The film society of the Lincoln Society organized the first retrospective of Ruben Oestlund’s films. His films and innovative approaches were largely unknown in the United States until his most recent production FORCE MAJEURE prompted attention because of its nomination as the Swedish entry for the foreign language  Oscar.

Oestlund’s   depiction of Swedish society mirrors a dark and satirical perception with absurd overtones. He avoids linear story lines, not permitting the audience to predict what will happen. Rather, he interrupts the flow of events bringing ambiguity and non-sequiturs to the screen. The viewer must decipher what is happening, which is facilitated by long takes, stationary camera work and realistic presentations.  As an astute but detached observer, Oestlund places the audience into an active role, challenging its perception but rendering the viewers frequently ill at ease and disturbed at the same time.

According to film critics, Oestlund’s THE GUITAR MONGOLOID, produced in 2004, ranged from one of the worst to one of the best Swedish films produced that year. His goal to make the audience feel insecure was certainly achieved. He did not decipher what is right and what is wrong nor convey message bound meaning. There is a series of seemingly unconnected   vignettes depicting the odd and erratic actions of individuals whose bizarre behavior ruptures the flow of events.  A boy damages roof top satellite dishes to interfere with television consumption.  An elderly women rambling to herself is obsessed with closing a door. She is looking for her stolen bike which in another scene is damaged by a group of young men. Their only activity in several vignettes is the destruction of bicycles. When she finds her bike she cannot disengage it from a lamp post but does not understand why. In the Russian roulette scene a man is pressured by his two drunken companions to risk his life. Shouting lyrics, a boy strums a guitar in front of shops.    In a parking lot scene there is a driver-less car which   speeds in circles chasing the owner. Two middle aged bike gang members are so strung out on the perfect conditions of their bikes that they engage in another sequence in a violent fight with teenagers who may have scratched one of the  bikes. In the last scene of the film, the guitar boy inflates plastic garbage liners and floats them in a surreal scene like a big black emblem   over the rooftops of the city. There is no straight storyline in Oestlund’s depiction of individuals acting on the margins of society and engaging in erratic behavior. Unless directly impacted passing people barely notice their action. 

Using the approach applied in GUITAR MONGOLOID Oestlund presents in INVOLUNTARY, released in 2008, a series of mini events interrupting the taken for granted reality. There is no straight story connecting the vignettes. At a birthday party a patriarch loses sight on an eye hit by a fire cracker,  yet to the consternation of his guests, he denies that something important has happened to him. Reporting child abuse by another teacher, an instructor interrupts the harmonious relations of her colleagues who want to suppress the incident. A driver stops his bus to find out who did minor damage to the toilet until a young boy is forced to confess while the passenger who was responsible watches silently. Sexually assaulted by his male peers during a trip and disgusted by the experience, a young man decides to stay with them. Half-drunk teenage girls interrupt riders on a train and in a group with others  damage a car. They run away from the irate owner and unconcerned about what will happen to her leave a drunken girl behind who is picked up by the driver.  Routine patterns of behavior are interrupted and cognitive dissonance results.

To Oestlund’s surprise, the reaction to the controversial and provocative film PLAY, of 2011 co-produced with Denmark and France, was much stronger among educators and social scientists than by film critics. Based on a true Goteborg story, five immigrant black children from poor backgrounds are ripping off three white middle class children including an Asian kid. In an elaborate ploy they obtain their smart phones and engage in another scam robbing them of their remaining valuables. The story is superbly and convincingly enacted by these boys. Oestlund precludes overt identification with either group by inserting unconnected trivial scenes   such as an office party at the shopping center,  a band of American Indians playing in front of it and an apparently ownerless crib obstructing passage on the train. Because of these scenes the disruptive elements of the PLAY become even more powerful.

The black group is aggressive and outspoken and excels in the cat and mouse game they play with the white kids who come across as passively serving as unwitting collaborators in the scams. They are systematically degraded in the story and show little resistance. Indifferent adults do not intervene to protect the white children or stop the boisterous behavior of the black ones in the tram or shopping center. One of the black children tells the white ones that it is their own fault for being victimized, “you must be stupid showing your smart phones to a group of five black kids”. There is also physical violence. On the tram young vigilantes beat up all the kids and one of the black children who wants to leave the group is assaulted by his friends. The other passengers remain indifferent except for an old man who tries to help the black child. At the end of film two white men steal smart phones from two young black children and accuse them of being thieves, though a woman defends the children in a heated exchange about minorities.

The camera work and visual style gives PLAY a documentary real time feeling. Customary moving images are missing and the audience is immersed like using the images as a giant looking glass.  Oestlund certainly realizes that there is a stereotype issue and that the film could reinforce the notion of criminal black youngsters. But without taking obvious sides he focuses on the race issue which has become prominent in liberal Scandinavia through heated immigration debate and the rise of right wing parties.

Though interrupted by unpredictable twists and turns the widely acclaimed FORCE MAJEURE feature of 2014 presents an accessible story of a professional couple’s weeklong stay in a luxury ski resort with their two children.  During that period an incident shakes the precarious basis of their marriage and reveals the turmoil behind the appearance of a happily engaged couple. Mutual taken for granted preconceptions about each other are destroyed and the marriage is collapsing, a pending disaster the kids sense immediately. Oestlund has stated that he hoped this film, which questions the brittle basis of most marriages, would lead to an increased divorce rate.

When a rapidly approaching avalanche threatens to kill the family the husband grabs his cell phone and escapes, abandoning his wife and children.  Prompted by panic or by a powerful survival instinct his action destroys the conception of the care taking and loving father and husband.  As Carl Jaspers suggests, the innermost self is revealed in such extreme situations.  Returning to the breakfast table he finds his family safe with the wife having protected the kids and he acts as if nothing has happened. In subsequent encounters with the spouse and friends he denies that he abandoned the family. His action creates an unbearable cognitive dissonance for his wife. She is forced to see his apparent true self, a weak and self-centered person in stark contrast to her perception of him before the avalanche hit.  He has to admit that he abandoned wife and children because his action was recorded on his smart phone. He spends time by himself with a friend who suggests screaming as a way to reduce stress, a behavior he repeats with a group of drunken men. Returning to his room he breaks down in tears, and is caught up in unstoppable wailing and crying that neither his wife nor his children can stop. He confesses his shallowness to her, his past infidelities and the cover-up of his fractured self. He has gone  through a primal experience, Jasper’s  extreme situation.  After he returns to his senses, he saves his wife during a snow storm after she had suffered a skiing accident. He acts firm but gentle with the children. When they leave the hotel, harmony has been reestablished and his wife has gained composure and cognitive balance. The world and her marriage make sense again. Yet the last scenes show the precariousness of their existence because their bus comes close to a life threatening tumble from a steep mountain road which is caught by Oestlund in anxiety inducing images.

As his retrospective shows, Ruben Oestlund belongs to a group of unconventional innovative film makers   such as Michael Haneke, Lars von Trier, Roy Anderson  and  Harmony Korine who break with traditional film making, disturb taken for granted conceptions of reality and force the audience to reflect. Oestlund's creative injection of doubt and cognitive dissonance induces  questioning and breaks our routinized mental habits.

Claus Mueller, filmexchange@gmail.com