Christian is a curator at an art museum. In order to attract an audience and try out something new, he approves the idea of a 4*4 meter square drawn on the city square, where people can enter and demand help from society. In the midst of all this, he struggles with numerous personal problems: his wallet and mobile phone are stolen in a confidence trick, but he gets them back when he inserts letters threatening to call the police to all tenants of a building where he geolocated his phone. However, now an immigrant boy accosts Christian since his parents accused him of theft. Christian also has a one night stand with an American reporter, Anne, but doesn’t want a relationship. After a controversial video promoting the museum is released, which shows a blond girl entering the square and exploding from a land mine, Christian resigns.
Overrated “The Square” is assembled almost like a Bunuel-style surreal satire on the modern world, demolishing and deliberately refusing to yield to the classic three-act structure of storytelling, yet it is a set of episodic vignettes which get so random at times that the movie itself loses its compass and becomes aimless. 70 minutes into the film, and you still do not know what this story is about. You get from one bizarre moment to another, and wonder when the whole thing is finally goint to end already, and then it ends and that’s it. It has several good moments, one neat comical situation (after great sex, Christian suddenly does not trust Anne that she will throw away the condom with his sperm in it, so the two pull it on both sides and won’t let go), and at least two scenes with a great example of a visual style (the subliminal, aesthetic image of a person’s shadow only seen on the street, while the person is outside the frame; the camera going up in a spiral as it tracks Christian and his two daughters climbing up spiral stairs, creating an illusion as if the stairs are just shrinking beneath them), yet it also embodies some of the worst traits of European 21st century art-films: tedious-pretentious vague symbolism; a disparate set of scenes without any ability for a narrative; shock as a compensation for lack of inspiration.
Speaking of latter, there is an ill-conceived, cringe worthy 10-minute sequence of a shirtless artist acting like an ape during a high-society dinner, until he assaults a woman, so the guests intervene and beat him up. The message is clear—how easily civilized people can fall back into primitivism—but a message alone cannot carry an entire film. A movie needs a cinematic assembly more than just a message. While aspirational, ambitious and stylish thanks to director Ruben Ostlund, it is indicative that this film forgets its square from the title, a sanctuary of sorts, and just moves on. The symbolism is that the protagonist wanted to create an artistic stand, using a small square as some sort of place for an utopia and philanthropy, while in reality the entire society around him acts indifferent and suspicious towards everyone else (even when Christian trusts and tries to help a girl in trouble, this turns out to be a confidence trick in which she robbed his wallet), drawing a conclusion that art lost touch with modern people, able now only to deliver disingenuous artistic placebo. However, in its own indifference and contempt towards its story and characters, “The Square” ultimately became the very thing it criticized: a disingenuous artistic placebo.
Grade:++
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