Mammoth (2009)

As the ending titles of Mammoth (2009) were running, my unsentimental friend S murmured "shit! this film was a shitload of shit!" If only I were as outspoken as my pal. I didn't like Lukas Moodysson's latest film either, but my feelings are mixed - as usual. The first thing that comes to my mind is that Moodysson's intention is all too clear. He wants to criticize global power and shed light on global relations. In this sense, his film has much in common with Babel - a movie which I found tedious, moralistic and self-righteous (there were a few successful scenes in there, I suppose). My judgement this time around is not as harsh, but there's something in Mammoth, too, that I would describe as self-righteous. (You might interject that Moodysson has said this or that thing in an interview, but I don't really care about that - for me, here, "intentions" are what we see on the screen.)

The story, in a nutshell, revolves around a family in New York, a wealthy computer game designer, his surgeon wife and their smart kid, and their Filipino nanny's family back in the Philippines. The New Yorkers are wealthy, but they work too much. The game designer, Tom, travels to Bangkok to strike a business deal. In Bangkok, he start to have doubts about himself and the position his wealth has secured him. He deserts his expensive hotel suite for a beach hut. But the nice hippie life does not bless him with the noncomplicated vacation days he yearned for. Back in New York, the surgeon, her kid and the nanny is trying to cope. The daughter, who hardly meets her hard-working, but restless mother, seems to have a deep fondness for the nanny, who teaches her stuff and is there for her. At the same time, she is a worker in the house, she takes care of the chores and the family depends on her services for their comfort. Back in the Philippines, her two sons are miserable. There is not much to do. The older son tries to get a job so that it would be possible for their mother to come home.

My biggest problem with Mammoth is perhaps best called political. This might be a one-dimensional interpretation, but Moodysson's criticism of global power relations seems to be conjoined with an almost evangelistic message about the Family; the beautiful, fragile core family. I realize Moodysson is not trying to translate Das Kapital into the big screen, but it is just that the critical aspect of his film is flattened out and drained by the focus of his movie, which is almost exclusively the family and family bonds. Taken in the wrong way, the message of this movie might be: if we simply worked less, and focused more on our families, peace and harmony would rule the planet. If we were only to realize the shallowness of the Dollar and focus on what really matters, everything would be OK. I don't think Moodysson actually intended to say this, but there is something in the approach taken that seems sanctimonious. (What exactly is it that makes the film sanctimonious and not for example an important examination of and reminder of global exploitation? Well, for one thing, the film is not brutal, and not focused enough.) The entire perspective of the movie is skewed somehow and I wish I could spell out more clearly why I think it is. Maybe: it is a slightly sentimental film and that robs it of credibility. (Lilja 4-ever was, in my opinion, not a sentimental film even though many might perhaps advocate that it is. I would say it contains many very strong images.)

I also had problems with the glossy, anonymous cinematography. This could be Grey's anatomy, and that is a very bad thing. In this sense, Moodysson explores a very different artistic territory than he did while shooting Ett hål i mitt hjärta (or Container - or even Lilja 4-ever which is perhaps one of my favorite films). My problem is not that Moodysson is "too mainstream". I don't know what it would mean to say that or what kind of accusal it would be. My problem is simply that the artistic form of the film is one more thing that glosses over the critical content. And this might also be related to one further problematic thing, namely that many metaphores are rubbed into the face of the viewer. This doesn't, to be sure, impress me.

On the one hand, Moodysson seems to have wanted to make a movie that has a very specific Message, but paradoxically, I experienced it as a film that drifts in many directions at the same time and that the whole thing remains a somehow aimless affair.

But as I said, there are also good things to be said about Mammoth. One of them is that none of the characters are simplified into a cliché. I did feel that most characters would have been more interesting, were we to spend more time with them, but still - black-or-white portraits do not abound here. Most of the exploitative relations (the New Yorker family & their nanny / Tom-the-computer-designer & thai prostitute Cookie) are not romanticized. And it is an entertaining film (I was not bored). But maybe that was the problem?