Everlasting Moments

B

The film Everlasting Moments is a very human drama. It is about a particular Swedish family, the Larssons, and follows their travails over the first two decades of the 20th century. While Europe at that time was observing the spread of Socialism, and later on the spread of the Great War, director Jan Troell, focused his lens in particular at Maria Larsson, whose daughter provided the details that became the vocal narrative for the movie. It is a solid piece of cinema, a gorgeously photographed period piece that possesses enough genuine drama to make it worth the price of admission. One would be forgiven to wonder, though, if the story's limited scope is really worth the telling, especially since we've seen much of these before, both on the big screen and small.

Jan Troell frames and delivers this movie as a tribute to Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen), the mother of the Larsson's 7 children, as she goes through her husband's (Mikael Persbrandt) up-and-down journey with the bottle and later infidelity and abuse. As refuge from the realities of life, she indulged in photography, a past time introduced to her by the kindly photo-printing shop owner Sebastian Pedersen (Jesper Christensen). The movie allows us to follow the blossoming of something akin to a friendship between Maria and Sebastian, while her children grow and marriage falters.

In telling such a localized drama, individual performances are imperative. Maria Heiskanen channels fortitude and stoutness as Mrs Larsson. Jesper Christensen effectively portrays Pedersen as the gentle soul who provides her comfort and emotional protection. Mikael Persbrandt is the only one of the three main actors who isn't a Jan Troell regular, yet he is perfectly cast as the brutish yet sympathisable Sigfrid Larsson.

Anything to be said about Everlasting Moments have been said before about many other, some of them vastly better, movies. Nothing in this movie is hard-hitting or complex, but its strength lies in its nuances and balance. It never veers too far into sappy family-drama territory (despite its premise), nor would Troell allow the story to become too dark (despite implications of such), but rather it remains steady and stout, much like the person it pays tribute to.
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