On Screen

Everlasting Moments—which, to be fair, is translated
from Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick—is really a
terrible title. It’s so sentimental, so bland, so slobberingly devoted
to the film’s premise: A beleaguered housewife in early-20th-century
Sweden finds joy and solace (and herself!) through the lens of an old
camera. She captures these moments in her camera, see, and the
moments—the moments last forever! Everlasting moments! You know
what else lasts forever? NOTHING. (Except, you know, plastic and
stuff.)

The ohhh-so-precious Hallmark title set off my corn-dar and had me
digging in my heels for the first half hour at least. But
Everlasting Moments draws you in with its dim, dense, Swedely
way—slow but not boring, bleak but not sad—an immersive
period drama with enough grubby floors and horseshit and drunken
longshoremen to rub up against reality in a deeply satisfying way.

It’s 1907, and Maria Larsson, a be-shawled and constantly scrubbing
mother of 900, lives with her brood and husband Sigge—a
strapping, drunk, loving, violent, philandering, mustachioed
dockworker. This is an era when people regularly say things like,
“World war couldn’t be worse than the chalk pit!”; when, apparently,
child-suicide is a problem; when women attempt home-bortions by
repeatedly jumping off the kitchen table; and when, just as you think
everything’s looking up, little Erik shows up and beats you over the
head with his polio crutch (metaphorically, I mean—you could
totally outrun him). Rough times—but interesting.

During one of Sigge’s stretches of incarceration (the Spring Flower
Temperance Society is always watching and tutting), Maria finds an old
camera in a drawer and plans to pawn it, but begins taking pictures
instead. She strikes up a gentle, chaste, almost-something-more
friendship with the man at the camera shop—everything she doesn’t
get from Sigge. And as Maria’s hobby matures (try to resist the joy on
her face when, for the first time, the contours of a cat emerge on the
blank plate) and Sigge’s alienation grows, there’s dull heartbreak and
tiny triumph on both sides.