Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014)

[Jeff]

Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure is one of my favorite films this year. Wry, insightful, and often squirm-inducing, Östlund poses all sorts of questions about masculinity, instinct, shame, and delusion. He's most interested in how fragile the carefully-manicured facades we project for others are. The craftsmanship recalls Haneke, but with a darkly comic edge. There are some beautifully composed shots and really great sound design. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the ending, which theoretically poses some new questions, and redefines some characters, but the uncertainty only adds to the charm.

It's due for a fairly wide U.S. expansion over the next couple of months.

[zedz]

This is (still) in my top ten for the year. An extremely funny comedy of mortification that also manages to tackle (sideways) plenty of large and unusual themes, with characters that are just stylized enough to serve those themes without being alienatingly simplistic. They generally behave horribly to one another, but understandably so, not just for the benefit of the filmmakers' thesis. For me, the most effective (and painfully familiar) scene was the nocturnal crisis between the couple who simply had the misfortune to spend an evening with the central couple, but whose relationship is nevertheless infected with recriminatory what-ifs and consequent sleeplessness. This in turn sets up probably my favourite gag of the whole movie much later on:

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when the male friend over-enthusiastically seizes on an opportunity to prove his manhood once and for all . . . by encouraging a bunch of tourists to get off a stalled bus in an orderly fashion.

[Jeff]

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when the male friend over-enthusiastically seizes on an opportunity to prove his manhood once and for all . . . by encouraging a bunch of tourists to get off a stalled bus in an orderly fashion.

That was funny

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(Women and children first!), but I wondered what else Östlund intended for us to take away from that scene. In the central couple, the wife now seems unnecessarily panicked, while the husband is staying calm with the kids. The driver was clearly incompetent, but nobody else on the bus was reacting at quite that level. Were we supposed to see that everybody has the potential to behave unpredictably (perhaps irrationally) when confronted with an adrenaline-inducing situation. After (almost) everyone was off the bus, the driver seemed to safely pull away without problem. Was this a case of another false alarm situation? Or were we supposed to see that once again, it was the wife who had to take necessary action to protect her kids, because the husband was unwilling or self-interested? It seemed like a weird addendum to the film. The husband's earlier stagey "rescue" of his wife on the slopes seemed like a natural ending, emphasizing their perceived need to re-establish, at least for the children, the idea that dad was the manly leader of their crew. Still not sure entirely what to make of the bus.

[zedz]

I probably need to see the film again, but

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I feel like that scene was further exploration of their broken (or maimed) relationship, but amplifying the dysfunction to the community on the bus. It felt a bit like the initial incident had primed the wife for a disaster that never actually eventuated, and she couldn't really be blamed for feeling like the scary bus ride at the end was finally it. I also wonder whether her concerted panic was a way of forcing everybody else to 'come over' to her side - which indeed they do when they leave the bus - thus affording her the validation she had been craving since the initial incident. The fact that this 'crisis' was so much milder makes the situation comical and pathetic (in a strange way, it's a feeble rerun of the opening non-catastrophe, but this time with everybody sullenly following the wife's script), and the dark irony at the end is that it just perpetuates the 'holiday from hell' for everybody, and probably casts the wife in the eyes of all the other disgruntled holidaymakers as a chronic overreactor - though this is a film that's driven by overreactions.

[Jeff]

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It felt a bit like the initial incident had primed the wife for a disaster that never actually eventuated, and she couldn't really be blamed for feeling like the scary bus ride at the end was finally it. I also wonder whether her concerted panic was a way of forcing everybody else to 'come over' to her side - which indeed they do when they leave the bus - thus affording her the validation she had been craving since the initial incident. The fact that this 'crisis' was so much milder makes the situation comical and pathetic...

I like that explanation. She had a pent up need to express that reaction. It does seem to fit with Östlund's sense of humor too. I need to see his other films.

[zedz]

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It felt a bit like the initial incident had primed the wife for a disaster that never actually eventuated, and she couldn't really be blamed for feeling like the scary bus ride at the end was finally it. I also wonder whether her concerted panic was a way of forcing everybody else to 'come over' to her side - which indeed they do when they leave the bus - thus affording her the validation she had been craving since the initial incident. The fact that this 'crisis' was so much milder makes the situation comical and pathetic...

I like that explanation. She had a pent up need to express that reaction. It does seem to fit with Östlund's sense of humor too. I need to see his other films.

I think it also ties in to her need to relitigate (and relitigate) the initial incident in front of witnesses. I think that's one of the most effectively squirmy parts of the film. It's pretty unforgiveable for her to bring third parties in on such a personal dispute and force them to adjudicate, but the manner in which her husband had handled the situation (total shutdown and denial) was equally unforgiveable, and left her little alternative.

[warren oates]

Thanks for talking up this film, both of you. I went to see it today and liked it a lot, though perhaps a bit less than you two. I felt it had made its point with 20-30 minutes to go and a bit too much thematic and dialogic repetition. I had similar questions about the ending and read it almost like zedz. I'd add that for me

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it was important that the one woman who stayed on the bus was the one who seemed very much a risk taker in her interpersonal and family relationships, seeming to have a don't ask/don't tell policy with her husband and totally unbothered by the idea of cheating on him while on vacation or of sharing him with other lovers when he himself might be away. All of those thoughts seemed totally anathema to Ebba. For her the sanctity of the domestic unit, of the image of her own nuclear family, was almost even more important than their physical safety. What her husband did in that split second on the balcony shattered her idea of their family and of the unspoken rules that she previously assumed had bound them all together.

[Red Screamer]

Hilarious(?) video of Östlund and his producer reacting to the Oscar nominations

[ianungstad]

I think they are just trying to parody the Steven Spielberg/Jaws video.

[Lost Highway]

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Maybe it's that I grew up near the Alps, spending many a winter skying with my parents as a child, but I thought the woman's decision to get off the bus was absolutely the right one and not an overreaction. I've once been on a bus where the driver appeared to drive too fast on a road like that and it was truly terrifying. I though the ending enforced that yet again, she is the one who takes the initiative, while the men, again, fail in their roles as protectors or pay lame lip service to it.

[swo17]

zedz said elsewhere on the forum that this film was all about terrible people being terrible to each other. I think that's true only to the extent that we are all terrible, or rather, that we all have the capacity to be terrible, to be cowardly when it matters most, to be self-consumed and glib, to take our personal troubles out on our friends, to try to hide our terribleness. All of the "terrible" things done in this film are relatable enough that if we haven't already done them ourselves, it's difficult to say with certainty that we would react any differently than the characters in this film if we were put in the same situation.

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Which is why it's something of a relief (and not just comic relief) that the main conflict resolves itself as it does, with the staged rescue of the wife for the benefit of the kids. It's a funny and even slightly pathetic moment, but also serves to show how forgiveness, compromise, and swallowing your pride are the things that can keep a marriage intact in spite of our terrible tendencies. I feel like if this were, say, a Haneke movie, it might have played much the same through to this scene, at which point the husband wouldn't have been able to find the wife, because not only is he a terrible coward but life is pointlessly cruel to boot. Of course though, that could have made for a good film too!

[D50]

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For the bus scene, I think what comes into play is the group dynamic displayed at the outdoor meal. Everyone was literally frozen until the last second because it's proven that you are more likely not to react to a situation when in a group. She knew this, and thus acted for everyone.

[warren oates]

What D50 is talking about is something that's more common in situations where there's any kind of situational ambiguity. I'd say that the dynamics of the restaurant scene and the bus scene are a little different, in part because of the perception of the threats and the time frames for acting/reacting. The bus is more likely to fit the model of diffusion of responsibility.

I like what swo's been saying about this film in the Gone Girl thread and above. The Haneke comparison is apt too and yet another reason to praise Force Majeure, for finding the funny lining inside the bleak existential northern worldview that permeates a certain kind of European art cinema.

[D50]

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I'm glad I visited this thread after I saw the film though. In the back of my mind I was thinking that the rescue seemed staged - especially when she calmly walked back up into the fog for her skies. And it also once again proved that you can run in ski boots!

I see this film as mostly about Ebba, as evidenced by the ending scene. Ever since that second day incident she has been running the avalanche scene in her head over and over. What could I have done differently? What could I have done to make my man be a man? Was I to blame for his running? It's like up until that point he wore the pants in the relationship - and in the end, she did.

[Zot!]

Brilliant, I loved this. The wife and I were ROFLing through most of the comedic set-pieces. My personal favorites were

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the tension-breaking r/c helicopter moment and the apres-ski patio scene. The sound-design with the swelling euro-dance track was so brilliantly timed to the emotional peaks and valleys of the characters and the otherwise static shot. The discotheque bro-down seemed a little too heavy-handed, and broke the spell for me, but it's a minor complaint

People are comparing this to Haneke, but the humor and meticulous focus on the mundane, seemed a more akin to Roy Andersson.

[zedz]

People are comparing this to Haneke, but the humor and meticulous focus on the mundane, seemed a more akin to Roy Andersson.

I think swo's comparison with Haneke was there to point out how it was nothing like a Haneke film, or were you thinking of something else?

[Zot!]

People are comparing this to Haneke, but the humor and meticulous focus on the mundane, seemed a more akin to Roy Andersson.

I think swo's comparison with Haneke was there to point out how it was nothing like a Haneke film, or were you thinking of something else?

You're right, swo already made the point that the film is refreshingly kind to the audience, however, I think I conflated it with the following:

It’s Michael Haneke meets “Scenes From a Marriage”

Which is ridiculous. Michael Haneke meets Larry David maybe. Anyway, it's great fun, and doesn't punish the viewer to make its point.

[Zot!]

Did anybody attend the touring Ostlund retrospective, and have recommendations?

[PfR73]

I saw all the films. Involuntary is the one that worked the least for me. I didn't find any of the individual stories developed enough on their own, or enough thematic cohesion between them as a unit. Play is very well done, but the experience of watching it was excruciating; it made me angry at just about every character in the film. The Guitar Mongoloid reminded me a bit of Jackass or a collection of found footage; it's funny and has a great ending. They're all worth seeing, but I'd recommend Play & The Guitar Mongoloid more than Involuntary. For the shorts, my favorite was Incident By A Bank.

[warren oates]

I'll second Play, which should make it obvious to the few above who are confused about where all these Haneke comparisons are coming from. At times, it feels like an alternate version of one of Haneke's earlier films, like 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. There's a cool, almost alien approach to humanity. And an awareness of the menace lurking just beneath the surface of daily life. One scene on a street car is very reminiscent of the Métro harassment Haneke shot for Code Unknown.

My favorite thing about Play is how Östlund uses carefully composed and choreographed long takes and bits of physical action, endurance and derring-do to up the stakes and make you feel the time in an almost documentary register. There's one simple shot, another long take, that blew me away -- what was happening and what continued to happen

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one of the skinny little bullied boys cranking out nearly 100 push-ups

was just not the sort of thing you'd ever expect to see in a film like this. I feel the same way about the moment where the lead boy

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climbs that big tree, much higher and more recklessly than you think he should, to the point where you start to worry about the actor's safety.

Likewise on the rather shocking digression where the third boy

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drops trou on camera for an emergency shit that looks completely real.

[domino harvey]

American remake coming with Julie Louis-Dreyfus in the lead

[warren oates]

Hope this doesn't happen at all, especially with her in the cast. Short of a stunning Steve Carell-like transformation, she's just got too much of a comedy face and persona. She'd be telegraphing with her mere presence everything that's so funny in the original because it's so self-serious and deadpan. A thoroughly pointless remake in any case.

[zedz]

Hope this doesn't happen at all, especially with her in the cast. Short of a stunning Steve Carell-like transformation, she's just got too much of a comedy face and persona. She'd be telegraphing with her mere presence everything that's so funny in the original because it's so self-serious and deadpan. A thoroughly pointless remake in any case.

That's only a problem if you're assuming that the American version will be attempting a note-for-note replication of the original, but frankly I can't think of any American comedy that's successfully navigated that kind of tone. It's also a terrific premise for a more traditional and/or broader comedy, which is what I'm assuming we'll be getting. Louis-Dreyfus is a great, agile comic actor, so I'm not going to write it off just yet.

[FrauBlucher]

This doesn't sound interesting to me but it depends on who the writer will be.

[warren oates]

I'll concede that zedz has a point. Though I do wonder if trying to thread that needle of a more broadly comedic and appealing Hollywood comedy wouldn't so dilute the material that it turns into something else entirely. Aside from the deadpan tone what really gives this film's comedy its juice for me are the existential stakes for the characters and their relationships. A less serious Hollywood approach would almost certainly result in much lower stakes.