Force Majeure [DVD]

An interesting situation that I could identify with; an illustration of a dilemma within a relationship that was a good focus for discussion.

Film discussion group. Some missed reactions but generally favourable. The group overall rating would probably be three stars

The script, direction, acting, and editing are close to flawless in this lengthy yet tense comedy drama set at a ski resort in the mountains, where the avalanche implied in the title sets in motion {both real and metaphorical} a seemingly unbridgeable impasse in the up-to-now fairly happy marriage of Tomas and Ebba, with their two young children, resulting in scenes often so painful to watch one feels one is evesdropping on intimate emotions as well as their visible enactments.Director Ruben Östlund's brilliant screenplay allows us unrelentingly to peer at scenes which go beyond marital strife into areas of pained existential shame and guilt, with viewpoints {theirs and ours} shifting and rumbling like the ostensibly innocent forces surrounding the characters on all sides.The actual dialogue between the now chilly couple is so forensically accurate I was inwardly squirming in recognition of some of the unresolvable rows and arguments I've had with partners, in which so much is said, or not said, and so little heard. Both Tomas and Ebba, because of the almost unique nature of the cause of their disaffection, behave in ways that are at once understandable and exasperating.You feel their misery.Östland's cinema has been rightly compared to Michael Haneke's edgier films, such as Hidden or the merciless Funny Games, and my only quibble with this one is that it does take a while to take flight, though once it does I for one was gripped.My DVD copy gets a docked star for the frustrating letterbox format, and the fact that too often the subtitles are difficult to make out due to having white print set against white snow!Otherwise, this is a rare and dazzling film.

I find it difficult to understand the reviewers who have dismissed this film utterly, when, slowly unfurling, are a number of points of crisis that the characters must face on this holiday, and which they could never have been foreseen, all of them affecting at the deepest emotional level. I was left with the feeling that there are always ethical dilemmas, which present themselves when we least expect it, and which we have to be engaged. Difficult choices, when made in the moment, say a great deal about us and our personal histories. We.can never be sure of how we would cope, since crises happen in a second.There are a number of personal crises in this film: the potential breakup of a marriage; the wife's attitude to the lifestyle of the woman who has open relationships with men other than her husband and does not feel guilt: the husband who breaks down in the face of being abandoned when realizing the impact of his behaviour on his wife and children, and so on.Yet, the scene which caused the most strongly emotional response for me, was the scene in which the wife, torn by the dilemma of keeping her children safe in dreadful blizzard conditions on the mountain, and attending to her husband who is also distraught in facing his potential loss, asks her children to stay where they are, leaving them, while she attends to him. The vulnerability of the children in this scene is palpable, though the interesting issue, is that she decided to leave them, to go to his aid, aware that she could not do both at the same time.Ultimately, they are united and both husband and wife have time to reflect on what has happened. There is some indication that they are a family again, facing things together, though the many issues that have occurred,cannot have failed to impact on them. They linger in the mind and transmit the notion of the difficulty of doing the right thing, when faced with our own experiences, prejudices and survival needs. The husband's distraught response to his actions, are also testament to a man who has come face to face with himself and is struggling to cope with that, and the potential losses he could face, as a result.Interestingly, the scene on the bus on the way down the mountain, in which everyone gets off to walk and the driver is pilloried, is another example of someone's struggle in the face of a hostile environment, both climatic and interpersonal. If we struggle to do what we are expected to do, we meet with hostility.Interesting also, is the man who watches the couple's marital struggle from a vantage point in another part of the hotel. It was as if he is the audience within the film - trying to make sense of what is going on, while we are watching him also. In other words, there is always a potential inner and outer critic, in everything we do (observing ego and super ego), so that taking perspective is always more relevant than judging an issue on partial knowledge, especially when situations present themselves in which we react in a manner that reminds us that we never truly know ourselves, nor others.