Everlasting Moments “Maria Larssons eviga ogonblick” (Jan Troell, 2008): Sweden

Reviewed by Anna Bewe. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Everlasting Moments is a phenomenal film by Jan Troell, and is based on Troell’s wife Agneta’s family history together with other historical events. The star in this film is definitely Maria Heiskanen, whose performance is outstanding. This film received an award for the year´s best film at the Swedish Guldbaggegalan and has been nominated at the Toronto Film Festival and for a Golden Globe.

The film takes place in Malmo, a city in Sweden in the early 19th century. The movie is about a mother, Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen), who wins a camera at a lottery. She is married to a man that is a hard-working drunkard (Mikael Persbrandt) and she has a constantly growing family which forces her to fight for a decent family life, with a camera stored and forgotten. But when Maria goes to a photo store to pawn the camera, she meets the Danish photographer Sebastian Pedersen (Jesper Christensen) which is a turning point in her life. She starts to see the world in another way. Everything comes alive in pictures which will last for ever, while everything else passes away. Maria’s pictures tell us about her life –poverty and developing, the joy of everyday life, and the outbreak of war–and a society in change.

It’s obvious that Troell is inspired by both filmic and Swedish history. In this film, he mixes real events with dramatic film footage, like the revolutionary explosion of the boat “Amalthea,” as a background to a photographically skilled, infidelity sequence. Everlasting Moments is a gripping drama about a typical working family in the early 19th century in Sweden. Maria’s story is a classic story about a working woman’s liberation and the film is both poetic and emotional. The actress Maria Heiskanen (Maria Larsson) mix shyness with full energy and she brings a spectrum with her that is worth an extra look. Even if many things happen during the years in Maria’s life, the film is subtle. Nothing is obvious; you have to read between the lines. This movie is a good film that shows that a great passion can help one to manage hard things that happen in life. This is a great film and if you haven’t seen it yet, go and see it.