Each episode of “Scenes From a Marriage” opens with a bit of frank reality. The five installments of HBO’s new limited series begin showing one of the show’s stars, Jessica Chastain or Oscar Isaac,…
, getting prepared for shooting — walking to set, receiving makeup last-looks. Then the clapperboard closes and, suddenly, we’re in the scene.
We meet Chastain and Isaac’s characters, first, in an interview where they discuss what makes their relationship work. What’s immediately clear is that the relationshipwork: Chastain’s Mira is ill-at-ease and strangely, floatingly uncertain of herself, while Isaac’s Jonathan feels no anxiety about answering for his wife, and has conceived of a narrative of the family’s life together that Mira co-signs, just barely.
Chastain and Isaac — Juilliard schoolmates who previously excelled as a couple in the 2014 film “A Most Violent Year” — consistently fulfill the brief the show presents them. In lengthy, unbroken shots, they track increasingly rocky emotional terrain. There is real pleasure in watching both these performers, especially Isaac, a gifted star whose having been largely absorbed into franchise cinema has meant that much of his promise as an actor has remained just that.
With the exception of bits of the first and last episodes and of the occasional presence of their daughter, Mira and Jonathan spend the series alone with one another. And they’re asked to carry titanic shifts in mood that can read at times as if one or the other, especially Mira, has undergone a personality transplant in between shots. Mira’s character history — a former college actor who now, as a tech executive, has ceded her creative side to her ambition — is coherent.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Jessica Chastain & Oscar Isaac On Portraying The Intensity & Intimacy Of ‘Scenes From A Marriage’: “Bourbon Helped” — Venice Film FestivalOscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain spoke this morning about some of the challenges behind new TV drama Scenes From A Marriage which is debuting at the Venice Film Festival. Adapted from Ingmar Bergma…
Read more »
Oscar Isaac in Paul Schrader’s ‘The Card Counter’: Film Review | Venice 2021Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan and Willem Dafoe also star in this brooding redemption drama about a former military interrogator turned professional gambler.
Read more »
Tiffany Haddish and Oscar Isaac on sex scenes and COVID filming for 'The Card Counter'Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish have an electrifying chemistry in Paul Schrader's dark drama 'The Card Counter,' which finished filming during the pandemic.
Read more »
Poland Submits Venice Premiere ‘Leave No Traces’ To International Oscar RaceEXCLUSIVE: Poland has become the first European nation to make its official submission to the International Oscar race this year, with Jan P. Matuszynski’s Leave No Traces selected to compete. The …
Read more »
‘Trenches’ (‘Tranchées’): Film Review | Venice 2021French journalist Loup Bureau spent months on the ground documenting Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russian-backed separatists, capturing life at the front in a long and hazy conflict.
Read more »
Kristen Stewart in Princess Diana Biopic ‘Spencer’: Film Review | Venice 2021Director Pablo Larraín, who upended the conventions of the genre with ‘Jackie,’ examines another iconic woman in crisis, this time as the last illusions of her fairy-tale marriage crumble.
Read more »