Review of The Square (2017) by Dana F — 27 May 2018

Whoa, there is a LOT going on with this movie. I can see this movie being taught in both film appreciation and sociology classes of the future... by a super nerdy, maniacal professor to a group of glassy-eyed post-teens who are trying to figure out what the hell they just watched.

This film is Swedish director Ruben Ostlund's follow-up to the brilliant "Force Majeure", which if you haven't seen, you should. And yes, it's a foreign film - some of it is in English but most of the film is subtitled Swedish.

And all of it is complex. On one hand it's a dark satire of the high-concept contemporary art world, and on the other much bigger hand, it's a biting criticism/exploration of social constructs.

It's one of the few films I've seen that is critical of the liberal elite, pointing out how their social altruism is steeped in hypocrisy. And if you don't understand what I said just there, it's probably better that you don't see this movie.

I barely understand it myself, and flatter myself when I say that I probably only absorbed even half of the points this movie was trying to make. This movie won the Palm D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year, which is in and of itself a vehicle for high art, so there is a certain irony to the movie.

.. one that it recognizes and fully embraces. While it's an incredibly smart film (to be honest, too smart for the likes of me), it's also haphazard and lacks focus. It's slow and tedious and about an hour too long, and it uses unconventional storytelling with a tangential narrative that left me feeling a little befuddled.

This movie is hard to review because it is not enjoyable, nor was it designed to be. If anything, its sole purpose is to make the viewer uncomfortable. And in that, it succeeds... boy, does it succeed.

There are darkly comic moments that will make you laugh out loud, but mostly, it's either boring or uncomfortable or both. This is both a movie for the thinking man and the creative man, assuming they are one and the same person.

So it's definitely not for everyone, probably for very few ... but the people who like it will adore it. But it definitely has something to say... and I'm still trying to figuring out what.