The Swedes aren’t exactly known for their cheerful, escapist movie fare. Maybe it’s that their cinema’s patron saint, Ingmar Bergman, came to define a haunting, sober style. Or maybe it’s just because the winters are so long and cold there, infusing seasonal affective disorder into all things.
Whatever.
The larger commercial audience probably won’t consider this an endorsement. But “Everlasting Moments” typifies the unflinching, unfussy aesthetic of fine Swedish filmmaking. And like the most affecting pictures from anywhere often do, this evocative period drama by veteran director/co-writer Jan Troell (1972’s “The Emigrants”) slowly creeps up on you and sucks you into caring deeply about its fully drawn characters.
Though it is set in outer Sweden in the early 20th century, its theme of domestic suffering is as current as the latest headlines about pop singer violence in Hollywood. Maria Larsson (the understated and sympathetic Maria Heiskanen) is a mother of too many children and a wife bound by duty “until death do they part” to the abusive, alcoholic philanderer Sigfrid (Mikael Persbrandt). In a story spanning two decades and one world war, told at times from the point of view of Maria’s eldest daughter Maja (Callin Ohrvall), it illustrates another example of the oppressed woman who can’t seem to leave the oppressor she presumably loves.
It takes the indomitable matriarch many years to develop the thing that will eventually redeem her and, in so doing, may redeem her working-class family. After she finds her old camera one day, Maria soon discovers she has an eye for photography — and an eye for the elder, local professional photographer, Sebastian Pedersen (Jesper Christensen). The unspoken love she feels for her compassionate mentor and the fulfillment she finds through her newfound art provide the private meaning in the life of a long-suffering proto-feminist.
Troell has created a small, melancholy piece that works so well thanks to indelible performances and imagery. As Maria’s reckless husband, actor Persbrandt portrays the movie’s villain with a complexity and a charisma that almost makes you understand why Maria stays. And while the production design by Peter Bavman is appropriately minimalist to accurately depict its time, place and social class, the director and his cinematographer Mischa Gavrjusjov find extreme visual beauty there. There are, indeed, everlasting movie moments in the very Swedish starkness of “Everlasting Moments.”
Quick Info
“Everlasting Moments”
4 out of 5 Stars
Stars: Maria Heiskanen; Mikael Persbrandt; Jesper Christensen
Director: Jan Troell
Not Rated.
Running Time: 131 minutes
In Swedish with English subtitles
