The Square **** (2017, Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, Dominic West, Terry Notary) – Movie Review

Writer-director Ruben Östlund’s Stockholm museum satire is provocative, clever and amusing, though it goes on way too long at 142 minutes, and loses its way and its bite in the last 45 minutes. It does have some interesting and witty things to say and does it in a darkly playful way.

Claes Bang gives a brilliant performance as Christian, the chief curator of Stockholm’s prestigious modern art museum as he gets in deep water as he stages a controversial new exhibit. That exhibit is The Square of the title, a pretentious nothing kind of art work thing, replacing some ancient man on horse statue in the museum’s forecourt, a statue that promptly falls over and busts when it is craned off its plinth, just like you though it would.

Christian, though, is fond of the new exhibit and conveniently explains it. ‘The Square is a sanctuary of trust and caring,’ he says. ‘Within it, we all share equal rights and obligations.’ This is of course going to be the theme of the movie. By the way, is Christian’s Christian name significant? I think it must be.

Who Christian cannot afford to trust are the publicists for his new exhibition. They think The Square is boring, and a hard sell, and so come up with a crazily offensive advert for it and shove it on you tube as a viral video that shocks the snobby art world. As satire, it gets a bit broad and obvious round here, but it is to get a bit more broad and obvious later, while at the same time becoming bewildering and obscure. A posh dinner banquet runs like a Luis Buñuel film, The Square gets that arty. Terry Notary is the gymnast who wrecks the joint.

Elisabeth Moss enjoys herself in a splashy support role as Anne, a very credible mad woman who starts stalking Christian after they have one-night stand sex, a bit like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction (1987). If they want to remake Fatal Attraction, Moss is your woman. Even her hair is crazy! Dominic West has a non-role as Julian, an art world phony.

Östlund seems to despise the modern art world – well he’s a movie person – and he can’t hide this in a sometimes unsubtle screenplay. He seems to despise people too, at least the characters he has created here. It is quite a chilly film. But them hey, Stockholm gets chilly.

The Square won the Cannes Palme d’Or and is Oscar nominated as Best Foreign Language Film of the Year. It beat BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017) to the Palme d’Or and is Oscar nominated when  BPM (Beats Per Minute) is not. I have nothing too much against The Square, but like the art world, the movie world is not fair or just.

The Square is rated R for strong language, strong sexual content, and brief violence.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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