THE new HBO limited series Scenes From A Marriage is an intimate and dark exploration of a marital breakdown which proved to be a strange but very rewarding experience as the production took place during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States.
Hagai Levi, who developed, wrote and directed the series, likened it to being on another planet.
"That's how the actors described it too. It wasn't acting, it wasn't directing, it was like a very, very true experience that we went through and when it ended it was, 'what was that?
"I was a long way from home and from my family, together with the actors all of the time, the crew around us, all in masks because of Covid-19 and the strict protocols we had in place, and it was so weird. Yes, really, another planet, that was the feeling. It was exhausting, beautiful and real," he said.
Double Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain described it as a "once in a career" experience, while her co-star Oscar Isaac compared it to playing on stage with a band of virtuoso musicians. "It felt unique," he said.
Chastain plays Mira, a successful tech executive, married to Jonathan, a philosophy professor played by Isaac. They have a young daughter Ava (Sophia Kopera).
Over the course of five episodes, Scenes From A Marriage presents a painfully raw, honest, tender, poignant and, at times, brutal portrait of a couple desperately trying to find a way to live and love together.
The show is based on master filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's ground-breaking six-part 1973 TV series of the same name.
"To me what was so exciting about both the original and ours is that it looks at marriage through the lens of the time people are living in," said Chastain.
Isaac added: "It's basically two people, Jonathan and Mira, in this house, tracking their relationship and everything about it and the way it unravels and plays out feels very unique."
In the new adaptation, Golden Globe-winner Levi decided to reverse the gender roles from the original.
In Bergman's story, Johan is the main breadwinner, a chauvinist who expects his wife, Marianne, to look after their children, cook and care for their home. When he announces he is leaving for Paris with his lover, even though shocked, Marianne still helps pack his suitcase.
In Levi's, it's Mira who is the ambitious executive left unfulfilled by her marriage to Jonathan, an intellectual philosophy professor who works from home and cares for their daughter, Ava. When their marriage hits the rocks, Jonathan is desperate to keep it alive.
EMOTIONAL COMPLEXITIES
Chastain was gripped by the screenplay from the outset. "I got to episode two and realised Levi had switched the genders. It became incredibly interesting to me because it really depicts women and my character, Mira, as full human beings.
"I loved the idea of exploring a woman with complications and complexities. That was the really exciting part," she said.
Producer Michael Ellenberg said that American playwright Amy Herzog who worked on the screenplay also added to the realism of the characters.
"Herzog is awesome. She had a hand, too, in keeping things honest for both the male and female roles. It wasn't just Mira's voice that was important but Jonathan's too. She wanted to keep it real for both of them.
"Plus, she has lived it — she's a modern, successful woman with two kids and a husband dealing with all the contradictions of our modern society," he said.
As the story in the series unfolds, love, hate, desire, monogamy, fidelity and the eternal dilemmas of marriage come into sharp focus.
With the emotional intensities and chemistry required for the two leads, it helped considerably that Chastain and Isaac have been good friends since studying drama together at Juilliard in New York 20 years ago. They previously co-starred in the thriller A Most Violent Year (2014).
"We're close friends and that was important for many reasons, a big one being that we have a shorthand together — we're efficient.
"We were really able to spend time on the important issues like, 'who are these people and what do they mean to each other?'," said Isaac.
Chastain added: "When we first meet Mira, she's in this marital depression where she has stifled and muted herself — and it was super interesting to explore all of that with Oscar."
"It also becomes difficult and quite painful in later episodes where we are verbally and physically hurting each other. And when you're filming those scenes with someone you really love — because there's deep love between Oscar and I — it becomes very complex and difficult to navigate. And I think you see it in the work.
"It was a raw shoot for both of us and thank goodness our friendship is okay and we keep talking, and our families have vacationed together and spent a lot of time together. But while we were shooting it, at the very beginning, I looked right at him and I said 'are we going to be friends after this?' because it felt way too upsetting and too intense. But I'm very happy to say that we are still very good friends!" she said.
The eight-week shoot, which began in October last year at Haven Studios in Mount Vernon, New York State, to depict the interior of Mira and Jonathan's house, had its own challenges.
"We had a huge Covid-19 department — 15 people and all of the crew were tested every day — but still, sure enough, we had to close the set for two weeks because some of the crew got sick," said Levi.
"Under those circumstances it became a very intimate environment and set. It felt like we were alone on an island. I spent months with people never seeing their faces, even once, because they were always wearing masks.
"It was a very weird situation but it felt like a real company because there was no world outside. We couldn't go anywhere, so that became our world. It was a very intense experience in the best way," he said.
Courtesy of HBO
Stream or download Scenes From A Marriage on HBO GO.