As I was watching this touching film for the second time in my living room last night, I commented to my wife, "If this were a Hollywood product the role of the mother would have been played by Michelle Pfeiffer" The investors would have demanded a photogenic star who could ensure financial success.The title "Everlasting Moments" was both the photos that the struggling wife of a violent cheating husband produced for economic and emotional independence; but also the story itself, as told by the oldest girl depicted in the film. Only because it was real, was the overarching cultural imperative of the times to remain in a marriage even if abusive, be convincing. Truth, when honestly depicted, has the capacity to weave together the fabric of a society in a way that is impossible for even the best writers of fiction.This was a clearly defined dramatization of an era, devoid of any synthetic sentimentality that would have ultimately detracted from the inherent humanity of a woman doing what she must, given the constraint of her times. It brought in the historic political forces, a rising communist sentiment that fueled the violence of the abusive husband, depicted in his personal conflict between paternal affection and the desire for a more fully experienced life, a conflict that only was resolved through the release of alcoholic oblivion.Understated, yet fully expressed, was the relationship between the mother and her older photographic mentor. It was a strand during the decade depicted in the film, that was all the more touching for the affection between them being conveyed only through a smile and artistic encouragement.While the words were in Swedish, I'm sure that every nuance came through clearly. We were taken to the Malmo of a hundred years ago, when even a simple photograph was the product of a skilled hand, and an inspired vision. This film, simple yet true, reflected the same spirit.I look forward to the next time I view the film for the additional hidden pleasures that will be uncovered.

Based on the true story of working-class housewife and part-time photographer Maria Larsson, Jan Troell's film required financing from five different countries, and was almost five years in the making. When Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen) discovers a valuable camera in her home, she takes it to a pawn shop in order to raise some money when her husband Sigfrid (Mikael Persbrandt) loses his job. The shop owner Pedersen (Jesper Christensen) takes a special interest in the camera and shows Maria its sentimental value by demonstrating the way it manages to capture light in order to photograph an image. Having to care for her family while her abusive husband goes on strike at the shipyards, she finds solace in taking pictures as favours for the townspeople, and discovers she has a natural talent for capturing the true art of everyday life.Filmed in grainy sepia, the cinematography manages to capture the feel of the 1900-era that we modern people see only through old photographs and silent films. It's an ingenious decision as the both looks beautiful, and helps transfer the viewer into a time that we can only experience through the work of people like Maria Larsson. Credit must go to Heiskanen who captures both the suffocating pressure of her characters situation, and her stiff-upper lipped determination and strength to maintain her love for photography that is opposed by her hard-drinking husband. Persbrandt is excellent too, helping develop Sigfrid as a fully-realised character, struggling with both the class situation and the influx of British workers that are taking the jobs while he and his co-workers strike and live in near-poverty. A beautiful film, sensitively handled by the director.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

There is a certain look, pace, feel and sensibility to the Swedish/Danish film-making style, particularly when depicting the horse and buggy era. This fine film by Jan Troell is a product of that aesthetic and brings to mind the work of other Scandinavian masters such as Ingmar Bergman, Bille August, Bo Wildeberg and Gabriel Axel. This is a story of simple people who struggle mightily against great odds, presented in such as way as to give us a visceral sense of their ordeals. Here is a director who can bring the distant past to vivid life and whose obvious love for his medium is reflected in the subject of the story he wrote himself. The period of the film is roughly 1907-1917 before Sweden became a social democratic welfare state and the story frequently touches on the class antagonisms that led to it. But there is virtually no point made in this film that lacks counterpoint, down to the very last line uttered before the closing credits. There are no easy answers here, no final, neat, beribboned conclusion that sends us away satisfied. Nothing sentimental to gush about, but something lasting, just as the film's title suggests.In form, the film is a grown woman's narrated memoir that wavers in emphasis from her father to her mother. The father (acted with textured skill by Mikael Persbrandt) is alternately magnetic and obnoxious, sensitive and brutish, depending on his whim. When he drinks, which he does on impulse despite best intentions, he is a terrifying, overbearing boor; when he is sober and in a good mood, he is the dream father - the charming, strong, fun-loving pillar of the family. But this family is not lucky enough to have the latter without major doses of the former. Luckily, the mother (superbly played by Maria Heiskanen) has her head firmly screwed on and not only manages to endure her husband's abuses while raising seven children in poverty but also finds time to learn how to use a Contessa camera which the narration tell us she won in a lottery shortly before she married. When, in a fit of financial desperation during a strike that finds her husband unemployed, she asks the gentle proprietor of a photography studio (Jesper Christensen) about the value of the camera, he compassionately persuades her not to pawn it but to use it. She allows him to coach her into mastery of this new-fangled device, thereby launching a hobby that helps make ends meet and adds luster to her grim tenement life while bringing joy and wonder to her family and neighbors. Even her husband eventually overcomes his initial grudge against her new preoccupation. The story seesaws from highs to lows, from bitter fights to tender reconciliations, from hopelessness to hope, with periodic moments of breathless suspense when life itself hangs by the slenderest thread. It depicts a society in transition, half in the Christian, semi-rural monarchic past and half in the secular, amoral, motorized future. In a sense, it is the story of Sweden itself. I couldn't help noting that the tenement shown in this film resembles the kind of building Greta Garbo was raised in. She was born in the same era, came from laboring parents and grew up to be absorbed by the new international technology of cinema, just as the heroine of this film is at one point enchanted by early motion pictures, to which she takes her children, leaving the grumbling, uncomprehending father to tend to his horse in the stable.The cinematography makes even poverty look beautiful (perhaps a bit too much so) and each character is achingly well acted by a very well directed ensemble. The pace is rather slow, but there is so much to care about that the viewer willingly waits patiently for one scene to flow into the next. All in all, an outstanding work that seems to embody the very spirit of its own story – the everlasting moment captured by a camera in the hands of someone with the great gift of seeing.

What a gorgeous poster, and frankly a gorgeous film despite its hard look at love conquering abuse, alcoholism, and the shattering of dreams. Sometimes two people find themselves forgiving each other, not out of weakness, but out of the underlying powerful love bonding them. Academy Award nominee Jan Troell's new film Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick, or Everlasting Moments here in the states, is a slow unveiling of what it was like to live in Sweden as a below Middle Class citizen, striving to feed your seven children and attempting to survive. It pulls no punches and shows life in all its dirty ways, engrained in the memories of all involved and displayed on film for our viewing, much like the photographs taken by Maria Heiskanen's Maria Larsson. These photos prove to her she is worth something in this world, showing her a talent that is unappreciated by her cheating husband, but viewed as magnificence from her tutor and friend Sebastian Pederson, (Jesper Christensen), and those in the town she lives, even helping to support them when times are tough.Sometimes that admiration trickles down and changes people like her brutish husband, played by Mikael Persbrandt, and sometimes that change happens too late. So much occurs to make you angry with Maria for not leaving Sigge after any of the numerous chances he gives her. Following his drunken verbal lashes, his jealous rages forcing himself on her, or even his threats of murder with a knife against her neck, she always looks at him and finds that love she fell for years ago. When he comes back from jail sober and rested, he is a different man, but each time temptation ruins his redemption. Whether her father's declaration, upon Maria asking permission to divorce him, of "you will be together until death do you part" lingers at the back of her head or not, she always finds forgiveness. Her children grow up to realize what is happening between the two, even questioning her reasons for staying as well. It is a different time and having so many mouths to feed in a poor neighborhood negates some options. It is only in her camera, a fine Contessa, is she able to escape into a frozen reality where a smile stays forever. She wishes one day her life can remain static in that state as well, never falling back into the violence her Sigge is so capable of providing.One may argue that the film portrays a weak woman staying with an abusive man, but I believe the story is more complicated than that. Sure Sigge is a horrible specimen of a human, without fail, but there is goodness inside of him. The pressures and stress of the times weighs heavy on everyone, yet manifest into anger when he can't quite handle it. Everlasting Moments becomes a study of love bonding together two people despite every worldly attempt to separate them forever. You almost begin to root for the Larsson family to survive it all, because you begin to see what could be.What really works above all else is the style. What at first seems very straightforward soon becomes seen as a very specifically shot film. With muted tones you begin to feel as though you are spying on photographs from the start of the 20th century. I also loved the moments when we get to see the photos that Maria and Pedersen take, even at times looking through the viewfinder at the upside-down image being sent through the camera. Even a throwaway moment of Pedersen showing Maria a moth/butterfly through the lens of the camera against his hand becomes a moment of beauty. Every detail is meticulously placed and included, all becoming a part of a fully fleshed world once the characters begin to move around in it. Heiskanen is fantastic as Maria, coping with the troubles of her husband, expressing the happiness she feels behind her camera or with Pedersen, and embodying the maternal love for her children. Persbrandt is a revelation as well, playing Sigge. The children nail it correctly when saying he reminds them of the bad guy in Charlie Chaplin's film, but his ability to navigate the emotional parts, to have that tear roll down his cheek or to hold his dead friend in his arm, even the jubilance of seeing his horse still in its place once he returns from jail one last time, really show the man he is deep inside, beneath the hard exterior.Jesper Christensen is my favorite, though—an enigma to the proceedings. Is he a wishful suitor for Maria or just a man who desires talent? How much of his helping her pay for supplies stems from his feelings towards her or his eye in seeing the skill and potential to be a professional photographer? It's a wonderful scene at the end, one after we see the two of them in an exchange that hints at burgeoning love, where the unwritten and impossible love between them is shown. The camera bonds them forever; it was just bad timing that won't allow them to ever be together. This relationship is an important affair of the mind; one she needs to cope with the affairs of the flesh Sigge has behind her back. Their stolen moments together in the darkroom developing photos can almost be seen as more romantic than any she shares with another during the course of the film. They become her own everlasting moments, imbedded in her mind like the images held still on her developed stock. Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick may be long and trying at times, but for all the filler, the moments that work make it a worthwhile journey to take, watching the many forms of love and how when it seems all but lost, it rekindles and burns once more.