A picture is worth 1,000 words.
Taking that picture is what Everlasting Moments is all about. In this new film from director Jan Troell, a woman uses a camera to transcend the grimy reality of her working class life.
The setting is Sweden at the turn of the last century; this is a Dickensian tale about the transformative power of art.
Everlasting Moments offers a sweeping history of a time and place through the experiences of one woman.
Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen, whose performance makes you wish the movie would never end) is a hard-working woman married to an apparently charming guy (Mikael Persbrandt) who, as it happens, is a philandering drunk.
The couple has a mob of children, including a daughter named Maja who narrates parts of the story.
Maria sews, irons clothing and cleans for other people to help earn money.
Maria has a camera which she won with a raffle ticket, and she decides to go and sell it to a photography shop. Instead, the proprietor, Sebastian (Jesper Christensen) shows her how to use the camera to take pictures, and a new chapter in Maria's life begins.
Sebastian also gives her the plates and chemicals she needs to develop her own photographs, and the movie conveys perfectly how -- at the beginning of the 20th century -- the whole process of creating a photograph seemed close to miraculous.
Maria produces a photograph of her children.
Her husband, meanwhile, becomes involved in socialism and a strike of dock workers. He's also involved with a local barmaid. While he goes steadily downhill, Maria slowly begins to gain experience taking photos.
She photographs the world she lives in and the children in the neighbourhood, eventually creating a small, local career for herself.
Everlasting Moments registers history as Maria's family experiences it.
Father is called up during the First World War. The family eventually moves to a house with electricity. Moving pictures come to town, and Maria takes the children to see a Charlie Chaplin film.
Side by side with bigger changes are the details of everyday life: Birth, death, church, school, work. Though the movie is longer than two hours, not a second of it is boring.
(But be warned -- it is slow. Compared to what else is playing at the movies these days, this one is like going out to a complicated, formal, six-course dinner versus a fast food drive-through.)
Beautifully photographed and rich with period detail, Everlasting Moments is the sort of film you fall into in the same way you might fall into a novel.
The movie, which has English subtitles, won just about everything at the Swedish Academy Awards and was Sweden's official selection in the best foreign language film category at the 2008 Oscars.
(This film is rated PG)
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