I haven’t seen all of the films that were nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the recent Academy Awards, but I find it hard to believe that all five were better than Everlasting Moments, Sweden’s entry. (It apparently made it as far as the short list of nine.) Over the years Sweden has perfected a certain kind of film for the international market: lengthy, detailed stories about families who lived a century or so ago. Think of the Pelle the Conqueror, or Best Intentions, or Ingmar Bergman’s atypical but audience-pleasing Fanny and Alexander. That tradition may have started with the director Jan Troell, whose 1971 The Emigrants and its sequel The New Land were among the most popular imports of that decade. Based on his wife’s research into her family, Everlasting Moments is set in the early years of the 20th century, a time of social unrest and poverty in that country’s history. Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen) is a working-class wife and mother in a seaport town. Her husband Sigfrid (Mikael Persbrandt) is a large, strong man who works hard to support his ever-growing family. He loves them but also loves to drink, which brings out the worst in him. The story’s dramatic hook is Maria’s discovery of photography: Attempting to sell a camera she won years ago at a fair, she is instead persuaded to use it and discovers that she has a knack for this fledgling art, a talent that gives her more guilt than pleasure. But while Troell, who has always photographed his own films, empathizes with his distant in-law on this, Everlasting Moments succeeds simply as a family chronicle in a difficult time. It is filled with incidents which individually seem to contribute nothing to the plot, but which cumulatively weave a rich portrait of ordinary people and the era in which they live. It seems to be getting a half-hearted release in the US, which is an awful shame: Everlasting Moments swept Sweden’s equivalent of the Oscars, and is certain to win an audience here with viewers who manage to find it.

—m. faust

Watch the trailer for Everlasting Moments