Writer: Ruben Östlund
DOP: Fredrik Wenzel
Cast: Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, Dominic West
Language: Swedish, English
A prestigious Stockholm museum's chief art curator finds himself in times of both professional and personal crisis as he attempts to set up a non-controversial new exhibit.
What all things that you can think of to be in the European news cycle over the past few years, all of them are in here; the refugee crisis, political correctness gone mad, debate around freedom of speech and expression, #MeToo, so-called Islamophobia, social contract etc. All of this is expressed by different sequences which put either the protagonist or other characters in it in not so normal kind of situations where things are quite unpredictable. Normal reaction of the viewer will be what you will do if you are in such a situation. Östlund goes for the squirmy kind of humor that he is known for and you are just glad that you have not faced these situations in real life, yet. A significant numbers of us are the kind who would feel uncomfortable about asking for extra pappadams during wedding sadhyas and won't know how to react if you are in the process of being pick-pocketed.
His other films like Play and Involuntary were both with parallel kind of sequences and explored similar kind of themes but with a more singular focus. Play was about the timidness of Swedish/Western European societies, especially from the liberal left, while discussing the topic of immigration by putting a situation of a group of black boys bullying a group of white boys. Involuntary was about group behavior and conformity. The Square, which premiered at Cannes and won the Palme d'Or, has a single protagonist whole way through but overall has a collection of sketches feel to it. Don't know whether it started off as a multiple story-line feature but was later condensed to this current form. Sequences do work spectacularly well but the seemingly scatter-gun sort of approach to the topics that it touches make you feel that overall it is less than sum of its parts. Conclusion if to be drawn at all out of the film would be that there is no correct way to respond to these topics. Perfect example for it would be the press conference sequence where you are damned either way. It reminded me of the predicament faced by the makers of the film Padmavati.
Film is stunning visually and the unusual soundtrack also works very well. The poster that I saw initially of the film made me think it was a period piece but was pleasantly surprised to see that it was very much contemporary. If I were to rank his films, the order would be:
- Force Majuere
- Play
- The Square
- Involuntary
Rating: 4.25/5
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