Beyond the script Many years have passed since Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from Marriage, but the film still remains a model of its kind of intensive study of the psychological principle in a man burdened with the bonds of marriage. In 2000, Liv Ullman, recognized as Bergman’s muse, according to his script, was staged the film “Infidel”, which has a biographical beginning and fully resurrected the former classical canons. In fact, the key role here is assigned to the great Swedish director, whose invisible presence is felt in almost everything. His visible embodiment was Erland Josefson, known just for the role of his wife Ullman in the mentioned film Bergman.
It is known that the late period of Bergman’s life was associated with the secluded island of Foreux, where he later died. Here, in the midst of the harsh majesty of the local nature, Josefson's character is in an agonizing search for answers to personal questions, the sum of which is the script of the new film. The creative process inevitably blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality, and now the director sees the main character, called Marianne. Whitewashed with gray hair, the man does not take his eyes off the mysterious guest, turning into a spectator of his own image and as if deliberately forgetting about the existence in the desk drawer of a photograph of the one that painfully resembles her. But it is impossible to stop the games of reason, and it is not necessary, because the past cannot be changed.
The story told in the "Never" is by no means new and even prosaic. The love triangle, each of the corners of which is sure of its exceptional sharpness in relation to the others, in the end, everyone turns out to be as stupid and fragile as a selection. Fate has given Marianne (Lena Endre) and her husband Marcus (Thomas Hanzon) everything they need for full happiness. Leading actress of the theater and conductor with a worldwide reputation, living quite peacefully with her beautiful daughter Isabel. But as soon as a third element named David (Christer Henriksson) appeared on the horizon, one of the seven sins did not keep itself waiting.
Liv Ullman, in the best traditions of his creative mentor, makes the film through, imperceptibly blurring the seemingly trivial story of human vices that seem to exist only in the memory-spoiled mind of the director. He becomes a kind of mirror for the emotional outpourings of Marianne, with the patience of a staff psychologist listening to her dramatic story down to the smallest details. The longer these "conversations" last, the greater the longing of the old man. The high level of the picture is also set by well-worked portrait shots. Along with Marianne’s emotional face, which animates the emptiness and fatigue of the director’s house, the film has many close-ups of human faces that don’t always seem attractive, but on which feelings always live, often only short-lived, like clouds in the sky. A real discovery can be called a girl playing the role of a daughter, so extraordinary was her sincerity, which can not be put into any high words. The heavier the scene, the more it unfolded from within, even in its silence.
And all this together gives the effect if not exploded bomb, then certainly a beautiful and spectacular fireworks of emotions and feelings. This is perhaps the rare case when the media orientation of cinema serves not a practical, but a purely theoretical purpose to make viewers participants in the amazing process of transforming personal memory and experience into significant creative decisions that Bergman himself once generously shared with them.