Edvard Munch’s The Scream became an icon of modern anxiety. This film explores the social, psychological, and artistic forces that shaped one of the most powerful images in art history.

In 1901, Edvard Munch’s “Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones),” a chillingly enigmatic 1892 painting of a man and woman — Husband and wife? Lovers? Complete strangers? — poised on a rocky beach with ...