Movie Details
| Title: | The Square | |
| Director: | Ruben Ostlund | |
| Year: | 2017 | |
| Genre: | Drama | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 09.23.17 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (2)
- Force Majeure
- Triangle of Sadness
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 09.23.17 | Alamo South Lamar | This Screening is part of event: FantasticFest 2017 The new one from the guy who did Force Majeur. It's about a museum director and attempts to comment on art, art criticism, social awareness, and class struggle. It takes on a lot and ultimately I think suffers from the strain. Although there are a good handful of great scenes, the ending doesn't really come together and there's a muddling of what the film is trying to say. I thought Elizabeth Moss's scenes were good, I loved that Dominic West's character wears pajamas with blazers, and all the contemporary art stuff was funny and great. One scene involves a performance artist pretending he's an ape at a formal dinner party full of artists and benefactors. The guy (who I later learned was a mo-cap actor on the Planet of the Apes films) takes things too far and suddenly the whole room is full of tense silence. Right after the film ended, they brought out a special guest but it was that actor with his arm extenders acting like an ape. I've never seen a theater go so quiet so quick. He didn't really do much - menacingly paced a few rows, slapped a cup out of someone's hand, then flipped over a server's prep tray on the way out of the theater, but the feeling of tension was palpable. I was sitting up toward the back of the theater and saw people around me quietly moving their water cups off the bar tables. Afterward there was a bunch of bullshit because some pregnant lady felt unsafe or whatever, but I felt like it was a perfect meta layer laid over the film. Here we were, a bunch of movie-goers clapping at the message packaged in a nice safe movie up on the scene when, just like the benefactors inside the film, we were confronted with something out of our control. It was great. |
