Troell’s Moments an Everlasting Snapshot
Oscar-nominated writer/director Jan Troell’s (The Emigrants) latest Swedish effort Everlasting Moments is like a winter breath of fresh air. After suffering through months of barely palatable releases (Coraline and Phoebe in Wonderland notwithstanding), this early 1900’s slice of family melodrama is so good it makes all that tedium and triviality fade away. It is a film that instantly becomes one of the templates the rest of the year will be measured by, the filmmaker delivering a miracle that left me emotionally stimulated and physically drained.
Maria Heiskanen in IFC Films' Everlasting Moments
Maria Larrson (Maria Heiskanen) is a working-class mother with an ever-growing family struggling to make ends meet under the abusive yoke of longshoreman (and sometimes alcoholic) husband Sigfrid (Mikael Persbrandt). Her prized possession is a camera won in a lottery, but with money growing tight and food becoming scarce she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice, taking the contraption to local merchant Sebastian Pedersen (Jesper Christensen) for an appraisal.
While he’d love to have it, Pedersen forgoes making the purchase and instead convinces Maria to use it at least one time before selling. After showing the woman how to take and develop pictures, he supplies her with materials and then sends her on the way home, never guessing his kindness has planted the seeds for a blossoming friendship.
Maria soon discovers the artist within taking pictures of the children, her local neighborhood, her husband and of the natural world hiding in the shadows around them much to her own personal delight. Next thing she knows people are coming to her home asking for photographs of their own, the camera opening a door into the changing landscape surrounding the entire family.
On paper, the film sounds pretty simple and familiar. In reality, Troell’s epic is so much more, going way beyond the routine to become universal and timeless. Moving with an elegantly controlled grace, what would normally seem cliché suddenly feels fresh and new. The director taps right into the very essence of his characters, all of them becoming fully formed flesh and blood creations right before my eyes.
Romance drips off the screen, something I’d thought I’d never say about a movie containing so many instances of domestic abuse and alcoholic rage. Yet I can think of no more heart-tugging sequence of film than the sight of Maria reaching for Sebastian’s cheek, no more tearful bit of longing than the beauty of her watching him disappear down a wooded street covered in the ebulliently glowing embers of rust-colored leaves.
The film builds slowly, each transition as measured and as patient as the woman at the center of the majority of them. Troell never pushes, never forces the viewer into the places he wants them to go. Instead he subtly leads them there, almost without our noticing, finally delivering a staggering last 20 minutes that had my tears flowing down my cheeks to the point you’d have thought I was a faucet.
Heiskanen is marvelous. She finds an inner grit and determination inside of Maria that’s sublime. This is a performance of few words yet one that speaks volumes. Heiskanen runs the gamut of emotions, crossing divides so wide they went beyond any I could have anticipated. I sometimes think that actors forget the power silence can have, how quiet can have both elegiac and devastating consequences. That is this performance, and even as the last image fades to black Maria herself never does.
As for the finished movie, it feels a lot like the images its protagonist takes. Troell moves his camera smoothly and with precision only to sometimes stop and linger like a photograph. Shooting the film himself (along with co-cinematographer Mischa Gavrjusjov), there are so many haunting moments I can’t possibly recount them all. This stuck with me, body and soul, capturing my imagination and my heartstrings so smoothly I didn’t even notice while it was happening.
The more I think about it, the more Everlasting Moments makes me smile. Not just in happiness or enjoyment, but also in that knowledge that I’ve witnessed my first monumental triumph of 2009, that I have been reminded the pure power and vivacious rapture cinema can sometimes achieve. Like a treasured photograph, this is a film to love.
- review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Film Rating: êêêê (out of 4)
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