Force Majeure: Couples Discuss Family Crisis Film
In the Russian rolled out one of the best films of the last year - "Force Majeure" by Ruben Estlund, who took the jury prize in the Cannes program "Special Look". This is the story of an exemplary married couple who went to a ski resort and suddenly got into an extreme situation.
"Force Majeure" calls into question the familiar roles in the family, suggests thinking about the concept of masculinity and traditional expectations from a partner. Among other things, this is just a very talented and beautiful film with a high degree of irony, which can be watched as an exciting story "nice people go on holidays, and something goes wrong." We asked to watch the film and share our thoughts on three different couples: a family without children, a family with children, and a couple that began dating not so long ago.
Ekaterina Birger and Georgiy Birger
Together 9 years
In "Force Majeure" rises The most pressing problem is how much stereotypical ideas about how men and women should behave have eaten into our consciousness. When the protagonist (husband and father of two children), seeing the avalanche, takes off instead of helping family members, it causes confusion and even contempt. From childhood we are driven into the head that men must be brave, strong, resilient, and here the hero is sheer disappointment. He is a coward, refuses to admit his guilt, and then also roars a beluga, so his wife and children have to calm him down. You look and think by inertia: that’s an asshole. And only then you realize that, in general, not quite an asshole - just an ordinary person with his own weaknesses. In the mirror situation in the finals, when the wife panics and runs out of the bus with the kamikaze driver at the wheel, and the whole family remains inside, there are no serious complaints about heroin.
Separately entertaining to watch as the problematics of the film reveal the stories of secondary characters. Here's a family friend came to the mountains to rest with a young girlfriend, leaving the children from his first marriage with his ex-wife, and this is a normal situation. But the woman arrived at the weekend with a young lover, leaving her family - and the eyebrows of others frowned disapprovingly on her forehead. In the film, the archaic behavior patterns of men and women fall apart, the characters change roles, and the audience instinctively comes from horror. The more interesting to check yourself and your reaction. Another thing is that you can act as a moral compass for as long as you want, but, obviously, anything can happen in life and you cannot be sure that you will always meet your partner’s hopes, and he’s yours. The main thing is to have the strength to understand and forgive. And better, as hypocritical as it may sound, just do not fall into such stories as the heroes of "Force Majeure." Because, according to statistics, the majority of couples who survived emergencies, later divorced.
For me, "Force Majeure" - This is first of all a film about gender. About what rights and obligations by default imposes on a person the presence or absence of a penis at birth, what kind of stupidity it really is and how, even realizing this stupidity, people are not yet ready to resist it. Estlund managed to very accurately capture the moment in our time, when psychology made a sharp leap, and the society itself did not have time for it. He simulates a situation in which at a perilous moment a man in a family behaves "not like a man." And even having a psychology friend who explains that we are all human, and the behavior in unforeseen situations is unpredictable, instincts are uncontrollable, and gender stereotypes are wrong, the head of the family is still not ready to accept the fact that he is not a man. Moreover, the psychologist friend himself also turns out to be internally unwilling to say goodbye to the stereotype, and when his girlfriend assumes that he would do the same, he is offended.
The woman, in turn, is also not ready for the fact that she does not have a male defender, she panics, the solid ground of an unwritten, but generally accepted contract entered into during the marriage, according to which she obediently raises children and indulges her husband, is lost getting reliability and stability. And the only way out of the situation is not the revision of this treaty, which is prompted by the modern advanced ideology, but its cover with inconspicuous patches like “female tricks” or militant masculinity. This is a matter of interpretation, but I am absolutely sure that the scene where the wife is lost in the forest was played by her, and masculinity plays out not only in the form of a path with a rescued beauty in her hands, but also in the form of an extremely funny and undeniably brilliant scene with screaming muzhik- vikings on binge.
What is most interesting here and that just inspires hope for change - Estlund in the final is well able to remind you that all the same standards of gender behavior lie deep inside us, but instincts (for example, to run from danger without thinking and not thinking about anything else ) still ancient, so learning to live with them humanity will probably be easier than trying to keep old-fashioned conventions.
Alyona Bocharova and Kirill Sorokin
Together 6 years old, daughter 4 years
I love films by Ruben Estlund for the absence of moralizing in them and for the fact that it leaves so many open moments for reading that it is possible to discuss them endlessly. We discussed after the show whether Estlund approves of a horny Swedish or a divorced school friend? Because in them there is much more than some psychological depth as in the characters. Or what did the protagonist admit to his child that he smoke? What he smoked before and hid, but the situation has become so distorted that why not say yes to the question to which he had previously firmly answered no, since he had a cigarette in his hands?
In general, this is a rather funny movie, in which it is difficult to associate yourself with one of the heroes, because they are all in varying degrees walking stereotypes. Twenty-year-olds, who came to the resort with a man twice as old and telling wives about how she tried to get a job in a bar, mother and wife, whose life revolves around her family, and her personal rest is adjusted to the work schedule of her husband, self-confident woman juggling family life and short holiday romance. To be honest, I think it's cool that a woman has been in all these roles in her life, I firmly believe. As for the main conflict, what can I say: it is necessary to engage in sex more, and not to run in the shorts along the corridor.
In general, I love Estlunda and his previous film "The Game" was revised only in the movie two times. In "Tourist" - and this is the original name of "Force Majeure", which, in my opinion, to a much greater degree conveys the clash of a serene resort civilization with everyday extreme - a similar story unfolds. About which, one way or another, everyone at least once thinks and with which it is wildly difficult to identify themselves. But for me personally, it was also difficult because of the figure of the main character - from the very first frames, he obviously appears to be snobby, selfish with a knit who doesn’t undergo any dramatic transformations during the film.
This is, of course, a great film about the power of rhetorical modulations that always slip in a relationship - when from some, relatively speaking, little things like scattered things or unwashed dishes can grow universal drama, affecting very global things. And this happens precisely because of such rhetorical assumptions. Of course, you understand that the heroes had problems even before the central incident. For example, when a husband looks at the phone, and his wife asks what, they say, you are staring at the phone, but he answers without a break: "No." At the same time, the film remains open to interpretation. Closer to the denouement there is an episode where the wife somewhere disappears on the way down. Where did she go? Just lagged behind? Specially decided to stage this situation in order to psychologically equalize them and exhaust the problem?
But the most powerful moment for me personally occurs at the end - the finale with the bus, when after flying panoramas from the lift you specifically go into a hole on the edge of a cliff. And to me personally at this moment for the first time it became really scary. And then, after the seeming triumph of sanity, comes the realization that instead of walking uphill, you could sit quietly on the bus. Although I, as an incorrigible aerophobe, scroll through such situations in my head approximately before every second flight.
Anastasia Tikhonova and Luke Rodilso
Together 4 months
Amazing how movies without a single uniquely cute hero can keep a mirror opposite the viewer. Personally, by the end I had no strength left to condemn any of the parties. Of course, it’s cool to watch the boyfriend’s hand, smile and say that he wouldn’t act like the protagonist, but I’d definitely not behaved like his wife and we would definitely figure it out. Well, damn it, in fact. I thought that the main thing in any family is how the repair service works in case of force majeure and whether it wants to work, otherwise any beautiful story turns into an escape from responsibility. The ending of the film is beautiful. I even decided that the bus driver was paid by friends to rehabilitate. And I decided that the heroes of the film will be ok - they are clearly each other.
Central issue of the film - how important for the family structure itself is the readiness and ability of the father at the instinctive level to show its loyalty to the safety of loved ones. How seriously should be taken the deep symbolism concluded in a situation that does not seem to imply any decisive consequences. Personally, I had before my eyes an example of a brave and devoted mother who raised me alone, as well as a weak and absent father — so it’s natural for me to take the female side with her need to care and protect.
My girlfriend and I were united by the fact that I am fully and unconditionally ready to protect our future children. This became for us an obvious positive conclusion to which we arrived, faced with the provocation underlying the film. Of course, the film can cause or reveal disagreements in pairs on this issue and this is its narrative power. He is able to ruthlessly reveal the deep divergent views of two people - so much so that they will literally begin to distance themselves from each other, sitting on the sofa in front of the screen. And this is a sign of brilliant work.