Changing

Rating:
Summary: life, experiences, and growth
Review: Sometimes it is hard to comprehend, but it does; life goes on. "Changing" is an autobiography of a woman who learns to balance her life out in all the roles and lives life to its best capability as she deals with the change that time brings in her. It is about being a young woman, being a middle aged person, and consciously realizing the growth time brings around in an individual.

The book is arranged in alternate chapters of Liv Ulman's life - before her achieving her success and after achieving the fame and recognition as an actress. It takes a while to grasp but once you realize it, it is an amazing read mainly due to the way she expresses herself. Her candid style finds the reader connecting to her sooner than they realize as she goes through similar sort of daily struggles as a mother, a wife, a working woman, as any modern woman does. She talks of her insecurities as an actress, as a mother, and later as the ex-wife. "Changing" is an effort to move on with time and accept the change in self.

A very highly recommended autobiographical read for anyone who has ever felt insecure in their relationships at some point in their lives. (Still wondering why this book went out of print!!!)


Rating:
Summary: Liv and let Liv
Review: There isn't another autobiography quite like Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann's first one, "Changing." It's an enigmatic title for a book that isn't meant to be read so much as unwrapped. Though at first it's rather confusing and hard to understand, by the halfway point Ullmann's delicate sensitivity is fully revealed.

Ullman describes (in alternating chapters) her life as a wealthy but unfulfilled star, and her childhood in Norway. It describes the collapse of her marriages, her love affair with reknowned director Ingmar Bergman, and the experiences of moviemaking and the life that surrounds it -- both the life of a star, and the life of a woman, a mother, and an artist.

The first third or so of "Changing" is incredibly difficult to read. It seems like Ullmann is picking more or less random incidents in her life and stringing them together out of chronological order. Some of the stuff, like anecdotes about her daughter Linn, feels unfinished, and it takes awhile to really understand what is going on.

But about halfway through the book, the picture starts to paint itself. Ullman's past and present link themselves together more fully, and you can start to appreciate the delicacy of her storytelling. She spends relatively little time focusing on the glamour of her profession. Most of those anecdotes are a blur. Instead, there are anecdotes about her struggle to finish her book, her guilt at leaving her daughter with nannies, how she acted, a walk in the rain with her daughter, her affection for the men in her life, and what she sees in people around her. Good, bad, sad, happy -- Ullmann seems to see it all.

Any woman called a muse (as Ullmann once was for Bergman) might find it difficult to stay humble. But Ullman manages it. She doesn't really describe herself so much as let the anecdotes describe her. Most of the time she seemed rather wistful and a bit lonely as she looked back over her life.

"Changing" seems like an appropriate title for a book about this actress's life in various stages. Ullman's biography is a deceptively simple, beautiful read from a unique woman.

Rating:
Summary: Liv and let Liv
Review: There isn't another autobiography quite like Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann's first one, "Changing." It's an enigmatic title for a book that isn't meant to be read so much as unwrapped. Though at first it's rather confusing and hard to understand, by the halfway point Ullmann's delicate sensitivity is fully revealed.

Ullman describes (in alternating chapters) her life as a wealthy but unfulfilled star, and her childhood in Norway. It describes the collapse of her marriages, her love affair with reknowned director Ingmar Bergman, and the experiences of moviemaking and the life that surrounds it -- both the life of a star, and the life of a woman, a mother, and an artist.

The first third or so of "Changing" is incredibly difficult to read. It seems like Ullmann is picking more or less random incidents in her life and stringing them together out of chronological order. Some of the stuff, like anecdotes about her daughter Linn, feels unfinished, and it takes awhile to really understand what is going on.

But about halfway through the book, the picture starts to paint itself. Ullman's past and present link themselves together more fully, and you can start to appreciate the delicacy of her storytelling. She spends relatively little time focusing on the glamour of her profession. Most of those anecdotes are a blur. Instead, there are anecdotes about her struggle to finish her book, her guilt at leaving her daughter with nannies, how she acted, a walk in the rain with her daughter, her affection for the men in her life, and what she sees in people around her. Good, bad, sad, happy -- Ullmann seems to see it all.

Any woman called a muse (as Ullmann once was for Bergman) might find it difficult to stay humble. But Ullman manages it. She doesn't really describe herself so much as let the anecdotes describe her. Most of the time she seemed rather wistful and a bit lonely as she looked back over her life.

"Changing" seems like an appropriate title for a book about this actress's life in various stages. Ullman's biography is a deceptively simple, beautiful read from a unique woman.

Rating:
Summary: Translated from Norwegian by the Author in Collaboration
Review: This book is in a class by itself. One of the extraordinary things about Liv Ullman's autobiography is how little it depends upon the author's celebrity for its power. Yes, she did write it herself, and yes, she writes very well.

Ullman's reflections belong to the body of literature by women about the delicate and complex business of being at once an artist, mother, lover, thinker, creator of magic, and wiper-up of spills. By saying so much in so few words and with so great a respect for the privacy of other people, Ullman reminds us that it is possible for writers to explore their own lives in print without betraying the trust of friends and lovers.

As an artist and a woman, Ullman is most deeply concerned with the process of shedding roles defined by others and becoming what she calls "one's best or truest self." In her view, the real woman is not one who plays roles thrust upon her by others.

Although talented, beautiful, successful and rich, she struggles to achieve an equalibrium between her responsibilities to herself and her obligations to others and is like most women who have refused to settle for one role in life. Her inner turmoil is tempered by a sense of humor and the realization that she is more privileged than most.

She returns to the subject of maternal guilt again and again and the concept is usually translated from the Norwegian as "bad conscience."

"Changing" is filled with compassion for the ways in which both men and women have been limited by traditional views of masculinity and femininity. Her view of relations between the sexes belongs to a feminist ethos that insists the liberation of women will also free men; it is totally at variance with the wing of the feminist movement that suggests women cannot be free until they are free of men.