There is a certain look, pace, feel and sensibility to the Swedish/Danish film-making style, particularly when depicting the horse and buggy era. This fine film by Jan Troell is a product of that aesthetic and brings to mind the work of other Scandinavian masters such as Ingmar Bergman, Bille August, Bo Wildeberg and Gabriel Axel. This is a story of simple people who struggle mightily against great odds, presented in such as way as to give us a visceral sense of their ordeals. Here is a director who can bring the distant past to vivid life and whose obvious love for his medium is reflected in the subject of the story he wrote himself. The period of the film is roughly 1907-1917 before Sweden became a social democratic welfare state and the story frequently touches on the class antagonisms that led to it. But there is virtually no point made in this film that lacks counterpoint, down to the very last line uttered before the closing credits. There are no easy answers here, no final, neat, beribboned conclusion that sends us away satisfied. Nothing sentimental to gush about, but something lasting, just as the film's title suggests.
In form, the film is a grown woman's narrated memoir that wavers in emphasis from her father to her mother. The father (acted with textured skill by Mikael Persbrandt) is alternately magnetic and obnoxious, sensitive and brutish, depending on his whim. When he drinks, which he does on impulse despite best intentions, he is a terrifying, overbearing boor; when he is sober and in a good mood, he is the dream father - the charming, strong, fun-loving pillar of the family. But this family is not lucky enough to have the latter without major doses of the former. Luckily, the mother (superbly played by Maria Heiskanen) has her head firmly screwed on and not only manages to endure her husband's abuses while raising seven children in poverty but also finds time to learn how to use a Contessa camera which the narration tell us she won in a lottery shortly before she married. When, in a fit of financial desperation during a strike that finds her husband unemployed, she asks the gentle proprietor of a photography studio (Jesper Christensen) about the value of the camera, he compassionately persuades her not to pawn it but to use it. She allows him to coach her into mastery of this new-fangled device, thereby launching a hobby that helps make ends meet and adds luster to her grim tenement life while bringing joy and wonder to her family and neighbors. Even her husband eventually overcomes his initial grudge against her new preoccupation.
The story seesaws from highs to lows, from bitter fights to tender reconciliations, from hopelessness to hope, with periodic moments of breathless suspense when life itself hangs by the slenderest thread. It depicts a society in transition, half in the Christian, semi-rural monarchic past and half in the secular, amoral, motorized future. In a sense, it is the story of Sweden itself. I couldn't help noting that the tenement shown in this film resembles the kind of building Greta Garbo was raised in. She was born in the same era, came from laboring parents and grew up to be absorbed by the new international technology of cinema, just as the heroine of this film is at one point enchanted by early motion pictures, to which she takes her children, leaving the grumbling, uncomprehending father to tend to his horse in the stable.
The cinematography makes even poverty look beautiful (perhaps a bit too much so) and each character is achingly well acted by a very well directed ensemble. The pace is rather slow, but there is so much to care about that the viewer willingly waits patiently for one scene to flow into the next. All in all, an outstanding work that seems to embody the very spirit of its own story – the everlasting moment captured by a camera in the hands of someone with the great gift of seeing.
In form, the film is a grown woman's narrated memoir that wavers in emphasis from her father to her mother. The father (acted with textured skill by Mikael Persbrandt) is alternately magnetic and obnoxious, sensitive and brutish, depending on his whim. When he drinks, which he does on impulse despite best intentions, he is a terrifying, overbearing boor; when he is sober and in a good mood, he is the dream father - the charming, strong, fun-loving pillar of the family. But this family is not lucky enough to have the latter without major doses of the former. Luckily, the mother (superbly played by Maria Heiskanen) has her head firmly screwed on and not only manages to endure her husband's abuses while raising seven children in poverty but also finds time to learn how to use a Contessa camera which the narration tell us she won in a lottery shortly before she married. When, in a fit of financial desperation during a strike that finds her husband unemployed, she asks the gentle proprietor of a photography studio (Jesper Christensen) about the value of the camera, he compassionately persuades her not to pawn it but to use it. She allows him to coach her into mastery of this new-fangled device, thereby launching a hobby that helps make ends meet and adds luster to her grim tenement life while bringing joy and wonder to her family and neighbors. Even her husband eventually overcomes his initial grudge against her new preoccupation.
The story seesaws from highs to lows, from bitter fights to tender reconciliations, from hopelessness to hope, with periodic moments of breathless suspense when life itself hangs by the slenderest thread. It depicts a society in transition, half in the Christian, semi-rural monarchic past and half in the secular, amoral, motorized future. In a sense, it is the story of Sweden itself. I couldn't help noting that the tenement shown in this film resembles the kind of building Greta Garbo was raised in. She was born in the same era, came from laboring parents and grew up to be absorbed by the new international technology of cinema, just as the heroine of this film is at one point enchanted by early motion pictures, to which she takes her children, leaving the grumbling, uncomprehending father to tend to his horse in the stable.
The cinematography makes even poverty look beautiful (perhaps a bit too much so) and each character is achingly well acted by a very well directed ensemble. The pace is rather slow, but there is so much to care about that the viewer willingly waits patiently for one scene to flow into the next. All in all, an outstanding work that seems to embody the very spirit of its own story – the everlasting moment captured by a camera in the hands of someone with the great gift of seeing.