Movie Review The Square

The Square (2017) 

Directed by Ruben Ostlund

Written by Ruben Ostlund 

Starring Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, Dominic West, Terry Notary

Release Date November 23rd, 2017 

The Square, the 2017 winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s highest honor, the Palme D’or, is a provocative and strange film. At times, the film defies description in its oddity and yet its points and purposes regarding political correctness as an excuse for the rich to ignore the poor are relatively obvious and on the nose. Directed by Ruben Ostlund, whose Force Majeure was far more interestingly provocative than The Square, the film has beautiful cinematography and a handful of the most interesting scenes in any movie in 2017.

Christian (Claes Bang) is the curator of a famed museum in Stockholm that specializes in Avant Garde performance art. The museum has recently received a very, very generous donation all the while the streets of Stockholm are teeming with the homeless and the helpless. Surely this type of money could be used for something better than a museum where the lead attraction appears to be an installation of piles of orderly gravel.

The new exhibit that this donation will help fund is another Avant Garde piece titled The Square. The Square is a lighted geometric square located in front of the museum. It is accompanied by a plaque indicating that "The Square" is a place of understanding and equality, to paraphrase the high-end pretension. Christian now must find a way to market the installation and the museum board has turned to a pair of millennial artists who have a unique viral campaign in mind.

That would be enough of a plot and metaphor for some movies but it’s not enough for Ostlund, who prefers to tell his story by putting the handsome and successful Christian through the ringer. When we meet Christian, he is walking to work when a young woman comes screaming out of the distance. The woman claims a man is chasing her and threatening her life. However, when Christian and another man stop to defend the poor, frightened woman, Christian winds up getting pickpocketed, and his seeming good deed proves to be the first of many indignities to befall our hero.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal