Watch Online Everlasting Moments Movie Free Germany Film Everlasting Moments Watch Trailer Swedish Video Songs Review Preview cast crew . Based on a true story during the early 1900s in Sweden, the young working class woman Maria wins a camera in a lottery, and decides to keep it - a decision which alters her whole life. The camera enables Maria to see the world through new eyes, but it also becomes a threat to her somewhat alcoholic womaniser of a husband, as it brings the charming photographer "Piff Paff Puff" into her life.
Everlasting Moments Swedish Movie
Cast and Crew
Release Date: 14th November 2009
Language: Swedish
Running Time: 130 mins
Rating: U
Genre: Drama
Starring: Maria Heiskanen, Mikael Persbrandt, Jesper Christensen
Directed by: Jan Troell
Local Distributor: Golden Screen Cinemas
Swedish director Jan Troell will be 78 in July, and when he talks about his filmmaking choices, about where to spend "the last vestiges of his time and energy," it is not a theoretical concern. His hand, Troell says, "must be turned to something quite extraordinary," and with "Everlasting Moments," it definitely is.
Winner of five prizes at Sweden's academy awards, including best picture, "Everlasting Moments" is a rich, intensely human story that deals with the mysteries of creativity and love and the pain and joy of relationships.
It is a narrative film made the old-fashioned way, with all the sureness, understanding of life and command of the medium that come with more than 40 years of filmmaking. Plus something more.
Troell's films have, of course, come to this country before. He's had three nominated for the best foreign-language Oscar, and his 1971 Liv Ullmann-starring "The Emigrants" had five academy nominations, including best picture and director. But this time, the story he's chosen to tell has a personal connection, and that has made it if anything more deeply felt.
"Everlasting Moments," as its title hints, tells the story of a photographer, but a most unusual one, a Swedish working-class wife and mother at the turn of the last century who won a camera in a lottery and saw it ever so gradually transform her life.
The woman, Maria Larsson, is related to Troell's wife, who extensively interviewed Maria's daughter, Maja, who functions as the narrator in "Everlasting Moments." Though all Troell's films have the clear-eyed ability to divorce emotion from sentiment, there is the sense about this one that it meant something special to those who made it.
Perhaps because it means so much, Troell has made sure to lavish attention on the creation of time and place, on duplicating the ambience of Malmö, Sweden, in the years before, during and after the first World War. Serving as his own cinematographer (along with Mischa Gavrjusjov), Troell has come up with a whole series of images -- a huge zeppelin throwing a shadow over a neighborhood, a ghostly street car appearing out of a snowy night -- that are magical.
Though protagonist Maria (Maria Heiskanen) will eventually see the magic in her Contessa camera, won in a lottery soon after she meets future husband Sigfrid (Mikael Persbrandt), initially she is so caught up in her hard life with her spouse and their ever-increasing family that she more or less forgets she owns it.
That's because by the time we meet Sigfrid in 1907 he's already become a falling-down-drunk alcoholic who, to make things worse, has developed both a wandering eye and a taste for socialist politics that leads him and his fellow dockworkers to go out on strike.
The resulting fiscal crisis gets Maria to think of selling the camera, but when she nervously visits the local photography shop run by Mr. Pedersen (Jesper Christensen), he has other ideas. He shows Maria how to use the camera, gives her supplies and gets her involved in the gentle art of taking pictures. "It's our secret," he tells her conspiratorially, and so it for a time remains.
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"Not everyone is endowed with the gift of seeing," a photographer confides to his promising student in "Everlasting Moments." But not only does Swedish director-writer-cinematographer Jan Troell possess this gift in overwhelming abundance, he has the talent to allow the viewer to see the souls of his characters and the salient details of the world they inhabit. Artistically on a plane with or near the vet filmmaker's best work, this period drama about a woman slowly discovering her metier is an artisanal creation par excellence that will be appreciated by discerning arthouse patrons worldwide.
Set across the period of about a decade beginning in 1907, this episodic, true-life-inspired story examines a cultural, political and artistic crossroads in intensely personal terms, specifically through a husband and wife whose many conflicts don't prevent them from producing seven children.
Aesthetically, "Everlasting Moments" could scarcely be more at odds with contemporary fashion; in a time when cinematic images are manipulated, degraded or altered, Troell's continued use of mostly natural light seems like a bracing rediscovery of a style that was fairly commonplace, and highly valued, in the '60s and '70s. Beholding Troell's exquisite images is like having your eyes washed, the better to behold moving pictures of uncorrupted purity and clarity. Troell's style has never changed, yet witnessing it again, or for the first time, has the power of a revelation.
Narrated judiciously by oldest daughter Maja (Callin Ohrvall), yarn is centered on her mother, Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen), a Finnish-born woman whose every thought is of her family. Posing a perennial problem, however, is her husband, Sigge (Mikael Persbrandt), a handsome, bull-like dockworker who's often drunk and abusive.
Happening upon a Contessa camera she won in a lottery but never used, Maria tries to pawn it when the dockworkers go on strike, but instead is shown how to use it by solicitous storeowner Sebastian Pedersen (Jesper Christensen). Slowly, and with no consciousness of "art," Maria discovers her natural bent for taking insightful, haunting pictures, helped along by lessons in the darkroom from Sebastian, who, due to reticence and perhaps their notable age difference, refrains from acting on his growing feelings for his protegee.
For Maria, daily life is always throwing things at her that keep her from her photography. When British scabs arrive to fill the jobs of the socialist-inspired strikers, Sigge, who's taken up with a barmaid, becomes identified with a fatal dynamiting of an English ship, ending his boat-loading days. But, much as she might like to be rid of Sigge, Maria can't bring herself to cut the cord.
At the midway point, action jumps ahead to 1914. When Sigge is called up for military service, Maria begins making money by taking group pictures and Christmas portraits; she even photographs the three Scandinavian kings when they meet to discuss policy, while Sebastian takes newsreel footage. Things only get worse again when Sigge returns, and to the very end, life has a way of giving with one hand and taking with the other.
Maria's gradual comprehension of her photographic gifts comes in direct opposition to her estrangement from her husband. Gently in the background are felt the larger movements of history, from the war to the socialist-capitalist showdowns to the continued emigration of Swedes to the United States.
Heiskanen carries the film as Maria, a modest woman who quietly absorbs most adversity except when it comes to her husband's drinking. It's not a showy role per se, and Heiskanen doesn't possess movie star-type radiance, but Maria's durability and embodiment of common-woman virtues draw one in. By contrast, Sigge is both a big man and a huge personality, thanks to Persbrandt's grand performance. One of Sweden's most popular stars, he will certainly boost his international profile with his outsized turn.
Production details transport the viewer back a century with utter credibility, and the camerawork makes every second an intense pleasure.
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For the cinephile, discovering a new film by famed Swedish director Jan Troell (one of this year's Telluride tributees) is a lot like eating a perfectly made truffle after a lifetime of mass-produced candy bars. His latest effort, Everlasting Moments, was like that for me; it's that rare cinematic experience that you settle back, bite into, and then savor as the subtle richness of the film cleanses the palate and fills the soul.
Based on the real-life story of Troell's wife's grandmother, the film takes us through the life of Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen, in a remarkable performance), a belabored mother of a large brood in the early days of the 20th century who finds renewed passion and intellectual independence through a Contessa camera she wins in a lottery. The camera sits for many years unused until one day, Maria takes it into the shop of the local photographer, Sebastien Pederson (Jesper Christensen), to sell it to help pay the rent.
The kindly Pederson shows Maria how to use the camera, and once she starts using it, she begins to see the world through a whole new lens. Finding herself unable to resist continuing to learn and improve her eye as a photographer, Maria becomes obsessed with capturing the little moments of life around her through the miraculous ability to capture living moments in still images.
Although life with perpetually abusive, drunken and philandering husband Sigge (Mikael Persbrandt) is a constant challenge, Maria finds through her photography a measure of independence and dignity that frees her mentally from the grimness of her situation. Soon she finds herself something of a village celebrity, being called upon to capture with her camera everything from Christmas photos of entire families to the Victorian death portrait of a child.
The film, like much of Troell's work, is epic in scope, focusing on working class people against the backdrop of the socialist revolution, worker strikes, poverty and the Great War; at the same time, this film is very intimate and personal, telling the story of this one woman against the broader canvas. Beautifully shot in a muted tone that evokes both the time period and its working-class setting, the film captures both the beauties and tragedies in the lives of Maria and her children, while the finely structured narrative connects the audience with the courageous, deeply empathetic Maria.
The film is very difficult to watch at times; Troell immerses us in Maria's life, in particular her relationship with her violent husband, and it's a bit of an emotional challenge to watch this otherwise intelligent, vibrant woman continue to stay with a man who beats her in violent jealous rages while pursuing other women himself, and even threatening to kill her in front of their children. Fortunately, though, Maria's spunk and spirit are always at the forefront of the tale, and Troell's expert storytelling and some outstanding performances combine to keep the film from feeling overly bleak.
Everlasting Moments turned out to be one of the hits of Telluride; after a sparsely attended initial screening, word of mouth started to spread on the gondola and in lines; the next screening, held in a much larger venue, was packed, and the fest ended up having to add TBA screenings to accommodate the crowds demanding to see the film. Very positive critical response and overall buzz from Telluride should help the film pop when it opens to the cinephile crowds at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. If you're attending the fest yourself and wondering which of the 270 or so films to work into your schedule, Everlasting Moments is one to put at the top of your list.
What's unsaid is that we can sense a real emotional connection forming between these two, but anyone expecting mad passionate outbursts, or even palpable romance, has come to the wrong movie, and not just because both Maria and Pedersen are married and attached to their spouses even though logically they shouldn't be.
For "Everlasting Moments" is not a bolt out of the blue movie, where everything irrevocably changes overnight. Echoing the way photographs are developed in the darkroom, only gradually does picture taking make changes in Maria's life, only little by little does she accept that she has "the gift of seeing" and, in Pedersen's words, "if you're a person who sees, you have no choice but to do so."
Though that process, helped enormously by Heiskanen's exquisitely alive performance, takes awhile, it doesn't take but five minutes of exposure to "Everlasting Moments' " pleasures for us to know that that time is going to be well spent. We know almost at once that we'll be both happy to go with this film wherever it chooses and not be disappointed when it gets there.
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