- Scenes From a Marriage
Among other things, Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac (playing this week at the Siskel Center) is an extended tribute-cum-insult to Ingmar Bergman, with the meandering intellectual blather delivered by Stellan Skarsgard’s character often coming off as a deadpan parody of the confessional monologues one finds in many Bergman chamber dramas. That the film runs four hours seems like part of the joke, a comment on the interminableness (for some viewers) of Bergman’s soul-searching. Nymphomaniac has been split into two parts for commercial release, though I’m glad I watched it all in one sitting this past weekend. Like many von Trier films, Nymphomaniac aims to irritate viewers into examining their prejudices. (“I believe the cinema should be like a pebble in your shoe,” said the director, playing an even more obnoxious version of himself, in his early feature Epidemic.) It felt almost necessary to sacrifice an entire Friday evening to it in order to appreciate it fully.
Ben Sachs writes about moviegoing every Monday.
