"The Square": review

Oleg the performance artist (Terry Notary) torments Julian the more normal artist (Dominic West).

[WARNING: spoilers.]

My Ruben Östlund marathon continues with 2017's "The Square," billed as a satire of the art world. The film stars Claes Bang, Christopher Læssø, Elisabeth Moss, Dominic West, and Terry Notary. While the film's title refers to a piece of art titled The Square, the artwork itself is something of a McGuffin, as most of the movie is about the irony of how the art points to certain pious virtues while the people we meet generally fail to express those virtues in their own lives. The film could be taken as a rightish skewering of frou-frou PC sensibilities, but it does show a concern for the downtrodden that is the best of liberalism.

Denmark-born Christian (Bang, whom I last saw in "The Northman") is the chief curator of the X-Royal art museum, so named because the art space occupies what used to be the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden. A posh, avant-garde facility, the X-Royal hosts plenty of weird, abstract, and hard-to-interpret works of art, including a room full of evenly spaced piles of dirt. When we meet Christian, he's about to be interviewed by Anne (Moss). Anne asks Christian if he could please explain, in simpler language, a particularly abstruse and impenetrable paragraph from the art museum's website. Christian supplies an oversimplified explanation while looking for all the world as if he doesn't understand the prose himself. Christian later stands before an audience and introduces an older rich couple who have given the museum a $5 million contribution. Along with thanking the couple, Christian explains the museum's mission and talks about a very new, special piece to be exhibited out in front of the museum: a piece called The Square, by Lola Arias. After Christian's spiel, the resident chef comes up to present the courses about to be served to the audience members, but the audience members are already shuffling eagerly toward the dining area. This prompts the chef to scream in anger, causing everyone to freeze while he finishes his recitation of the menu and, looking chastened and subdued after his outburst, tells everyone to enjoy the food.

While outside the museum and crossing a plaza, Christian hears a woman screaming in terror. Though he is in a crowd, the woman runs right toward him and another man who happens to be walking next to Christian. The woman screams that someone is trying to kill her, and moments later, another man runs up furiously as the woman pulls away and keeps on sprinting. The man then stops and agreeably says he wasn't targeting the two men. Very oddly, the stranger bids Christian and the other man a good day. Christian is relieved at first, then he realizes his wallet, cell phone, and cuff links are missing: the screaming woman and furious man had been working a pickpocket con. The game isn't over, though, as Christian is able to track his cell phone. With the help of his assistant Michael (Læssø), Christian figures out that his phone is in a given apartment building. Realizing that GPS tracking isn't very exact (Michael guesses an error of about ten meters), and instead of simply calling the police, Michael and Christian come up with the idea of printing out an angry, threatening letter to be placed in the mail slot of every apartment in that building. The letter is worded as a personal accusation: "I know you are a thief..." Along with the accusation are instructions to return the wallet, cell phone, and cuff links by depositing them at a local 7-Eleven. Christian and Michael go to the rough neighborhood where the thieves apparently live, and Christian drops off the letters. Some ruffians attack Christian's car, but Michael takes the wheel and manages to drive himself and Christian to safety, although not without scraping up the car. Later on, Christian does indeed receive a package addressed to him, and inside, he finds his untouched wallet and cell phone—his cuff links, it turns out, had been with him all along.

A public talk, at the museum, with an American artist named Julian (West) is constantly interrupted by a man with Tourette's Syndrome who keeps clapping and shouting vulgarities. Julian tries to handle the situation with good humor, but it's obvious he's becoming exasperated. The female host also tries to be as civil as she can despite cries of "Show us your tits!" from the Tourette's sufferer.

Christian meets Anne while both are at the same party; they end up leaving together and having sex, but after Christian ejaculates into his condom, Anne demands that he hand the condom over to her. Suddenly suspicious that Anne might use his sperm to get herself pregnant and entrap him, Christian refuses to hand over his cum-filled rubber, and a sort of imprecation-laced wrestling match occurs, with Anne finally obtaining the condom. Later on, at the museum, Anne comes up to Christian and says she doesn't have sex with just anybody; for her, sex implies a deeper commitment, and she wants to know whether Christian is willing to be just as committed. Still sensing a trap, Christian worms his way out of the situation without giving Anne any sort of definite reply. Meanwhile, a 7-Eleven staffer calls Christian to tell him that a second package for him has arrived and needs to be picked up. It contains a childishly written note saying that Christian's accusation of thievery (remember, he basically accused everyone in the entire apartment building of stealing his possessions) has caused trouble, and that Christian must apologize to the offended party and to the party's family.

At the museum, an advertising agency is laying out its scenario for how to market the new exhibition of The Square, saying that, these days, the best marketing comes through controversy. The ad team's idea, which they don't explain in detail, is to provoke controversy by going against the stated ideals that The Square—a literal lighted, 4 ⨉ 4-meter square laid into the ground in front of the museum—purports to represent: a space in which fellow man must help fellow man, and all will have equal rights and responsibilities. Christian approves the ad team's idea without looking through it very deeply, and later on, to his horror, he discovers that the ad team has generated controversy with a special-effects-laden video in which a little, blonde homeless girl walks into the middle of The Square and suddenly dies in a horrific explosion, as if a land mine had been buried there.

The offended party who wrote Christian the letter demanding an apology turns out to be a furious Arab boy, maybe ten or twelve years old, who first meets with Christian's assistant Michael, and then with Christian himself after the boy somehow tracks Christian down. The boy meets Christian in the lobby of Christian's own apartment building as the older man is taking his daughters upstairs to their apartment. Christian threatens to hit the boy if he continues with his demands; the boy seems to slink away, but moments later, Christian hears the boy banging on the doors of other apartments. When Christian pops out again, the boy says that, as he promised in his own letter, he was now "making chaos" for Christian. Incensed, Christian ends up pushing the boy, who falls down the stairs and out of view. From Christian's reaction, we guess the boy is hurt but not badly, as Christian tells him, "I told you what would happen if you didn't listen to me." Christian goes back to his place, but he hears the boy plaintively whimpering "Help me." Christian doesn't go back out this time, and the whimpers eventually cease.

In a bizarre interlude that fits strangely into the plot, Christian attends a dinner that is a performance-art piece by a man named Oleg Rogozjin. Rogozjin imitates a great ape, which at first produces titters—he appears shirtless but using arm extensions that allow for a gorilla-like gait—but the humor vanishes as the "gorilla" becomes increasingly sinister and threatening. When Rogozjin attacks a beautiful woman by pulling her hair and dragging her out of her seat, a bunch of men suddenly rise up and tackle Rogozjin. They beat him with seemingly murderous intent, but the scene cuts away before we learn Rogozjin's fate.

The video of the child being blown up provokes a wildly negative reaction from every sector imaginable, but the video has gone viral, which is what the ad team was aiming for. At a press conference, Christian announces that he was irresponsible in allowing the ad to move forward, and that he will be stepping down as chief curator. Two reporters at the press conference take two completely opposite tacks toward Christian as he sits penitently in front of everyone: one reporter claims that Christian ought to be ashamed at showing such coldness to the homeless community who are, apparently, a teeming presence in Stockholm. Another reporter, however, asks whether Christian's condemnation of the ad and subsequent resignation amount to a kind of self-censorship, a curtailing of freedom of speech. Back at home, Christian flips through a newspaper that writes negatively about the promo video for The Square, but that also prominently mentions the artwork's creator and talks about her life. Christian might be out of a job, but the museum now has its publicity.

Feeling bad about what happened to the boy, Christian digs through garbage to find the boy's number and tries to call it, but a computer voice says no one is available at that number. Christian films a long video apology and sends it to that phone number, with no idea whether it will be received. Later on, while in the car with his daughters, he decides to revisit the boy's apartment building to deliver a personal apology, but a neighbor tells him that the boy and his family moved out some time ago. Dejected or pensive, Christian and his daughters drive back home. And that's how the film ends.

As with "Force Majeure," I found myself torn. The film's pacing was once again glacial, and that in itself could be a deal-breaker for many viewers. Billing something like this as a "comedy" or a "satire" seems strange given how plodding the movie is. It sometimes feels as if director Östlund is trying to undermine his own film by dragging scenes out or cutting them abruptly so that we don't have the satisfaction of a proper conclusion.

I'm beginning to see, after two of Östlund's movies, some of the man's tropes. Along with slow pacing, awkward tension, and putting children in stressful situations (in this film, Christian's daughters can hear what's going on in the apartment building's hallway as Christian deals with the angry kid), Östlund seems to love loose ends. As with "Force Majeure," in which we never learn the fate of the bus passengers, we don't find out Christian's fate after he's resigned from his position at the X-Royal Museum. (We also never learn what becomes of him and Anne.) Östlund also loves repeating certain musical leitmotifs: in this movie, there are two: a modernistic rendition of Ave, Maria; and a funky, Bobby McFerrin-like vocal bit that conveys a sense of the silly. This leads me to anticipate more of the same in Östlund's third movie, "Triangle of Sadness," which I'll be reviewing next.

Is the movie, in fact, a satire of the art world? I'll venture a yes, and I'll go one further and suggest that Östlund, who also wrote the story, is as ambitious as Tom Wolfe was with The Bonfire of the Vanities, a novel of American corruption that skewered almost every sector of society. Bonfire is a good lens through which to see Östlund here: "The Square" is commenting on the pretentious fatuousness of the art world, which speaks in an arrogantly postmodernist, obfuscatory idiom, condescending to the masses while also pretending, through its art, to care about the poor, the downtrodden, and the marginalized. Over and over again, we are reminded that The Square is supposed to represent things like compassion, equality, and aid for our fellow man, but the movie gives us constant scenes of homeless people begging and being ignored, or of rich and privileged people who react with fear when confronted by members of the rough-edged hoi polloi. The message here seems clear: the liberal caste that claims to feel for the disadvantaged and the voiceless is empty, soulless, and utterly uncaring. Östlund, like Wolfe, weaves an intricately interconnected plot involving people of different races and social classes; also like Wolfe, he shows how seemingly small events can lead to massive consequences—as when Christian dismissively approves the ad agency's proposal without actually examining it—an action that leads to his downfall. What's truly interesting is that movie critics, most of whom are lefties, adored "The Square," showering it with praise despite their being the targets of the film's criticisms.

The movie also seems to be saying something about distractions and interruptions, or maybe it's saying something about the importance of backgrounds. In the scene in which Anne confronts Christian at the museum after their weird night of sex and condom-wrestling, the tense exchange is constantly interrupted by a nearby art exhibit whose audio component contains a series of unpleasant noises that sound like metal objects collapsing and rolling around everywhere. This background distraction proves quite intrusive. In the first scene with Julian the artist, the Tourette's guy starts off as a background distraction, but his loud clapping and vulgarity become interruptive and make it difficult for the female presenter to continue interviewing Julian. The chef mentioned near the beginning of this review is interrupted when the crowd begins, rather rudely, to shuffle away in the middle of his spiel. In several silent moments where Christian is in his apartment, his concentration is interrupted by sounds coming from outside the apartment. Interruptions and distractions are frequent enough to be considered another Östlund trope, I think. There were some of those in "Force Majeure" as well, as the peaceful silence of the ski lodge was intermittently interrupted by far-off explosions meant to start controlled avalanches.

The scene with the man-ape was fascinating. It's hard to see how it fits into the overall plot, but it makes for an interesting and provocative interlude. The man-ape's presence is utterly compelling; actor Terry Notary, a muscular mo-cap actor who is an expert on animal movement, and who has worked on films like the Planet of the Apes series and "Avatar," does a great job of conveying atavistic menace as he's stalking through the dining area. Part of the humor of the scene comes from the fact that the man-ape, at one point, focuses on artist Julian, poking, prodding, and provoking the artist until Julian can stand it no longer and is forced to run away. Perhaps something is being said, in this scene, about the clash between the savagely primitive and the pretentiously civilized.

So I'm once again left torn. The slow pacing of the movie is brutal, but the movie is brimming with ideas and occasional flashes of recognizable humor. I'm left not quite knowing what to think, but I admire the way Östlund makes me, as the viewer, question my own emotions. It was, for example, only toward the end of the man-ape scene that I examined what I'd been feeling for the past few minutes and realized I'd been tense, anxious, and waiting for an explosion of violence—sort of the same thing that can happen when watching some of Quentin Tarantino's best scenes. So I ended up deciding I liked the man-ape scene. It didn't seem to square with the rest of the movie, but it somehow worked for me (and there had been hints that the scene was coming: Christian would occasionally find himself in a dark room where one wall projected moving images of the man-ape). I'm not sure how much I like cinematic auteurs in general: I'm always suspicious that they're trying to make abstruse, abstract statements that have little to do with reality, but I have to admit that, if Östlund is an auteur, he's one who encourages you to examine yourself.

Unfortunately, the movie contains two plot holes that I can't stop thinking about. Both relate to the angry Arab boy. First: how did the boy track Christian down? The only clue the boy had was the threatening letter that Christian had distributed to every resident in the apartment building. Christian left no address or phone number, so how could the kid end up at Christian's apartment? Are we to assume there was simply some sort of karmic magnetism that guided the boy to Christian, like the bad penny that always turns up? I don't know, but this should have been explained better. The second problem is much bigger: the boy, when he confronts Christian, tells him that his parents, upon receiving the accusatory note, immediately thought their own son was the thief. In anger, they rescinded all of his privileges, from video games to meeting friends and going anywhere. But if that were true, then how did the boy manage to chase Christian down? If he'd been grounded, shouldn't he have been at home, seething at the injustice of being accused and unable to prove his innocence? We can perhaps assume he somehow managed to escape his parents' surveillance, but that doesn't seem plausible. Whatever the case, I see this as a huge plot hole.

As with "Force Majeure," most of the problems the main characters face are caused by their inability to do one simple thing—apologize. In "Force Majeure," all Tomas has to do is recognize and apologize for his cowardice. In "The Square," all Christian has to do is face the boy and his family and apologize for writing an accusatory letter (and maybe apologize to Anne, too, but she came off as having several screws loose; is the annoying young woman another Östlund trope?). The difference between the two movies is that Tomas gains a sort of redemption while Christian loses his job and faces an uncertain future. And it just occurred to me that "Tomas" and "Christian" are both religious names. I wonder what that might mean.

So, based on what I know after watching two of Ruben Östlund's films, you're in for a slog if you're an American who normally lives on a diet of standard action films, comedies, and horror. Östlund's films will definitely prompt you to think if you're the thinking type, but they will bore and exasperate you if you're not prone to philosophizing, and/or you have the attention span of a housefly. So, a warning: Östlund isn't for the shallow or the impatient. Stay well away. But if you like pondering issues and social commentary, and if you welcome something other than the usual dreary, leftist perspective, "The Square" might just be for you.