Film Festival 09 - Everlasting Moments
Everlasting Moments
Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick, Sweden/Denmark 2008,
130m
Director: Jan Troell
Festivals: Toronto, Pusan 2008
The title of this intimate drama of working class life evokes the
magical promise offered by photography. In the decade from 1907
that the based-on-fact story covers, few households possess a
camera, but Maria, the struggling wife and mother at the film's
centre, wins one in a lottery. Gently encouraged by the camera
store owner, she finds flashes of profound respite from the dramas
of her tough life in creating portraits of her children, her
neighbourhood, the way the light streams through a window. The
director, Swedish veteran Jan Troell, is a photographer himself and
every frame of this beautiful film is alive to the camera's power
to bear witness to time, place and experience. - Bill
Gosden.
"A Finnish immigrant to Sweden, Maria marries her husband Sig in
1907, and has a boatload of kids - and the film charts their
marriage in a leisurely, episodic way, through births and deaths
and tumultuous strikes and a World War& Sig is inconstant - not
a bad man but a weak one, a creature of appetite who never thinks
twice about his patriarchal authority. And Maria, burdened with her
children's care, unable to earn a living on her own, is trapped in
his world. That's when she comes on that camera& Gradually,
Maria begins to develop a dual self; holding the camera makes her
forget for a time that she's a wife and mother. Yet her powers as
an artist are inextricable from her spirit... Troell treats every
frame as if the medium of filmmaking were magical and new. Period
films with lots of sepia tones are usually soft in the head, but
the nostalgic glow of Everlasting Moments only deepens its
mysteries." - David Edelstein, New York
In Swedish with English subtitles
