EVERLASTING MOMENTS i15) Sweden
Wednesday, 28th April 2010

To close the mini-season we return to Sweden but to a film that is a world away from Let the Right One In, Everlasting Moments. For one reason or another it would be possible to argue that the first three films of the mini-season are each in their own way atypical of what the Society usually screens. With this final film, however, we are very much back in traditional EFS territory. Everlasting Moments is at heart a true-life tale set in Malmo in the early 1900s. As a period reconstruction it is done with superb craftsmanship and attention to detail and it boasts a splendid central performance by Maria Heiskanen.

The film-maker here is Jan Troell and if, like most Swedish directors, he has been eclipsed by the fame of his fellow countryman Ingmar Bergman he has nevertheless been making films regularly since the mid-1960s. His most famous works have been The Emigrants (1971) and its sequel The New Land (1973) and it is significant that whenever possible he has been the photographer and editor of his own films as well as contributing to their screenplays. Having been born in 1931 he is not here rivalling Andrzej Wajda or the late Eric Rohmer who were octogenarians when they made Katyń and The Romance of Astrea and Celadon respectively but it does mean that he was in his mid-seventies when he created Everlasting Moments.

Interestingly it came to fruition as a concept developed by Jan Troell’s wife, Agneta. Back in 1986 Agneta had met an elderly woman, Maja, the oldest of seven siblings born to a poverty-stricken working class mother. Maja spoke to Agneta of her mother’s life and revealed to her how winning a camera in a lottery had changed everything for her mother. From then on photographing her family and those around her had transformed her life. Sensing that there might be a book in this material Agneta not only continued to see Maja until her death at the age of 92 but also taped interviews with her surviving relatives. Her story has now become the basis of Evelasting Moments which although presented as a fictional story is very much rooted in these real-life events. The film that has resulted explores the power of photography to capture key moments in our lives while also showing how for one woman taking up photography helped her find a beauty in life that counterbalanced all those aspects that made her life so difficult. I end this note as I started it with Philip French. Everlasting Moments released here last year didn’t quite make it into his Top Ten but it must have come close since this is what he had to say about it: “The acting all round is of the highest order in this beautiful, tender truthful film”.

Programme Note by Mansel Stimpson