The Square (2017)

Director: Ruben Östlund
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:

1. Force Majuere
2. Play
3. The Square
4. Involuntary

 Rating: 4.25/5

Gitarrmongot (The Guitar Mongoloid) (2004)

Director: Ruben Östlund
Writer:    Ruben Östlund
Cast:       Mikael Allu, Bjarne Gunnarsson, Erik Gustafsson
Language: Swedish

The film marked the feature film debut for Swedish director Ruben Östlund and it is about different people living outside the norms in the fictional city Joteborg which not much different from real-life city of Goteborg. Even though it is not a documentary, most of the people seen in the film are non-actors more or less playing themselves.

Östlund has directed four feature lengths film so far and I found the other three to be great. So I watched this with pretty good expectations and was really disappointed with it. I found it totally uninteresting. The film is supposed to be a criticism against the boredom of normal Swedish films and all I did watching it was getting bored. I think it is more of a case of making a mockery of the audience which is suggested by the last scene. The boy in it connects several bin bags filled with air and let it fly from a cliff. As it passes over the streets,  several onlookers speculate on what it is with some suggesting it could be an advertisement or some sort of weather balloon. It kind of disrupts their otherwise normal looking day for just a few seconds. Maybe Östlund is speculating that viewers of the film would give more meaning than it deserves to make their time watching it worthwhile, when in fact it is just a waste-filled bin bag of a film.

Östlund trademark like long takes using static camera is already present in the film which shouldn't surprising since he already had considerable experience as director of skiing videos.Overall it is one to avoid but people might want to watch it if they are fans of his other works like I am.

Rating: 1/5

Play (2011)

Director: Ruben Östlund
Writers:  Ruben Östlund ,Erik Hemmendorff
Cast:       Lisbeth Caspersson, Kevin Vaz, Johan Jonason
Language: Swedish

Inspired by actual court cases, the film portrays a group of black boys aged 12-14 who rob a smaller group of white boys by means of psychological bullying tactics. Their modus operandi is to ask the victim to show his phone which they claim resembles the one that was robbed last week from one of their brothers. They insist that they should confirm the identity with the said brother and proceed to bully them further. 

The film takes a look at the modern Scandinavian/Liberal society's attitude when it comes to dealing with immigrant issues. The film is not really about bullying even though it is based on an actual case of the same. The director, in a totally genius fashion, makes the liberal left confront their own usual selves where Political Correctness gone mad and nanny states have produced what can be called as reverse-racism. We have all faced bullying in our lives at some point or the other and the hate that it generates towards the one who is bullying can be of epic proportions. There is one scene during the film where a group of people confront the bullying boys and intimidate the shit out of them. At that point I really wanted them to beat the shit out of those boys. I have seen people justifying ragging by seniors in college as a process which will help in reducing inhibitions, but in practice it is just a form of bullying where all the insecurities of people who does it come out of woodwork. It is indeed a big issue in India.

In parallel to the bullying story, the director inter-cuts into a train in-between where the conductor is worried about an unattended cradle in the coach. He makes announcements alerting the passengers of its existence which is against safety standards and asks the owner to come and claim it. When no one shows up, he again makes further announcements and finally tells them that it will be removed at the next station. When he is about to remove it, his colleague tells him something which prompts him to take it back and again make the announcement but this time in English. A bemused passenger quips that the next announcement will be in German. Director is using this plot-line to show the nanny-stateness of Scandinavia which might be an explanation for their softness and political correctness. The film would be of much relevance these days especially after the Charlie Hebdo incident. In my opinion the policy of multiculturalism is madness. All efforts should be made to integrate the immigrants into your country so that that they will uphold the same values like Liberty, Free-Speech etc because otherwise it will breed resentment. What you are doing through multiculturalism is delaying your own confrontation with the issue of racism and class struggles and when the confrontation happens inevitably it will be much more difficult than if you had gone for integration.

In the last sequence of the film, one of the parents of the bullied confronts one of the bullies who is sitting in a bench with his brother and the cradle. The encounter become physical even as the father tries to explain the situation to him. A by-stander takes exception to this and accuses him of racism at which point he accuses her of reverse-racism. The father would represent most of us in the audience. Some will interpret the film as very racist but that would me missing the point completely. The film triggered havey debates in Swedish press with some from the liberal left accusing the director of racism, completely missing the irony of it. The film is not a mirror on immigrants but one on the native Swedes. How and when the cradle end up in the train is not explained.

Film is characterized by the director's trademark of extremely long takes with a largely still camera. We get to look from a distance what is happening. Ostlund's 'Force Majeure' is among my top three from last year. All three films I have seen so far from him have been great and I am gonna finish his filmography soon.

Rating: 5/5

De ofrivilliga (Involuntary) (2008)

Director: Ruben Östlund
Writers:  Ruben Östlund, Erik Hemmendroff
Cast:       Villmar Bjorkman, Linnea Cart-Lamy, Leif Edlund
Language: Swedish

The film, directed by Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure), is a tragic comedy or comic tragedy as described by him featuring five parallel stories with human group behavior as the common theme. It makes itself very clear during the classroom scene where a student knowingly makes a mistake just to conform with the group when she is unaware that the teacher told had already rest of the students to disagree with the obvious right answers that she would give in order to demonstrate it. 

It took me some time to figure out what was happening. When you have multiple story lines you are biased to look for them to converge physically. In stead in this film the director is going for a common theme that connects them all together. Still there are some scenes which are disguised to make us think that we are watching a different story to the one being shown and these show us up for the judgement that we make on characters based on prejudice. The film opens with a scene from the perspective of windshield of a vehicle gliding through streets without encountering any traffic. This scene is repeated again at the end but we realize that it is from an Ambulance for which road has been cleared and with the absence of music it feels very different. The five story lines in the film are:

1) A party in a house where the host gets smashed in the face by some fireworks. He refuses to go to hospital because he doesn't want to be a spoilsport even as the male members in the party consoles the wife that these things are not explosives and practically not dangerous at all. You can now guess where the ambulance fits into the story.

2) Two teenage girls acting as such in a very teenage fashion taking kinky pictures of themselves and behaving like drunk hooligans. The group is absent in most of this story line but I guess they are trying to behave as per normal teenage stereotype.

3) The school story line where a teacher stands up against the abusive behavior towards an unruly student by her much senior colleague, only to leave her alienated from rest of the staff. 

4) A frat reunion holiday in which one of them takes exception to the sexual prank committed on him by his best friend only to make a u-turn when he felt isolated from the group.

5) A long distance bus driver who refuses to drive further unless the passenger who damaged the curtain rod in the toiler owns up.

In all these story lines the people who took a stand against the group are on the right ultimately but we question their actions in almost all the cases. We are also prone to the group behavior even when we are far removed from the actions and observe them like the cameraman in this film where it is most of the time still. Film is characterized by very long takes.

Overall it is a great watch even though it takes some time for you to connect the dots. Five stories in which there are no commonality in terms of time or space can be disorienting initially but it is definitely worth persevering with. Not nearly as tough as watching Michael Haneke's '71 fragments of a Chronology of Chance ', which I didn't like.

Rating: 4/5   

Turist (Force Majeure) (2014)

Director: Ruben Östlund 
Writer:    Ruben Östlund
Cast:       Johannes Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Clara Wettergren
Language: Swedish, English

A family on a ski holiday in the French Alps find themselves staring down an avalanche during lunch one day; in the aftermath, their dynamic has been shaken to its core, with a question mark hanging over their patriarch in particular.

It is the reaction to what turned out to be an avalanche smoke, instead of a proper avalanche, that causes tension between the members of the family. The mother tries to protect the children while the father takes his gloves and phone and runs away. Even though they don't speak about it immediately, the event comes up during their dinner conversations with other holidaymakers. While the situation is totally awkward for them, it makes for us a brutally funny film. I first came across the term 'Force Majeure' while reading some contracts in which it stated that consideration has to be made for unforeseen circumstances and included those words. Funnily enough, it also included 'Acts of God' and I really don't have a clue about what that could possibly mean. Can I say 'God told me to not honor the contract'?

The film has this Force Majeure event affecting the marriage and family contract that they all implicitly signed on to. It was a split second decision for the husband to make and he acted based on his instincts. To make matters worse he denies that he made a run for it when the wife first brings the matter into conversation. The wife also ends up talking to another woman who has an open relationship which leaves her questioning the sacrifices she is making in her relationship without any benefits to show for it in a 'Force Majeure' situation. Their situation also affects the relationship of their couple friends' when the wife in it concludes that her much older husband would also react the same way. At the end of it, after a family crying 'catharsis', they leave the resort in a happy state following another near death experience. That would have been the logical end for the film but it prolongs for another ten minutes giving a resolution for the other couple in questions. Some people have objected to that ending but I didn't find it that problematic to ruin the whole film for me.

Overall it is a great film that would find a place in my top five list for the year as of now. In some instances I was reminded of Sreenivasan's 'Chinthavisthtayaya Shyamala'. Also, there is a Heneke feel to the whole thing and I found the whole family mechanically brushing their teeth extremely hilarious. It has been shortlisted for the academy awards in the Foreign film category.

Rating: 5/5