Alongside the plethora of restorations and rereleases of films made decades before, the Cannes Classics section of the festival also includes a handful of new films that highlight film history. One of this year’s biggest festival appearances is legendary Swedish actor and activist, Liv Ullman, and her presentation of a new documentary made about her life’s work called Liv Ullman – A Road Less Traveled.
Before the film had its world premiere for our audience, Liv Ullman came up onto the stage to share a few words of gratitude. Liv Ullman is most well known for her collaborations with writer/director Ingmar Bergman, as she was featured as the lead in most of his well known films like Persona, Scenes from a Marriage, and Cries and Whispers. Bergman’s films are a part of the international cinema canon, and are regarded as some of the greatest films ever made by cinephiles across generations. You could feel an air of shock and excitement as an audience filled with diehard Bergman fans and cinephiles were witnessing a figure of such renowned status in the flesh.
The film is divided up into the three sectors in which she identifies her career through: her work as an actress, a director/writer, and an activist. The first third of the documentary stands out as my favorite section because it taught me more about her side of the histories between her collaboration and marriage with Bergman that I had previously thought to know all there was to know. It is the perfect analyzation of how her choices she makes as an actress have cemented herself as one of the best in history, and elevated the films and career of Bergman as well. Older clips of Bergman are shown alongside Ullman recounting her memories of working with him. Bergman describes her face to have an ageless quality. She feels grounded and believable in a diaspora of diverse roles and ages, and clips of other actors and actresses like John Lithgow and Jessica Chastain comment on her inspiration to generations of actors and actresses. One of my favorite moments is when the documentary remarks on her mastery of the closeup. Ullman gleefully discusses how exciting of a challenge each closeup on her face has been for her throughout her career, particularly in the cinematographic choices of her films with Bergman. She states that it is the ultimate strip down of an actor when the camera can capture every intimate detail of a facial performance. There is nothing to hide behind, but there is a sense of freedom within that for Ullman. This section showcases some of her most iconic intense closeups and reminds the audience of the power within her eyes and the gravitas they hold in relaying a thousand emotions.
After getting to know Liv Ullman’s creative instincts and career over the decades, particularly in her transition to becoming a director, the film concludes with a morally conscionable showcase of her charity work. I commend her sense of duty she sees within herself and all other artists to give back to charity, as she describes in one scene that artists are fortunate to have a spotlight and must use it to bring attention to the important issues that the world faces. However, it is her kindness and her abilities to facilitate conversations between world powers that the documentary states is her recipe for success in helping the cause for world peace. The film is contradictory in its deification of her abilities to find common ground within these humanitarian crises across the world when it highlights her personal, close friendship with former Secretary of State and renowned war criminal Henry Kissinger. How ironic that the documentary praises her actions in helping out with the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide, while it also allows her to discuss the friendly, loving relationship with the man who signed off American bombings of Cambodia only a decade before.
Ultimately, the documentary was meant to praise the work Liv Ullman has done over the course of her career and holds her up on a pedestal by unfairly comparing the vitality of her charity work to her contribution to the arts as an actress and filmmaker. The documentary was unbalanced and failed to pique my interest in her personality as it related to her humanitarian contributions. Nonetheless, the spotlight for Ullman is well deserved and I am eternally grateful I had the chance to see the gratified reaction that Ullman had for Cannes’ tribute to her.