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13 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Emotionally enthralling--beautiful., 21 February 2009

Author: nancylibra9 from United States

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.

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13 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
I Remember Mama: Swedish style, 26 January 2009

Author: johno-21 from United States

I recently saw this at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival and it would be among my favorites of this years festival. Everlasting moments was Sweden's official entry for the 81st Academy Awards and although not nominated it did make the short list of nine and it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Set in the port city of Malmo in Southern Sweden beginning in the year 1907 it tells the story of Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen) and her hard working dock worker husband Sigfrid (Mikael Persbrandt) who is abusive to Maria and battles the bottle and infidelity issues. Maria is a Finnish immigrant married to the Swedish Sigfrid and they have a rocky marriage but Sigfrid is a good provider when sober and they start a large family. Maria once won a camera in a lottery and is considering selling it when the Danish owner of a photography shop, Jesper (Sabastian Pederson) convinces her to use the camera and become an amateur photographer. It begins a long friendship between Jesper and Maria much to the chagrin of Sigfrid. The story is told in narrative by the Larsson's daughter Maja (Callin Ohrvall) as she remembers the hardships of life in early 20th century Sweden and the strengths of her mother that kept the family together. It's kind of reminiscent of the 40's film classic I Remember Mama. A wonderful story based on the remembrances of a real life Maja who lived from 1902 to 1991. From veteran director Jan Troell its a beautiful period piece with wonderful cinematography by Mischa Gaurjusjov and Troell himself. The attention to detail in reproducing the times is amazing from set designer Peter Bauman and costume designer Karen Gram. I would give this a 9.5 out of 10 and recommend it.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
For better or for worse, 3 May 2009

Author: Red-125 from Upstate New York

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.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Neo-retro treasures, 19 March 2009

Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

There is still a place for the old tools and the old technologies. Despite the coming of Kindle, even Google's Eric Schmidt knows no better way to learn than to read a print book. Audiophiles know vinyl still sounds better than CD's, which in turn still sound better than MP3. The new technologies have their place. Their introduction stimulates the economy; they work better in certain contexts; they inspire new interest in the material they bear. Even a new pen might inspire one to write; a new computer, to do more research or writing. We don't have dip pens much any more, but they do still exist and have their use. Many still use so-called "outmoded" but artistically valid technologies. We still have fountain pens. We still need pencils.

And so it is, very often, with styles: when new ones come along, they don't necessarily render earlier ones useless. Photography has not wiped out painting. Non-objective painting has not wiped out magic realism. Rap hasn't eliminated pretty tunes. The same is true for movies. Old-fashioned ones still have their place.But with the arts, if you're going to be retro, you have to prove you had a good reason for it. Andrzej Wajda's 'Katyn' (2007) and Jan Troell's 'Everlasting Moments'(2008) are test cases on this issue.

Both are new movies that are traditional in their look, outlook, pace, and subject matter. 'Katyn' proves its worth more quickly, because it concerns an historical event, one that was hidden from view. The massacre of Polish officers by Russians in WWII and the attempt to blame it all on the Germans is history that needed to be told; it's the history of Wajda's own father, one of the slaughtered officers. Troell's film, concerning a working class Swedish family early in the last century, isn't quite as essential. Its Hallmark-sounding title is a hint that it's more nostalgia than history, and the story it tells, of a boorish husband and a wife struggling for independence, is in some ways only marginally memorable.

'Katyn' is a film of slow cumulative power. It presents the atrocity before, during, and after through families and individuals. It depicts how people risked torture or extermination to resist the cover-up, and it ends with devastating simplicity by re-staging how the killing was done, very specifically what it looked and sounded like. Not much in 'Katyn' either in content or style seems distinctly 21st-century. Except for one thing: this story hasn't been told before. Now it has been, and beautifully. And since it concerns events of sixty years ago, an old-fashioned style is appropriate to it, as well as being a style of which Wajda is a master. The film may seem retro and boring to young viewers. Their cry, and others', sometimes is that WWII, especially the Holocaust (which perhaps by association links in with other massacres of the War), has been "done to death." (This is mainly just because there have been four or five well-promoted films on the subject in recent months.) But that is really nonsense. Some subjects are never sufficiently examined and can never be overdone, as long as an artist with a fresh angle "does" it.

It's valid however, to say that Jan Troell's earlier period family sagas were richer and more involving than his new 'Everlasting Moments.' The whole thing is that this film is about a pretty ordinary Swedish family. But the interest of the film isn't so much in the small-town working-class family, the seven kids, the big womanizing drunkard father. It's in the interface between the wife, Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen) and the film's style. And this is where the film gradually but amply justifies itself. Heiskanen's face, often and lovingly filmed in closeup, is more memorable than any of the faces in 'Katyn.' The visuals consciously (and often remarkably) echo the subtle, even, naturally lighted tonalities of old glass plate negatives. (Early photographic equipment isn't as handy as today's, but that doesn't mean the photographs were inferior aesthetically.)

Maria, wife of the cheery, powerful, but dangerous Sigge (Mikael Persbrandt), marries him owning a valuable camera she's won in a lottery. When things get tough, she decides to sell it. This leads her to go to Sebastian Pedersen (Jesper Christensen), a photographer with a shop, who refuses to let her sell it and instead takes her under his wing and falls quietly in love with her. Throughout the film and Sigge's skullduggeries and the family's economic travails, Maria uses the camera with increasing artistry. Along with this, the sweet platonic love affair with Sebastian continues, and he woos her with equipment, paper, plates, and lessons in developing photographs. The film is a celebration of the addictiveness of photography and the magic that happens in the darkroom. (Alas for digital camera users, to have lost that alchemical mystery!)

The relationship between Maria and Sebastian would be worth a subtler, richer film by itself. But Troell likes family sagas. And history and sociology call upon him to focus on Sigge and the seven children. Unfortunately, though the film is narrated by eldest daughter Maja (Callin Ohrvall) and that adds logic to the focus on the mother, few of the other children are well individualized. The film is somewhat at cross purposes this way, with its unique story about a woman artist who's also a passionately dedicated mother constantly interrupted by its lumbering family history. (But that was also Maria's life.) Unlike other Troell films, this feels sometimes too long, sometimes too short. But despite the conventional, old fashioned film-making or perhaps because of it, the photographic story and the counterpoint in the film's own on screen images, 'Everlasting Moments' more than justifies its existence. Perhaps not as historically essential as Wajda's 'Karyn,' for many of us, and particularly for a lover of still photography (and darkroom magic) like myself, Troell's film, whether "essential" or not, winds up being more emotionally involving.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Enraptured, 15 March 2009

Author: Michael Fargo from San Francisco

I was reluctant to see Jan Troell's film for fear it might not be worthy of the experience of seeing his "The Emigrants"/"The New Land." Ordinarily, I'd rush to see something by any good director, but those two films were of such distinction, I hesitated.

Many of the same issues in "The Emigrants"/"The New Land" are here but we have it from the point of view of an artist and this film concentrates less on the art itself than the reason the artist needs to do it. It's a slight shift in focus than we usually get in biographies of artists, but it made this film something that's truer than, say, seeing Ed Harris ape Jackson Pollack dripping paint.

The rise of the middle class, WWI, labor unions, the demise of feudal monarchy, alcoholism, abortion, disability, codependency, feminism, and most importantly how industrial technology released the poor from dire existence to the opportunity (and leisure) of making art...and why that was important.

It's an ambitious film that feels as light as a shadow. While there is quite a bit of dialog, there's never any explanation despite extensive voice-over by a daughter of the subject of the film. We're shown why this woman needs to take photographs, and how she's introduced to it and the changes it brings lifts us up to the ecstasy she feels.

The circumstances of her marriage which is the primary focus of her suffering Troell renders with great sensitivity and understanding. The fact that the abusive husband, Mikael Persbrandt, almost steals the film is a testament to the compassion of the filmmaker.

But its the central character's actress, Maria Heiskanen, who takes a role that could have been maudlin and infuses it with a ferocious passion that stays in one's memory. No director could have wished for more in this performance.

Filmed in 16mm then transferred to 35mm, the passion of the main character for making images is clearly the director's own. One (of many) moments is so exquisite and complete: The lead character doesn't understand how photographs are made, and when she's shown with the image of a butterfly projected on her open hand, we're as astonished as she is.

That image is used again near the end of the film in a way that's masterful. I don't know if this movie is as good as "The Emigrants/New Land," but its worthy of the director who made that monumental work.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
No one ever died of a bit of the belt … Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick, 5 May 2009

Author: babubhaut from buffalo, ny, usa

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

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.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
A Real Heartfelt Flick about the Empowering Quality of Photography, 13 January 2009

Author: eugenetard (eugenetard@yahoo.com) from Los Angeles

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This movie was an enjoyable surprise to me, really worth watching. I don't speak Swedish or know of the director. I just saw it at the Aero in Santa Monica, where they screened the foreign film Golden Globe nominees, and I'm so glad I caught it.

It's set in Sweden back in the day, before and during WW I, and it follows the life of this Wife and Mother, and her family. This woman is a rock, and she's the soul and center of this story. She's got hardships out the wazoo, mainly an ever-growing number of mouths to feed during a war, and a drunken, philandering, impulsive, and abusive husband to deal with.

She won a camera in a lottery before she was married, and, never having used it, tries to sell it for the cash. The old gentlemanly proprietor of the camera shop sees a chance to share his passion, and sets her up with film and developer and whatnot. Thus begins a friendship, maybe a platonic love-affair, between the two based on the power and beauty of picture-taking.

And, as any film concerning photography should, this one looks Just Great. It's got a grainy sorta washed-out look that really takes you away to that time and place. But it also serves the tone and feel of her story really well. It takes you with her inside, into her picture- taking.

This is what I dug so much about this movie, was its take on the possibilities provided by photography, and Art in general. Where making art can take a person. This woman has such a bunch of trials and troubles, her family life is so stocked with drama, set against a backdrop of World War and labor strife. And yet she's able to transcend to some higher levels, and get something out of it, maybe make a little sense of it, whenever she takes out the camera and uses it.

The different reactions and repercussions to her taking up photography are awesome. And the moments where we witness her really starting to get into it are so cool. The actress is so so good, and while she's a more-or-less ordinary-looking woman, when she's seeing her results of her picture-taking, her eyes just light up with such a subtle fascination and beauty. It's awesome.

And for this stuff, the movie's a Must-See for folks who are into Photography &/or Film-making. We get to witness this woman's entry into her Artistic Space.

The photo-shop proprietor looks at her pictures and says "It's not everybody who really has the Gift of Seeing."

If you're down with that notion like I am, then See This Movie.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
A lovely film, 20 July 2009

Author: Mick-Jordan from Ireland

The title of this film is particularly apt in light of what it presents and how it does so. Obviously every photograph is an everlasting moment in itself but in this film they are moments that represent a time and a place. Maria Larsson's pictures show the plight of the poor in early 20th century Sweden; the Red Rallies that were sweeping through Europe and the coming of war through to the restoring of peace. All these events and how they affect the ordinary people of her little town are recorded faithfully by this simple downtrodden housewife in between fending off her drunken husband's advances and raising the seven or so children that result. While there isn't so much a plot to 'Everlasting Moments' there is still an engaging story. It opens in 1907 when Maria discovers a camera she had won some years before and put away and forgotten about. Times are hard and her first thought is to sell it and she heads to the local photographic shop run by Sebastien Federson. He manages to persuade her to wait a while, to try and get some use of the camera first before she decides to get rid of it and pretty soon Maria is hooked on her new hobby. Meanwhile her husband Sigge flits from job to job and pub to pub and makes home-life more and more a living hell. Maria keeps her camera a secret from him for as long as she can and uses it as her only means of escape – she can't possibly leave her marriage, tearing asunder what God has joined together. While Sigge is all but openly unfaithful she herself has a chaste, platonic love with her mentor Sebastien. As Everlasting Moments takes you on its journey you just go with the flow, you forget that at some point this film is going to come to an end and in a way you don't really want it to. The acting all round is excellent and appropriately enough the photography is striking. The entire film looks like a faded photograph from the era, it's shot in colour but you have to regularly remind yourself of the fact by spotting something of colour in the scene. This just adds to the atmosphere, the feeling that you are not watching a film set in the early 1900s but in fact at a play - being performed in the early 1900s.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Sometimes slow is best, 22 June 2009

Author: Pascal Zinken (LazySod) from Maastricht, The Netherlands

The story of the life of a more or less normal family as told by one of its daughters. The most interesting families deliver the most interesting stories and this is one of them - especially by the way it is told and shown. A pivotal event in the life of the family is the day where the mother wins a camera and starts using it to make pictures of everything she deems interesting and/or important. The story is constantly told using back-flashes and this works very well - as events roll by the definition of the family is fully developed and as one gets to know more and more of the people in the family one starts to understand why some things are done the way they are done. With each passing year in the story the bonds become closer and the pictures become clearer.

It's a fairly long film but given all the things that happen that doesn't hurt the film at all. The color scheme used is very fitting and gives a nice extra effect, the choice of music is good too. Story telling is enticing and acting is well beyond the bare necessities to keep the film alive. So, all in all, a most enjoyable watch.

8 out of 10 mugshots of the past

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Piff, Paff, Puff, 12 April 2009

Author: David Ferguson (fergusontx@gmail.com) from Dallas, Texas

Greetings again from the darkness. The best word I can come up to describe this fine film is humanistic. Everything about director Jan Troell's (The Emigrants) approach is based on the affect or reaction of the individual, very human, characters.

Maria Heiskanen as Maria Larsson is fascinating ... in the most grounded, heartfelt style I have seen. She reminds of Imelda Staunton in her ability to sell grace and dignity despite all obstacles. This is not a film about some character's ability to make headlines. Rather it is one woman's battle for independence for herself and stability and safety for her seven children.

We may question why Maria insists on remaining with her violent-when-drunk husband, but she takes her father's counsel to honor her vows very seriously. She battles through much for her family but the true joy in the story comes from her awakening with a Contessa camera, courtesy of Sebastian Pederson (played well by Jesper Christensen). She discovers a god given talent and eye for photography.

This is a long film, but so realistically presented that it just compels the viewer to join in. Sadly, it won't find much of an audience in the U.S., but it is excellent film-making and a very rewarding journey.

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