Los momentos eternos de Maria Larssons

Jan Troell is the nestor in Swedish movies. He's got more than 40 years of experience. And you're aware of it here. Not a second too much in any scene. A total concentration in every millimeter.

It all takes place in Malmö, a city in southern Sweden, in the beginning of the 20th century. A worker with drinking and infidelity problems is married to this woman and they have plenty of children. It's a life of misery, but suddenly a new world opens to the woman. The world of photography. Another way of viewing.

After that nothing can really harm her. Not even the violence from her husband. Every detail is there it should be in this movie. Every button is at the right place in every suit, and it's also obvious for the audience what the director means by it.

To be shown at any film rookie school.

Everlasting Moments (2008)

This is a vivid, unsentimental, yet tender and loving portrayal of a Swedish seaside family in the early 20th Century. The brute is the father of the family, and yet he is fun and sometimes loving. The heroine is the mother, who suffers greatly, but who also can never quite break free of her husband. The children grow up and prosper, modestly, anyway, over the 15 years of the movie. And we come to see that this is pretty much the most common story of a working class family from that period, anywhere.

And there is a small extra interest, because the mother discovers a camera among the family things, and is persuaded to learn how to use it. The scenes, interspersed over the years, where she takes pictures and develops them in a makeshift darkroom are beautiful, and yet they are not (thankfully) overblown into something momentous and artistically profound.

My field happens to be the History of Photography, which I teach at a couple colleges here in Albany, and I have to say, they nailed the historical accuracy very well. I can't say for sure about when that camera was made, but it seems about right. More importantly, I can say that the style of the photographs is really typical for a talented, serious, dabbling amateur such as our leading woman. The size, the clarity, her care in holding it (even turning it horizontally for a key photograph), and the procedure in general is quite exactly how I would have advised a moviemaker to go about it. This helps not only people in the know (there aren't so many of us, I realize) but in general an historical validity in the bones of the movie.

As elegant as the movie is filmed (almost to excess, in a few scenes--the cinematography outclassed by the simple, gorgeous use of light throughout), it comes across as hard and true. The film is beautiful, but life is beautiful. It's not easy, it involves losing some battles, it involves giving up some dignity, but if you stay the course, as these people do in ways most contemporary families would not, there is some other kind of reward.

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.

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An exceptional story about a woman learning to be an artist in a restrictive time and place. The story, images, and acting are magnificent. Please take time to see this reflectively. The characters are strong and three-dimensional. The choices they make in the early part of the 20th Century probably aren't ones we ourselves might choose. It is a movie which shows subtlety and nuances. My friends and I loved this film for the strength of the woman, her yearning for self-expression, her ability to have artistic vision in an era where there was no encouragement,the delicate balance of the relationships and limitation of choices--given the hard realities of money and social constraints. You will find it moving.

Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick (2008), directed by Jan Troell, is showing in the U.S. with the title "Everlasting Moments." It's an unusual movie, and I enjoyed it, but it's hard to describe or review.

The film takes place in Sweden, roughly between 1900 and 1920. It's more or less an "I Remember Mama"-type memoir, narrated by the oldest daughter of a married working-class couple--Maria Larsson, played by Maria Heiskanen, and Sigfrid Larsson, played by Mikael Persbrandt.

Maria Heiskanen is a very attractive actor, but this part calls for her to appear relatively plain, which she manages to accomplish. (Sort of like Betsy Blair appearing as "the dog" in "Marty.") Her husband is a basically decent sort of guy, who was considered a good catch when they married. Unfortunately, he's a mean drunk and, even when sober, he's not always the best of spouses.

What makes Maria different is that she has won a camera in a lottery, and her ability to take photographs moves the plot forward, insofar as it moves forward at all.

The film more or less meanders along, with episodes that appear realistic enough, but that don't always seem to be heading in a clear direction from beginning to middle to end. Time moves forward, and people--and the actors who portray them--get older, but the movie doesn't unfold in an "A therefore B, B therefore C" sort of way.

This is a movie to watch if you don't demand sex or action, if you don't mind a slow pace, and if you don't mind a movie that appears to be shot more in sepia than in true color. I enjoy that kind of film, so I liked "Everlasting Moments." If your tastes don't run along those lines, I'd pass it by.

Incidentally, we saw the film in a theater, but I think it would work well on a small screen.