Maria is not sophisticated and may have little education, but she is a deep and creative woman and an instinctively gifted photographer. She has no theory, but her choices of subjects and compositions are inspired. And perhaps Mr. Pedersen inspires her, too. He is much older and always polite and proper with her, but over a time it becomes clear that they have fallen in love.
No, the film is not about how she leaves her drunken husband and becomes a famous photographer. It is about how her inner life is transformed by discovering that she has an artistic talent. She continues to be committed to Sigge by a bond deeper than marriage or obligation. But she tentatively takes steps toward personal independence that were rare in that time. When Sigge goes to fight in the war, she supports the family by taking marriage photographs.
Maria Heiskanen, who plays Maria, makes her a shy woman who is almost frightened to take a larger view of herself. She is strong when she needs to be but unaccustomed to men like Mr. Pedersen, who treat her as something more than she conceives herself. One of the film’s mysteries is how clearly she defines her marriage to Sigge, which endures, even though she fully feels the possibilities that Sebastian never quite offers. Mikael Persbrandt makes Sigge not a bad man but powerless over alcohol. His labor is back-breaking. And look at the tact of Jesper Christensen as Sebastian, who loves Maria from the moment he sees her but wants to protect her from the problems that could bring. The movie is intensely observant about these gradations of love.
Everlasting Moments reflects the great self-assurance of Jan Troell, whose work includes such masterpieces as The Emigrants, The New Land, and Hamsun. All of his films are about lives striving toward greater fullness. He respects work, values, and feelings. He stands apart from the frantic hunger for fashionable success. After I saw this film, I looked through a few of the early reviews of it and found critics almost startled by its humanism. Here is Todd McCarthy of Variety: “Beholding Troell’s exquisite images is like having your eyes washed, the better to behold moving pictures of uncorrupted purity and clarity.”
The story comes from the heart. Troell, who showed Everlasting Moments at Telluride 2008, adapted it from a novel by his wife, Agneta, who based it on one of her own family members, Maria Larsson. Maria lived this life and took some of the photographs we see. The film is narrated by her daughter, Maja Larsson (Callin Ohrvall), and in my imagination I hear Maja telling the story to Agneta, for Jan was born in Malmo, and the dates work out that they might both have known her well and always thought hers was a story worth telling.
Gandhi
PG, 188 m., 1982
Ben Kingsley (Mahatma Gandhi), Candice Bergen (Margaret Bourke-White), Edward Fox (General Dyer), John Gielgud (Lord Irwin),Trevor Howard (Judge Broomfield), John Mills (The Viceroy), Martin Sheen (Walker), Rohini Hattangady (Kasturba Gandhi), Ian Charleson (Charlie Andrews), Athol Fugard (General Smuts). Directed and produced by Richard Attenborough. Screenplay by John Briley.
In the middle of this epic film there is a quiet, small scene that helps explain why Gandhi is such a remarkable experience. Mahatma Gandhi, at the height of his power and his fame, stands by the side of a lake with his wife of many years. Together, for the benefit of a visitor from the West, they reenact their marriage vows. They do it with solemnity, quiet warmth, and perhaps just a touch of shyness; they are simultaneously demonstrating an aspect of Indian culture and touching on something very personal to them both. At the end of the ceremony, Gandhi says, “We were thirteen at the time.” He shrugs. The marriage had been arranged. Gandhi and his wife had not been in love, had not been old enough for love, and yet love had grown between them. But that is not really the point of the scene. The point, I think, comes in the quiet smile with which Gandhi says the words. At that moment we believe that he is fully and truly human, and at that moment, a turning point in the film, Gandhi declares that it is not only a historical record but a breathing, living document.
This is the sort of rare epic film that spans the decades, that uses the proverbial cast of thousands, and yet follows a human thread from beginning to end: Gandhi is no more overwhelmed by the scope of its production than was Gandhi overwhelmed by all the glory of the British Empire. The movie earns comparison with two classic works by David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago, in its ability to paint a strong human story on a very large canvas.
The movie is a labor of love by Sir Richard Attenborough, who struggled for years to get financing for his huge but “noncommercial” project. Various actors were considered over the years for the all-important title role, but the actor who was finally chosen, Ben Kingsley, makes the role so completely his own that there is a genuine feeling that the spirit of Gandhi is on the screen. Kingsley’s performance is powerful without being loud or histrionic; he is almost always quiet, observant, and soft-spoken on the screen, and yet his performance comes across with such might that we realize, afterward, that the sheer moral force of Gandhi must have been behind the words. Apart from all its other qualities, what makes this movie special is that it was obviously made by people who believed in it.
The movie begins in the early years of the century, in South Africa. Gandhi moved there from India in 1893, when he was twenty- three. He already had a law degree, but, degree or not, he was a target of South Africa’s system of racial segregation, in which Indians (even though they are Caucasian, and thus should “qualify”) are denied full citizenship and manhood. Gandhi’s reaction to the system is, at first, almost naive; an early scene on a train doesn’t quite work only because we can’t believe the adult Gandhi would still be so ill-informed about the racial code of South Africa. But Gandhi’s response sets the tone of the film. He is nonviolent but firm. He is sure where the right lies in every situation, and he will uphold it in total disregard for the possible consequences to himself.
Before long Gandhi is in India, a nation of hundreds of millions, ruled by a relative handful of British. They rule almost by divine right, shouldering the “white man’s burden” even though they have not quite been requested to do so by the Indians. Gandhi realizes that Indians have been made into second-class citizens in their own country, and he begins a program of civil disobedience that is at first ignored by the British, then scorned, and finally, reluctantly, dealt with, sometimes by subterfuge, sometimes by brutality. Scenes in this central passage of the movie make it clear that nonviolent protests could contain a great deal of violence. There is a shattering scene in which wave after wave of Gandhi’s followers march forward to be beaten to the ground by British clubs. Through it all, Gandhi maintains a certain detachment; he is convinced he is right, convinced that violence is not an answer, convinced that sheer moral example can free his nation—as it did. “You have been guests in our home long enough,” he tells the British, “Now we would like for you to leave.”
The movie is populated with many familiar faces, surrounding the newcomer Kingsley. Where would the British cinema be without its dependable, sturdy, absolutely authoritative generation of great character actors like Trevor Howard (as a British judge), John Mills (the British viceroy), John Gielgud, and Michael Hordern? There are also such younger actors as Ian Bannen, Edward Fox, Ian Charleson, and, from America, Martin Sheen as a reporter and Can dice Bergen as the photographer Margaret Bourke-White.