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Everlasting Moments (2008)

Director: Jan Troell

Time Out rating

Average user rating

6 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Just as Terence Davies’s sublime ‘Distant Voices, Still Lives’ crystallised the comforting, co-op spirit evoked by the Hollywood musical on the lives of postwar Liverpool’s working classes, so Jan Troell’s similarly spellbinding ‘Everlasting Moments’ illustrates how the miracle of photography offers fleeting respite to the blue-collar matriarch of a sizeable brood in turn-of-the-century Malmö.

Maria Heiskanen plays Maria Larsson, doting mother to seven and wife of fractious, constantly inebriated lunk Sigge (Mikael Persbrandt). She discovers a talent for taking photographs when trying to pawn a Contessa camera won in a local lottery, and is urged by the shop assistant to give the contraption a whirl before selling it. As Sigge administers regular bouts of abuse and relies on brute force to dodge accusations of infidelity, political dissidence and general folly, Maria secretly begins to snap her surroundings. From the set-up, you’d expect the film to skip down a conventional narrative path where Maria’s newfound talent leads directly to empowerment, happiness and a measure of independence, but it tactfully avoids the allure of cliché to concentrate on a more profound and rational story, one just as interested in family and community dynamics as it is in the difficulty of expressing oneself artistically.

As a portrait of a genuinely ‘good’ person, Heiskanen’s nuanced, deeply affecting performance recalls Imelda Staunton in ‘Vera Drake’, her reserved and intensely pragmatic façade occasionally slipping away to reveal an inner passion that – in the social context – must be suppressed at all costs. And while Persbrandt’s Sigge is very much the ogre of the piece, his charismatic turn plays on the inner complexities of a character who constantly teeters on the cusp of redemption, but never quite manages to come to terms with feelings of envy and bitterness towards his saintly spouse. Ambitious and stately while never stooping to maudlin hysteria, Troell’s film meshes scenes of high drama and silent contemplation while the milky, sepia-toned Super16 photography lends the images an exquisite, tactile quality.

Author: David Jenkins 2009-05-19 13:02:07

Time Out London Issue 2022, 21-27 May, 2009

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User reviews of this film

MadAboutFilm said...

Posted on Aug 18 2009 13:43 The best film I've seen in a long time. Very endearing cinematography, superb acting and a fantastic subject matter. Vey highly recommended. Sci-fi and Hollywood action-film fans should ignore this comment.

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tabula Rasa said...

Posted on Jun 12 2009 23:38 Hi again, Phil. So many presumptions and none of them accurate. No, haven't seen the film, not a science fiction fan, don't regard your writing as constituting a 'review', got all my wits about me. Did it occur to you that the 'Time Out' review might have influenced me? The pretentiousness of your original comment is only equalled by the presumptuousness of your second. Did you really have to demonstrate that you know a bit of Latin (or how to use a dictionary)? And the self-evident observation that you went and gave away the whole damn plot is not addressed, unsurprisingly.
Well, that's it. I'm going to leave it there. No more comments from me, Mr. Ince, no matter how pointed your riposte or whatever language it's couched in. I think I'll go and see a movie now. Pip-pip.

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Doron said...

Posted on Jun 12 2009 19:25 What a wonderful low key film. Story, acting and setting where all great and there was nothing obvious as to how it would develop. Highly recommended

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Jun 08 2009 14:03 What a peculiar satement, blank slate. It's the sort of pitiably abusive post one expects from a half-witted science fiction fan. Have you no view on the film yourself? If my review deterred you from seeing it then I presume you felt you benefitted from it. If it didn't, why not express your thoughts on the film?

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Tabula Rasa said...

Posted on Jun 06 2009 08:13 How stupid do you have to be, Phil Ince to review something by just recounting the whole plot.? Were you deliberately trying to stop people seeing it? Or do you just have no imagination at all?

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on May 29 2009 13:49 I found it hard to see the point of this. Much may be lost in translation but it only felt like a 'paraphrase' of incidents from a novel about life in the pre- and post-Great War period. No element of the story was sufficiently prominent or significant that I could fathom anyone's reason for wanting to tell me about it. Despite the heroine's noble suffering, I wasn't moved. A woman in a very difficult marriage rediscovers a camera won in a raffle. The winning of the camera was the spur to her marrying her husband. She develops a passion for photography and a business in portraiture. Her wayward (albeit generally industrious) husband objects, both to the camera and to her chaste but clearly potent relationship with the older owner of a camera shop. The film ends in reconciliation; husband and wife seem set to restore a modest and dilapidated country cottage; the photographer moves away. Neatly done (though something about the make-ups gave it an unhelpfully modern look). Competent but undistinguished.

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