Everlasting Moments

We follow a mother of five … no, wait, make that six … no wait, here’s another … well, the mother of a large and growing family, married to an abusive drunk, from 1907 to about 1920. They are very poor, but she has a camera she won in a lottery. She is befriended by the man in the photo shop where she goes to buy film, paper, developer, and other items needed by photographers in those days of glass plates and long exposures, and she discovers she has an eye for great shots. There are hardships, there is defiance on her part, there is real deprivation when the war starts. Eventually … well, I won’t go any further. It’s not a surprise, really, because this movie is like real life (was based on a real woman’s life), so there are no great dramatic resolutions. Things change, slowly or abruptly, as they do in life. This is a powerful, engrossing movie with a stellar performance by Maria Heiskanen, a plain-looking Finnish woman who is not as old as she appears here.