Why I love Liv Ullmann’s per­for­mance in Autumn Sonata

After forg­ing an illus­tri­ous career full of crit­i­cal acclaim, Liv Ull­mann is being bestowed with an hon­orary Acad­e­my Award at the 2022 cer­e­mo­ny. Although Ull­mann has sad­ly nev­er won a com­pet­i­tive Oscar, an hon­orary award intend­ed to rec­og­nize a long, sto­ried career is still bet­ter than poten­tial­ly win­ning for a per­for­mance that prompts ques­tions of ​“How did she win for this and not that?”

Besides play­ing the right role, the right tim­ing in a person’s career can often dic­tate when, or if, they win an Oscar, not to men­tion the com­pe­ti­tion in any sin­gle year and the polit­i­cal nature of awards cam­paign­ing. Since Ull­mann has large­ly stepped away from the act­ing scene as of late, a non-com­pet­i­tive award is the best way to rec­og­nize her dis­tinc­tive talents.

When Acad­e­my Pres­i­dent David Rubin announced Ull­mann as one of this year’s hon­orary Oscar recip­i­ents, he acknowl­edged her ​“brav­ery and emo­tion­al trans­paren­cy has gift­ed audi­ences with deeply affect­ing por­tray­als.” One of those por­tray­als is her over­looked work in the 1978 film Autumn Sonata, direct­ed by Ing­mar Bergman. The movie did receive Oscar love for Bergman’s screen­play and in Best Actress for Ullman’s co-star Ingrid Bergman who gave what became her swan song film per­for­mance. Yet Ull­mann remains the emo­tion­al back­bone of what is essen­tial­ly a com­ing-of-age tale.

Com­ing-of-age sto­ries have tra­di­tion­al­ly fol­lowed the sto­ries of ado­les­cents as they tran­si­tion into adult­hood, but as com­ing of age can also be defined as a stage of reach­ing emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty regard­less, Autumn Sonata might clas­si­fy as such a sto­ry as it fol­lows Eva (Ull­mann) and her jour­ney towards break­ing out of her men­tal state of child­hood caused by emo­tion­al neglect at the hands of her pianist moth­er Char­lotte (Ingrid Bergman).

When Char­lotte goes to stay with Eva, Eva’s hus­band Vik­tor (Hal­var Bjork), and her oth­er daugh­ter Hele­na (Lena Nyman) for a short while, she and Eva attempt to mend old wounds. That is until small quib­bles over Eva’s infe­ri­or piano tech­nique esca­late into a heat­ed night-time con­ver­sa­tion where Eva unloads on Char­lotte over the hurt that she inflict­ed on her. Even if Char­lotte nev­er hurt her phys­i­cal­ly, the way she made a teenage Eva feel inse­cure about her appear­ance and always went away on con­cert tours, putting her career before the needs of her chil­dren, still caused Eva to feel wound­ed and unwanted.

Through her facial and body ges­tures, Ull­mann suc­cess­ful­ly cap­tures how Eva is men­tal­ly stuck in her younger years. The way she skips around her house, her hunched pos­ture, and plead­ing eyes show that while she may be a full-grown adult, deep down, Eva has remained the same shy child yearn­ing for val­i­da­tion from her most­ly absent par­ent. That is until the big con­fronta­tion where, in most of the scene, she has her over­sized glass­es – a form of dis­guise for her anguished eyes – tak­en off.

Dur­ing that sequence, Ull­mann goes into a deep quiver once Eva goes into the exact ways Char­lotte harmed her self-esteem. It’s as if those painful mem­o­ries are play­ing in her head while she goes into great detail about them. Because par­ents are a high­er pow­er that chil­dren often try not to upset no mat­ter how old they become, Eva mus­ter­ing up the tenac­i­ty to stand up to Char­lotte in spite of how she might react shows her impul­sive need to put the past behind her. Eva may get small emo­tion­al scars from her moth­er-daugh­ter quar­rel, yet those scars will heal faster than the life­long wounds Char­lotte inflict­ed on her.

After vent­ing about all the ter­ri­ble things her moth­er put her through, there’s a notable shift in Ullmann’s vocal pat­tern. She goes from speak­ing in the soft, peo­ple-pleas­ing voice heard before­hand to a scathing hiss with her phys­i­cal stance being straighter and more assured. Eva then prods Char­lotte over whether her motives for being neglect­ful stem from want­i­ng her to have sim­i­lar feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cy, ask­ing, ​“Is the daughter’s mis­for­tune the mother’s tri­umph? Is my grief your secret pleasure?”

Despite the pain shown on Charlotte’s face with her even­tu­al­ly plead­ing for for­give­ness from an unre­spon­sive Eva, there’s no moment of res­o­lu­tion. Instead, as Char­lotte is mak­ing her plea, the scene then cuts to Char­lotte on her train ride back home. If Autumn Sonata were a more con­ven­tion­al Hol­ly­wood fam­i­ly sto­ry, it might have end­ed with all being for­giv­en with the final shot being Eva and Char­lotte bond­ing over piano play­ing before the cam­era fades to black. But Ing­mar Bergman makes a con­clu­sion that veers clos­er to the dev­as­ta­tions of real life with Ull­mann, the movie’s beat­ing heart, encap­su­lat­ing the stag­ger­ing pur­suit of cathar­sis that comes with par­ent-child troubles.

What Ull­mann pulls off with her phys­i­cal and vocal man­ner­isms is a tes­ta­ment of her abil­i­ty to say more about her char­ac­ter with just a head tilt or a glance than what most actors can say with pages of dia­logue. Sim­i­lar­ly, in her role as a mute actress in Per­sona, she can switch from being an astute con­fi­dante to cryp­tic con­niv­er with just a change in her facial expres­sion. In Cries and Whis­pers, she like­wise uses her eyes to exude her char­ac­ter Maria’s ever­green feel­ings of famil­ial and mar­i­tal unfulfillment.

Giv­en the dark emo­tion­al places that Ull­mann went into as Eva in Autumn Sonata, and the oth­er char­ac­ters she’s brought to life across her career, it’s clear why she’s being award­ed an hon­orary Oscar for her brav­ery and tal­ent. Between her daunt­less­ness and seam­less abil­i­ty to cap­ture the breadth of human emo­tion, Ull­mann is a per­former who is tru­ly in a league of her own.