Everlasting Moments – Maria Larsson’s eviga ögonblick (2008)

Directed by: Jan Troell | 131 minutes | drama | Actors: Maria Heiskanen, Mikael Persbrandt, Jesper Christensen, Emil Jensen, Ghita Nørby, Hans Henrik Clemensen, Amanda Ooms, Antti Reini, Birte Heribertsson, Claire Wikholm, Hans Alfredson, Jonas Bengtsson, Henrik Buchhave, Oskar Christensson, Max Eskilsonshagen Petter Forkstam, Olle Frödin, Erik Gustafsson, Rolf Jarl, Maria Kulle, Pierre Lindstedt, Annika Lundgren, Maria Lundqvist, David Magnusson, Livia Millhagen, Linus Nilsson, Johan Noren, Rickard Nygren, Callin Öhrvall, Sebastian Olsson, Sanna Persson, Ann Petren, Christian Rurfors, Magnus Sandberg, Andreas Traunsberger, Johanna Troell, Erik Waller, Magnus Wennerhag

The Swedish drama ‘Everlasting Moments’ is set in a working-class environment at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was a time when fathers were still called Father and mothers Mother. A time when a hard-working Father was sometimes seized by the devil of drink, and drunkenly worked his innocent offspring with the belt. A time when a weeping Mother exclaimed: ‘Oh, Father, please don’t hit the children’, after which Mother too could expect a beating.

It is highly doubtful whether it really was that way at the time, but it is the cliché that we know from later literature and films. Especially in the beginning of ‘Everlasting Moments’, director Jann Troel (1931) sprinkles plenty of these clichés: Father with loose hands, obliging Mother, drunken brawls, socialist belch, gentlemen who can’t keep their hands off their maid, the stern gaze of God, newfangled antics that are not tolerated, and so on etcetera.

In addition to this cliché image, ‘Everlasting Moments’ has a second cliché image that we mainly know from the 1970s. In the course of the drama, Mother works her way from servile house slave to independent woman, with a career of her own, an artistic talent and a platonic relationship with a wise and sensitive photographer. In between acts she takes care of her seven-headed offspring, and does it so excellently that her children – cleaned and eaten – look nothing like children from a poor working-class family at the beginning of the last century.

All those clichés make ‘Everlasting Moments’ predictable to the core, which is reinforced by the conventional drama. Every happy scene is followed by a bit of drama, after every raindrop a ray of sunshine appears, after every death a birth is celebrated. The symbolism is equally obvious. When Father has had too much to drink and can no longer drive the horse cart, Mother grabs the reins and when after several bleak years the family moves out, it finally receives the blessing of Electric Light. And that’s not even talking about the wisdom about Seeing and Capturing True Life.

This makes ‘Everlasting Moments’ a predictable, humorless and weak piece of cinema. But still… precisely because of that predictability, this is a film that pleases entire hordes of cinemagoers. An older and nostalgic audience in particular will hardly be bothered by the clichés, but will marvel at the beautiful images and enjoy the simple story. They will rather sigh that too few of these kinds of films are made these days. A sincere sigh, although that doesn’t make this film any better.