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It is not clear what is more battered in "pictures from married life": the soul of the characters or herself

Hagai Levy's new adaptation starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain is done with a confident hand, but it's such because it's treading plowed and familiar paths.

Thus, although the feeling in it is so exposed, blatant and demanding, the feeling behind it is technical and artificial

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• Pictures from married life

Ido Yeshayahu

Monday, 13 September 2021, 14:32 Updated: 14:43

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Trailer for the series "Pictures from Marriage" (HBO)

Throughout watching the new version of "Pictures from Marriage" the question arises again and again: why was it actually created? What led Hagai Levy, creator of "In Treatment" and co-creator of "The Novel" and "The Boys," to remake Ingmar Bergman's classic series? And why did HBO tops think it would be a good idea to update it?

In its outline, the new "Marriage Photos" - whose first episode aired yesterday (Monday) Bite, Hot and Cellcom Tiwi, alongside airing in the United States - follows the original almost one by one. Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain play Jonathan and Mira, a married, intellectual couple. As is required from a contemporary series, the power relations between the two are not as archetypal as originally. Jonathan is much more sensitive and vulnerable than Johan (played by Arland Josephson), and Mira is really not the insecure introverted creature that Marian was (played by Lib Ullman), though her hesitation in the first episode can be portrayed as such.

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Naked moments of a couple.

"Pictures from a marriage" (Photo: HBO)

The pair of new heroes met when they were university students together.

Today he serves as a lecturer, so on the one hand his salary is not particularly high, and on the other hand his free time makes him a parent who is more present in their childhood life.

Mira is a product manager at a high-tech company and the main breadwinner at home, whose tight schedule allows her to be less available in family life.

From the first episode it is clear how exposed the nerves in the series are. How exposed everything is, in fact. In Bergman's series, the interview was part of a documentary, while this time, in a sort of statement about Levy's ambiguous intentions, the interviewer is a graduate student conducting research on relationships. Asks explicitly what makes their relationship a success.In practice, putting their relationship in front of a questioner, floods the secrets and avoidances and emphasizes the differences in attitudes between the two.

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Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, "Pictures from a Married Life" (Photo: HBO)

Later in the same episode, when a pair of friends (Corey Stoll and Nicole Bahari) arrive for a joint meal, the explosive and embarrassing pairing of the others sheds an even more positive light on the apparent harmony of Jonathan and Mira.

But in fact it only emphasizes again the different places where the pair of heroes are.

Everything is an illusion.

The attractive bourgeoisie of Jonathan and Mira, the semblance of a perfect relationship, whose mind is sharpened - everything stands in contrast to their ability to communicate in a basic emotional way.

When they are already conversing it always seems like an afterthought summary, and in most cases manifests itself as a volcano that erupts after months and years of repression, denials, secrets, betrayals, and passion that may have withered but still sizzles.

Throughout the five episodes of the series (all sent for review), "Pictures from a Married Life" presents an uncompromising, not-so-easy-to-watch psychological description of a dying relationship, teeming with frustration, anger and pathos.

Each episode features long real-time scenes, detailed minutes of prickly and stifling intimacy.

We stumble upon the most naked moments of a couple, which are often also the most horrible, just as happens to Jonathan and Mira at the friends dinner in the first episode.

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Isaac and Chastain demonstrate amazing acting performances. Just like the characters they play, the two already knew each other in college. They’ve already played a couple in the 2014 film “Very Tough Year,” and accordingly, as anyone who has been on any social network in the past week knows (and if you missed it, see the two right here on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival), the chemistry between them is magnetic. Thanks to them, even in the toxic quarrels of Jonathan and Mira, it is still possible to identify what connected them in the first place.

Levy, who wrote and directed all the episodes of the remake, leads the story with talent and a confident hand.

But that's the point, the pungent feeling is that it's clear why the hand trusts - it's walking on plowed and worn paths.

Not only because it is an adaptation of an existing classic - let’s face it, most of humanity has not really watched it - but because the original “Pictures from a Marriage” is so iconic and influential that its presence has accompanied us regularly in dozens of other works, some masterpieces, since first airing in -1973.

It resonates in every modern story about the decline of relationships, and in the current century alone has been present in films such as Noah Baumbach, Sam Mendez and Richard Linklater, in series such as "The Sopranos", "Meter Man", this year in the explicit and tedious "Nothing Expert" tribute, and of course In those of Levy himself: "In Therapy" (in the characters of Rami Weiberger and Alma Zack) and "The Novel".

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Acting school, literally.

"Pictures from a marriage" (Photo: HBO)

Almost every episode opens for some reason with the breaking of the fourth wall: the actors prepare for a scene and only then begin it.

This is a puzzling choice that is not clear what the reason is, and in practice only adds an artificial layer to something that is not always convincing anyway.

It seems that it was created as an intellectual exercise or of an acting school, and its very existence is not related to an impulse from the bowels but to an opportunity that has arisen.

Not because Isaac and Chastain forge, of course, but because just the opposite of the characters, whose intelligence kneels under unprocessed emotions, it seems that "pictures from married life" technically sketch raw emotion.

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