Toronto - Toronto International Film Festival isn’t exactly an entity that needs introduction. So I’ll skip right to the movie. Jan Troell’s Everlasting Moments was a last minute pick after not being able to get into Me and Orson Welles. It proved much more entertaining than I thought, and I’m glad (I think) that it was not substituted by Knitting - it would then have been a typical night.
Maria Larsson wasn’t your typical 20th century mom. She bore and raised 8 kids in her life time, saw through the twice incarceration of her husband, dealt with unemployment, breezed through the aftermath of an attempted rape on her daughter without a lawyer, grew old with her polio-inflicted son, and crashed-&-burnt through a love relationship with a man she was forbidden in all circumstance to be with. That’s a long list. I think the announcer at tiff got it wrong - she wasn’t a proto-feminist. There’s a difference between strong women and feminists, most of whom might scoff at what Maria actually lived through. Their weapons of choice would have been divorce, child support, and expendable men and women. Here you just have one tough cookie - who lived through all that with photography as her accomplice. The film was very simple - story, characters, backdrop and progression. It’s regular life in the 1900s. The camera angles were usually good at conveying the feeling of the scene. And I thought the actress did a fairly good job as Maria and Sigge was every bit the pig he was supposed to be, right down to his dirty grin.
You have to give it to the old-timers: they may not have much, but they had hearts. I think what this film captured wasn’t the stuggle of a woman. It was a simple story with a simple message - live for the moments that lasts, and no cherry picking, either. There are harsh moments, joyful, tearful and hateful times that smart people are apt to avoid. But what are they really missing? At the very end her daughter Maja questioned: why did mom never leave that sum-bitch of a husband who did nothing right by her? Did she know all along that he would eventually succeed? I seriously don’t think she cared. It’s not because she was constrained by her own father’s request - that marriage is sacred. Not because Petersen wasn’t handsome or rich enough to have her. But she stayed because she wanted to see what else it can throw at her. Sure, every circumstance throws you different memories, and choosing your screensaver is better than coming back from lunch and finding your bosses/coworkers huddled around a Disney-porn screen asking for your password. Maria’s curiosity is what won me over, and the fact she relished the challenge. I think many people these days can take that message home and shove it - down their throat, and between their ears.
4/5 to Jan Troell - that’s him in the pic, I think.
