Directed by
Ruben Östlund
A Swedish family is on vacation in
the Swiss Alps. The father, mother, and
young daughter and son all appear happy and pose for pictures in front of a
snow-capped mountain. They look like an advertisement
found in an REI catalog. On day two,
they enjoy lunch atop a restaurant balcony overlooking the slopes. Suddenly, an avalanche begins to form. As it grows larger and larger, the patrons
gather in front of the ledge to take pictures.
But soon the avalanche appears to grow out of control and everyone
begins to scream and embrace for impact.
Dusty white powder covers the balcony.
The mother grabs her children and pulls them under her. The father grabs his iPhone and flees the
scene.
This is the crucial episode that sets
forth in motion the events of Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure,
which despite its premise is not a disaster movie, but instead a subtle, introspective
study of what happens when the avalanche fiasco turns out to be a false
alarm. The family and all the restaurant
patrons emerge from the scene physically unharmed, but for the mother, the
emotional damage is irreversible and cannot be easily healed: At the time of
crisis, her maternal “fight-or-flight” instincts triggered the immediate
reaction of protecting her young children, while her husband’s reaction was self-preservation
at all costs.
The father, named Tomas (played by
Johannes Kuhnke) doesn’t appear to be selfish or uncaring. And the mother, named Ebba (Lisa Loven
Kongsli) initially does not appear to be too disturbed by her husband’s actions
(or, perhaps more accurately, non-actions). Östlund photographs Force Majeure mostly in series of long, unbroken static shots so
when as viewers we first witness the avalanche, the camera does not pan to
Tomas’ fleeing or Ebba’s stunned reactions like it would in a Hollywood film (this
may be a scene to rewind and pause several times if viewing the film on DVD). We see the chaos of the event just as the
characters do, which proves to be crucial because in order for the emotional
complexity of Force Majeure to work,
we have to understand both sides of the issue.
In Tomas’s view, he was simply
acting on his natural impulse to run to safety, and since the avalanche ultimately
ended up benign and everyone ended up safe and unharmed, why dwell on grave hypotheticals? For Ebba, the issue is much more complicated –
so complicated, in fact, that she doesn’t even broach it until later that
night, while having dinner at the lodge with friends. At first her tone is playful, but perhaps
inevitably, it turns to genuine pain and disappointment over his abandonment of
her and the children. Now one of the
core aspects of marriage is that we are privy to our significant others at
their best times as well as their worst (not unlike the famous maxim attributed
to Marilyn Monroe, “If you can’t handle met at my worst, then you sure as hell
don’t deserve me at my best.”) Ebba and
Tomas have undoubtedly witnessed each other at their best and worst moments,
and Tomas’s actions during the avalanche would undoubtedly qualify as one of
his worst moments (his ensuing self-denial and defense of his actions don’t exactly absolve
him, either). But marriage is also about
mutual respect and courtesy for one another, and the acknowledgment that no one
is perfect and some things are better left withheld from friends and other
loved ones.
That being said – while Tomas’s
actions may have been indefensible, is it any better that Ebba confronts and
embarrasses him about them in front of their mutual friends? Yes, Tomas may be in denial about the
severity of the situation (similarly, male audience members may grow impatient
with the movie’s near-obsessive focus on the event), but Ebba’s decision to share
these details with friends not once but on two separate occasions constitutes a
major marriage faux pas. If we are to believe that Tomas truly cares
about his wife and children, isn’t it natural to expect that his reaction to
her feelings of abandonment would be his own sadness and regret that he couldn’t
have acted as a better protector? Isn’t
Ebba’s public shaming of her husband unnecessarily cruel? Or is it justified on the grounds that it was
Tomas’s own selfish and uncaring behavior that led her to have these feelings
in the first place, and a public airing of grievances may be just the stern treatment
Tomas deserves?
As you can probably see, Force Majeure is designed to push
buttons with viewers (particularly married ones) and make you ask serious questions
about your own strengths and inadequacies.
It’s so easy to read a book or watch a film about the Holocaust or the
Civil Rights Movement and proclaim that had you been there, you would have
sacrificed yourself in the name of justice and Universal Good. Watching Force
Majeure, I thought about the first thing I would reach for in the event of
a fire at my house (the answer is not my iPhone.) But at the same time, as Tomas -- or someone like Steve Bartman -- essentially
tells his friends: You weren’t there, you didn’t see what I saw, and regardless
of what you want to believe, had you been there you more likely than not would
have done what I did.
Of course, Steve Bartman had the
luxury of pulling a Henry Hill and going into hiding, removing himself from the moralistic scowls of
casual onlookers and talking heads.
Tomas and Ebba have no such luck, and have to endure the rest of their
vacation – hell, the rest of their lives – with the knowledge that Tomas acted
less than heroically during time of crisis (in this respect, he joins the likes
of one George Costanza). How can their marriage, which may have
already been fragile to begin with, continue to survive? What’s fascinating about Force Majeure is that Tomas and Ebba both desperately want to forget about the events during the
avalanche – this should be Exhibit A in the school of “the less said, the
better.” Put another couple into this
scenario and maybe they laugh about it over a couple of drinks, or perhaps it’s
so insignificant that it’s never even formally brought up. But Tomas and particularly Ebba prove
incapable of not talking about it and not thinking about it, and this begins
what appears to be a path leading down the road of self-destruction. Like many unhappy married couples, they are
the only ones laying the bricks.
There are other characters in Force Majeure. There’s the couple Tomas and Ebba dine with,
who go back to their hotel room and naturally begin to question their own
actions and inclinations if placed in the same circumstances. There’s a married friend of Ebba’s seeing a
much younger man, who informs her that monogamous relationships tend to have
the toxic effect of defining an individual’s identity solely in relationship to
the man or woman they are attached to.
Then there are Tomas and Ebba’s young children, Vera and Harry, who
spend most of the vacation distracted by their iPads and yelling at their
parents. It’s possible to interpret
these kids in a few ways: Their bossiness and aggression (at one point they
kick Tomas and Ebba out of the hotel room) demonstrate how they are the products
of a dysfunctional marriage. Or maybe it’s
just that they’re spoiled. Or maybe they
recognize that their parents may be on the brink of divorce and are trying to
keep them together in whatever misguided and naïve ways they can. Or maybe they don’t understand anything at all.
Force
Majeure is not a perfect movie. At
times it is too slow-paced, the supporting characters are underdeveloped, and the
final ten minutes feel tacked on and heavy-handed. But Östlund is a masterful provocateur of resuscitating the
baggage we want to sweep underneath the rug during a long marriage, and how
small, casual moments are capable of revealing deep and profound defects. Even more broadly, the film dares to ask
questions about contemporary masculinity and the Tomas’ contested role as the “man
as protector,” a socially conservative ideal now considered anachronistic and even
politically incorrect today. As George
Costanza asks prophetically, “What kind of a topsy-turvy world do we live in
where heroes are cast as villains?” The answer is a world where there are no
heroes or villains, but only vulnerable husbands and wives whose personal insecurities
and feelings of guilt need not necessarily require avalanches to be triggered.
(Note: Force Majeure is Sweden's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 87th Academy Awards.)
Rating: 3.5 stars
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