231 - Liv and Ingmar, 2012, Sweden. Dir. Dheeraj Akolkar.
"The first Summer was pure happiness. We were making Persona on the island. It was hot.
No Summer since has ever been like that.
Not like that."
So says Liv Ullmann in a remarkable documentary love letter to her great friend of fifty years.
Liv Ullmann met Ingmar Bergman when she was 25 and he was 46. They fell in love. They lived together. They had a daughter. They separated. They made twelve movies together. They stayed dear friends for the rest of their lives.
The film is shot on the island of Faro, where Bergman lived for upwards of 40 years, where he and Liv lived together when they did, and where he, and they, made so many movies. Together.
The cinematography of this film is appropriate for a film about Bergman, showcasing the island's seductive elements in brilliant and colorful natural light.
The film is also edited masterfully, moving fluidly among interviews with Ullmann, her reading from her 1976 autobiography Changing, Bergman's letters read by Samuel Froler, clips from films, and clips from newsreels and other sources.
Liv Ullmann comes across as a wise and transparently beautiful soul. Everything she says feels fresh and deeply heartfelt. She makes her own words written 37 years before seem spontaneously spoken.
She is a fantastic writer.
She is also a fantastic actress, and one imagines from watching this film, a fantastic human being.
The viewer will be easily caught up in sharing with her story.
These are the chapters of the film.
Love
Loneliness
Rage
Pain
Longing
Friendship
In these chapters Ullmann is unflinchingly honest about their relationship and its low moments as well as its high ones.
Liv reveals that Bergman was filled with jealousy and possessiveness. He built walls around the property to make it a compound and in which she felt imprisoned.
He had a single-minded commitment to his work and a need for his loved ones to fit into his duties and his schedule.
They fought.
She says, "I was confronted with his jealousy, violent and without bounds."
He too was honest. He put it in his films.
The documentary strives to give him his voice.
In his letters he writes, "I can reach my hands towards you and say, Don't be afraid, Liv. I will not do you any harm. I love you. The demons have left me for now, but it was terrible while it lasted."
She describes how her feelings of love for him deepened through the years, as they grew older and she saw his vulnerabilities.
She moved to America for a time. He flew to Broadway to see her. He championed her Hollywood films. He called her.
She moved home and continued working with him.
There are many sobering moments and many touching moments. This is a story of two lives fully and remarkably lived.
In the end he said to her, "You are my Stradivarius."
She tells us that it is the best compliment she has ever received.
When I heard it I jumped. I thought through the comparison eight years ago and have been using it in my teaching since--to inspire actors. I only learned this morning that Bergman used the phrase.
It is an appropriate analogy.
The priceless violin. The world's greatest instrument. The master says to his muse, You are it.
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