's useful to remember that ''Scenes From a Marriage" was largely a string of two-shots that pinned the protagonists to the screen like bugs. Bergman takes the same approach here, but he has mellowed in his mid-80s. He loves these insects because they are us.
Indeed, Liv Ullmann's Marianne could be speaking for the director in the opening sequence, when she addresses the camera and says ''Myself? I'm still active in my profession, but at the pace I choose. Mostly family disputes and divorces." She's a lawyer (not that it helped her in the earlier film) and in her early 60s has become curious about the ex-husband she hasn't spoken with in more than 30 years. Without quite understanding why, she calls Johan (Erland Josephson) and arranges to visit him in his retirement.
There are echoes here of more than ''Scenes From a Marriage." Johan's summer house recalls the setting of early works such as ''Wild Strawberries" and ''Secrets of Women," while Karin (Julia Dufvenius), his 18-year-old granddaughter by a previous marriage, has the headstrong passion of long-ago Bergman heroines like Monika in the film of that title. Fittingly, ''Saraband" is concerned with the way family wounds of the past constantly bleed into the present.
Marianne is delighted to see her ex-husband -- 20 years her senior, he's close to dotage -- and because their relationship is free of responsibilities, it flowers anew. They're nice to each other. Slowly, however, she comes to see another face of Johan, the unforgiving one he shows to his son, Henrik (Borje Ahlstedt). The latter, a classical musician and conductor, is nearly the same age as Marianne, but he's stuck in a vicious circle of rebellion and appeasement. Henrik is a reminder that some of us never move beyond adolescence and never forgive our parents for it; the problem is that he now has a teenager of his own. Both are still reeling from the death two years earlier of Henrik's wife Anna, who, as they talk about her, seems the wisest person in the movie.
Karin is a gifted cellist -- the film takes its title from a Bach piece -- and her father wants to groom her as a solo star. She's not sure what she wants, other than to keep him sane, and her fears and resentments tumble out in long kitchen conversations with Marianne, the step-grandmother she never knew. Ullmann is her usual deft self, but Dufvenius is a force of nature, sometimes actressy but also melodramatic in the way that young women often are. One pines, probably hopelessly, to see what else Bergman could do with her.
''Saraband" builds slowly and naturally to an unbearable personal crisis in which Karin comes to a fork in the road; the choice that is the best for many reasons is also the one that will destroy her father. This is the choice that Johan gets behind, partially because it will benefit his granddaughter but also because it will allow him to see his son twist slowly in the wind one last time.
Marianne is appalled, as are we, but Bergman certainly isn't. He understands that we devour our loved ones for no other reason than that they're close at hand, while treating distant acquaintances with undue affection. A half century ago, in ''Wild Strawberries," the young Bergman fancied that old men can learn lessons and attain peace. Now an old man himself, he believes no such thing, and while that's hard wisdom, it's wisdom nevertheless.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
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