I felt dumb while trying to derive this, so here it is. Sourced from page 129 of Braess FEM textbook.
Let X,M be two Hilbert spaces, and a:X×X→R,b:X×M→R continuous bilinear forms.
Assume that a is symmetric and that a(u,u)≥0 for all u∈X.
Let f∈X′,g∈M′ and let
L(v,μ)=12a(v,v)–⟨f,v⟩+(b(v,μ)–⟨g,μ⟩)
which is simply the Lagrangian of a constrained minimization problem.
Assume that (u,λ) satisfies
a(u,v)+b(v,λ)=⟨f,v⟩∀v∈X,b(u,μ)=⟨g,μ⟩∀μ∈M,
then one has the saddle point property
L(u,μ)≤L(u,λ)≤L(v,λ)∀(v,μ)∈X×M.
The first inequality is actually an equality by noting that L(u,μ)=12a(u,u)–⟨f,u⟩=L(u,λ) by using (2).
For the other inequality, let v=u+w, then
L(v,λ)=L(u+w,λ)=12a(u+w,u+w)–⟨f,u+w⟩+(b(u+w,λ)–⟨g,λ⟩)=L(u,λ)+12a(w,w)–⟨f,w⟩+a(u,w)+b(w,λ)=L(u,λ)+12a(w,w)≥L(u,λ)
where (1) and (2) are used.