One for you and one for me: Everlasting Moments. UPDATED.

by Ryland Walker Knight

Some of you may remember our friend Martha's glowing essay about Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments from a little while back. Well, I've seen the film now, too, and I threw together a little review for Spout Blog. Knowing how much the film means to my friend makes it resound that much more with me but I do think, independent of that association, that it is a refined film: gentle, curious and quite lovely. I'm told Troell was something of a to-do in the 1970s, when his film, The Emigrants, was nominated for Best Picture despite its foreign tongue (cough, subtitles). Given all the "he's back!" profiles (such as this one in the Times) leading up to this new film's release, perhaps we can expect it to rightfully garner an audience and earn some money away from the latest so-called "film adaptation" of a comic book that happens to open today as well. Because, for all its easily dismissable "prestige" qualities (and one goofy icicle gleam), Troell's work is so careful and so loving that his film develops into the exact opposite: something filled with wonder, brimming past hurt and swinging into life with open eyes.

UPDATE: Martha's new piece on this film can be found at The Auteurs' Notebook.

Everlasting Moments: Come, Closer

by Martha Polk

I report with overwhelming gratitude that Everlasting Moments is a film about what it means to be a woman, what it means to produce images, and what it means to be a woman, wife, and mother who is pulled from her very heart center toward art, images, and a certain vision of the world. Let me quick tell you how it goes: Maria Larssen (Maria Heiskanan) won a Contessa camera in a lottery weeks before she was married to Sigge (Mikael Persbrandt). Years later when Sigge and the rest of the dockworkers go on strike, Maria tries to sell the camera to help support her four children. Shop owner Sebastian Pedersen (Jasper Christensen) "buys" it from her but lets her keep it, insisting she try it before she let such a prized possession go. And then we're off: Maria's relationship with the camera unfolds along side her relationships with Mr. Pedersen, her children, and her increasingly self-centered and terrifying husband. But of course, I wouldn't be here struggling through qualifying paragraphs if these bare narrative bones weren't wrapped in something special.

[Ed Note: First, click the text above to read Martha's full piece over at her home-base blog, WHAT IS THIS LIGHT? Next, I know this piece took a long time to write and is special to Martha, so please be a friend and shake a hand and read with thoughtful eyes. There's a lot of good stuff in there.]